Challenges

Implementing sustainable procurement on a wide scale
is a challenge today for many organisations

• Proliferation of standards: the number of standards published by NGO’s, Government, Private companies, related to sustainable development is growing everyday : GRI, NRE, SA8000, SD26000, AA1000, SD21000, EMAS, Agenda 21…Procurement professionals can not cope with the proliferation of industry specific standards, protocols and guidelines applying to 100’s of specific commodities.
   
• Unreliable information: Accessing to reliable information on the environmental footprint and social practices of a supplier is challenging, due to the lack of experience of buyers and the unavailability of public information. This is especially true for smaller suppliers which in some cases represent the highest level of risk.
   
• Change Management: even if sustainable procurement goals are generally supported by most of employees, significant change management issues remain, the most important being linked to the short term objectives of the buyers (savings) conflicting with the medium to long term goals associated to CSR.
   
• Lack of resources for remediation: in most companies, resources are focused on suppliers monitoring and audit, leaving few resources for remediation and collaboration with suppliers regarding their capabilities' development.
   
• Complex supply chain: unlike many other supply chain risks (financial, operational) the environmental and social risks are carried through the various tier of the supply chain. You may be more exposed to the unethical practices of your Tier2 and Tier3 suppliers than you are to your Tier 1.

EcoVadis Sustainable Supply Management solution addresses all of these issues by providing a web-based collaboration tools with suppliers, and a shared service expertise, which allows procurement executives to get access to reliable, commodity specific information on all of their suppliers.