Cross-Functional Collaboration for Sustainable Procurement and Resilience


As we enter 2025, complying with supply chain due diligence legislation and responding to geopolitical challenges both require expertise across various specialties within an organization. Creating long-term value for a diverse set of stakeholders, internally and externally, while establishing the business case for a sustainable, resilient, and strategic sourcing program cannot be solely managed by one department. More than ever, there is a need for a centralized, cross-functional approach to supply chain due diligence that can be facilitated through data centralization and collaborative tools.

Regulations:

Reporting regulations, namely CSDDD and SB 253, are largely calling for a closer assessment on who we do business with. The EU’s CSDDD has a broad scope that combines social due diligence with environmental metrics, highlighting the importance of integrating both areas to assess risks and expand understanding of your impact. California’s SB 253 also places a more urgent emphasis on emissions reporting and other climate risk mitigation throughout your supply chain. Not only do you need visibility into who is contributing toward your production targets, you also need to be aware of their environmental impacts.

Collaboration:

Compliance with these regulations is inherently multi-faceted. To achieve the necessary outcomes, professionals with backgrounds in procurement, traceability, responsible sourcing, environmental sustainability, and legal frameworks need to speak the same language. By sharing the same data, procurement teams can evaluate suppliers based on their social and environmental performance with criteria set by sustainability and responsible sourcing teams. Risk evaluation and mitigation can be driven by traceability and legal teams based on a rich dataset gathered from supplier sustainability programs. Executives can evaluate the reach, impact, and performance of these programs on-demand and over time. When these interdepartmental channels open, noncompliance—whether legal, environmental, social, or otherwise—can be identified quickly and comprehensively.

Centralization:

A standardized approach to supply chain due diligence requires buy-in from all parties. Some ways to support this process are to centralize data management, internally communicate, and share responsibility within sustainability programs. Streamlining departmental alignment through a shared tool can remove roadblocks and inefficiencies that could hinder your compliance efforts. When teams are fragmented, larger goals for a resilient supply chain could be undermined through latencies, inaccurate or missing data, or disjointed processes. By bringing multiple operational stakeholders together on a single platform, your organization can ensure both effectiveness and longevity in leveraging supply chain metrics to achieve tangible outcomes.

Our Solution:

The G360 Insights® platform is thoughtfully designed to support the due diligence process through built-in collaborative functions and role-based access control. Sourcing managers, sustainability teams, responsible supply chain teams, company executives, service providers, and the suppliers themselves all have access to the right data at the right time, simply by logging in. Not only can you compare performance across your entire supplier network in a centralized repository, but you also can engage suppliers through sustainability programs directly in the same system. From social audits and CAPAs, to traceability, to greenhouse gas inventories, you can manage the growing impact of your CSR programs in a singular, standardized, and scalable platform. By bringing these teams together, you can streamline procurement processes and maximize the impact of your efforts across departments.

Outcome:

Overall, the broader business environment is calling for sustainability and due diligence to be formalized into a company’s DNA. With visibility into key metrics across departments, your organization can make more informed decisions and adopt a systems-thinking approach to building resilience in the face of environmental, socioeconomic, and regulatory uncertainties.  Instead of viewing supply chain compliance and reporting as a hurdle, it can become an opportunity for positive business transformation that benefits both stakeholders and the bottom line.

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