Sustainable Supply Chain Improvement

Consumers, investors, and employees alike are putting increasing pressure on both the public and private sectors to align to environmental and ethical standards and minimise negative social and environmental impacts.

Procurement operations and supply chain represent the largest sources of an organisation’s social and environmental impacts, deeming them the most crucial aspects to review when establishing and implementing a new sustainability strategy.

However, for many organisations, understanding the sustainability opportunity within the supply chain and its impact on the cost optimisation agenda is extremely challenging. To determine the opportunities and deliver on them with credibility, you need a combination of robust tools, deep knowledge of sustainability measures and supply chain management with proven methodology.

Our Approach

After the initial OA phase of identifying potential sustainability improvement and cost reduction opportunities throughout the supply chain, we then work with you to create a sustainability plan, implement your strategy and ensure the improvements are measurable and maintained over the long term.

You can expect us to:

Run a thorough OA to map out the cost and sustainability risk in your supply chain and identify improvement opportunities – we also evaluate how well your procurement organisation is equipped to deliver and sustain environmental and social objectives, to include a review of your sustainability KPIs, strategy and structure
Deliver on opportunities identified across sourcing categories and supply chain functions throughout your organisation, unlocking the potential of procurement to drive quantified cost and sustainability improvements; we typically segment your supply base and apply a range of SRM and sourcing levers depending on your priority categories and suppliers
Enable sustained benefits and improvement through leveraging our eFlow platform, giving your organisation access to our team of sustainability and category experts and our technology suite to ensure continuous improvement throughout your supply chain in the medium to long term

Sustainability Opportunity Assessment

Our Sustainability Opportunity Assessment (OA) will help you to identify, deliver and sustain a sustainability strategy driven by your priorities around social, environmental and cost, risk and revenue impacts.

We also conduct practical category management to include gross margin/sales price reviews for clients within Manufacturing, Retail, Goods for Resale to help translate into practical top line benefits. Together, we will define and prioritise sustainability levers and demonstrate social and environmental outcomes that are measurable and reportable. These outcomes align with your organisation and its sustainability objectives and typically include some or all of the following:

Emission reduction – carbon footprint, greenhouse gases, toxic gases, carcinogenic particulate matter
Waste minimisation – identifying and limiting sources of waste, promoting recycling or aftermarket and avoiding landfill, enabling circular economy
Plastic avoidance – materials evaluation considering total environmental burden, sourcing portfolio redesign for minimum total impact
Child labour and modern slavery elimination – improving supply chain transparency and auditing suppliers’ labour practices
Supplier accountability and continuous improvement reporting on raw material sources and their own sustainability practices
Community engagement – ensuring fair wages, enabling local organisation in your supply chain, boosting employment
Diversity improvements – promoting the inclusion of ethnic minorities, gender balance and orientation through your supply chain
Cost minimisation with a sustainability overlay
- Demand management of direct materials and travel
- TCO / cradle-to-grave, such as increasing a specification to last longer so unit price is higher but
through-life cost is lower (purchase, maintain, operate, dispose)

Efficio’s London headquarters holds the BS EN ISO 14001 certification.

ISO 14001 is an internationally agreed standard that sets out the requirements for an environmental management system. It helps organisations improve their environmental performance through more efficient use of resources and reduction of waste, gaining a competitive advantage and the trust of stakeholders.

It requires that an organisation considers all environmental issues relevant to its operations, such as air pollution, water and sewage issues, waste management, soil contamination, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and resource use and efficiency.

Like all ISO management system standards, ISO 14001 includes the need for continual improvement of an organisation’s systems and approach to environmental concerns. The standard has recently been revised, with key improvements such as the increased prominence of environmental management within the organisation’s strategic planning processes, greater input from leadership and a stronger commitment to proactive initiatives that boost environmental performance.

Efficio's roadmap to improve sustainability through your supply chain involves five essential steps

1. Determine procurement's sustainability strategy
- Clear, actionable, measeurable
- Strategy must align with business strategy
- Consider customer base, investors and corporate and brand strategies
2. Define clear procurement role in strategy delivery
- Procurement should demonstrate that it can help to deliver on the sustainability strategy
- Early involvement will maximise the effectiveness of strategy delivery
3. Equip procurement team with the knowledge and tools to deliver
- Ensure adequate team training
- Increase knowledge and awareness of supply chain impact on sustainability
- Provide team with comprehensive tools to track progress
4. Segment your suppliers

Segment your suppliers in line with their potential impact on your sustainability performance into:
- Top suppliers (joint success stories)
- Other suppliers
5. Measure and communicate your results
- Use SRM tools
- Track KPIs
- Communicate progress via comms team, investor relations, campaigns with strategic suppliers

The time is now…

We can help you using our extensive assessment tools and unrivalled procurement expertise to create a robust and measurable sustainability plan. Combining sustainability practices with the pursuit of cost reduction, our methodology and technology enables us to help you reduce negative environmental and social impacts, mitigate reputational risk and firmly establish a confident sustainability programme.

A sustainability programme is no longer ‘nice to have’ – it’s how we make business decisions as consumers, investors and employees in today’s world, making it an essential component of both your internal and external communications and operations.