Sustainability in Procurement

Companies are currently dealing with the issue of aligning their supply chains to be transparent, resilient and sustainable. Regulatory provisions such as CSDDD, EUDR and CBAM ¹ significantly increase requirements and make procurement into a key management function. At the same time, the expectations of customers, investors and employees are rising: Companies should be demonstrably improving their sustainability year after year. This context gives rise to one decisive question: How can sustainability, regulatory security and cost efficiency in procurement be effectively combined? Working together, we align your procurement in such a way that sustainability becomes a measurable success factor – one which is integrated into your organization’s processes, data and decision-making logic. 

Our solution approach

Holistic sustainability approach : We embed sustainability in your procurement 

We support you in systematically embedding sustainability in procurement and the supply chain. We give your employees the capability to understand sustainability requirements, integrate them into methods and processes, and effectively implement them in your day-to-day business. Our approach consistently unites environmental and social responsibility with an economic perspective. After all, sustainable procurement is always cost-conscious. Using a holistic view we consider these seven dimensions: 

1. Strategy and targets: We help you derive clear sustainability goals for procurement, make them measurable and embed them in your company’s overall strategy. 

2. Regulatory compliance: We ensure that you implement regulatory requirements in a practical manner and that your procurement processes are always compliant. 

3. Governance, policies and rules: We establish binding guidelines and control mechanisms, thereby making sustainability an integral part of decision-making processes. 

4. Category group and supplier management: We incorporate ESG criteria into tenders as well as supplier qualification and development. 

5. Organization, roles and responsibilities: We create clear structures and roles with a view to ensuring sustainability is organizationally embedded in your procurement – right down to specialized roles. 

6. IT systems, data management and reporting: We link sustainability data with procurement processes and enable informed decisions by means of transparent scorecards and reporting. 

7. Carbon management and reduction: We use primary CO₂ data from the supplier base, enable robust product carbon footprints, and implement targeted reduction measures. 

Sustainability transformation : We turn your procurement into a value-creating engine

From our many sustainability projects we know that for the full value of sustainability to be achieved it must be consistently integrated into decisions and processes. Our consultants are familiar with the tension points between cost pressure, operational supplier management and increasing regulatory requirements. We bring together environmental and social responsibility with economic efficiency and pragmatism. 

Our goal: To make procurement a transparent, value-adding driver of your sustainability transformation. To achieve this we analyze the maturity level of your procurement function, derive a roadmap for further development, and implement sustainable procurement. The result is a procurement organization which plays an active and leading role in driving measurable change and is capable of reporting substantial progress

¹ EU Supply Chain Directive (CSDDD), EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), EU CO2 Boundary Offsetting Mechanism (CBAM)

Sustainability in Procurement