Transformational partnerships can deliver outsized impact, but require focus, top‑to‑top alignment and a willingness to move beyond short‑term cost thinking. These relationships are much more difficult to bring about in practice, but some companies have found success with co-investment and incubator schemes.
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Ever Sustainable and The Gap Partnership recently hosted a series of roundtable discussions with senior procurement, sustainability, and supply chain leaders to explore how organisations can embed sustainability more effectively into procurement.
The sessions centered on our joint whitepaper, 'Baking sustainability into procurement', which sets out a practical framework for engaging suppliers, from basic compliance to deeper, value-creating partnerships.
Discussions focused on what this looks like in practice, where organisations are making progress, and what continues to hold teams back.
Key insights from the roundtables
- Most organisations are operating across the first two levels, but often without a clear, deliberate approach to where effort is best spent.
- Supplier data quality remains a significant challenge, absorbing time and limiting the ability to move into more strategic conversations.
- Balancing consistency with fairness, particularly between large suppliers and SMEs, remains an ongoing tension. Oftentimes, a one-size-all fits approach can raise more problems than it solves, and many companies explore more tailored approaches.
- Transformational partnerships can deliver outsized impact, but require focus, top‑to‑top alignment and a willingness to move beyond short‑term cost thinking. These relationships are much more difficult to bring about in practice, but some companies have found success with co-investment and incubator schemes.
Key takeaways
- Compliance is essential, but it is unlikely to drive meaningful change on its own.
- Sustainability is most powerful when it is treated as part of the total commercial agenda, not a standalone requirement.
- Intentional supplier engagement, rather than blanket approaches, is critical to unlocking value.
- Better systems, clearer standards and the smart use of tools, such as AI, can free up procurement teams to focus on impact.
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