Evaluate the suppliers’ capabilities and alignment with the organization’s requirements, and particularly how their sustainability practices are aligned with your organization. In this step, weighting your sustainability criteria is critical. If you e.g., have requirements for your suppliers’ ambition on prevention of deforestation, allocating additional weight to this parameter in your evaluation can be beneficial. In the exhibit below you can see an example of how sustainable criteria can be considered in the RFI stage:

If the shortlisted suppliers demonstrate satisfactory sustainability practices that align with your internal goals and requirements, a request for more details can be appealed through an RFP document to receive formal tenders from relevant suppliers. This document should contain sustainability-related questions that are more detailed and complex than in the RFI process as it seeks to uncover and verify detailed information about the supplier’s sustainability goals, commitment, and performance. Thus, it’s important to tailor them to the specific project and supplier under consideration.

Continuous assessment and monitoring of your supplier’s sustainability performance is critical to your organization for several reasons.

• Firstly, it enables your organization to track whether your suppliers continue to comply with your standards and adhere to potential new regulations.
• Secondly, it allows you to track suppliers’ progress and improvement on criteria of interest.
• Finally, it demonstrates commitment and engagement with your suppliers which fosters a culture of accountability and improvement.

Data for re-assessment should be collected and evaluated at least annually from suppliers. In the graph below you can see an example of how sustainability criteria can be considered in your Supplier Performance Evaluation:

To ensure a successful implementation of your newly designed green procurement model, equipping your procurement leaders and employees with the right skills and know-how is essential. There are fourkey activities you can take to upskill your employees.

1.  Understand what skills and capabilities you need for the green Procurement Model. In general, the six values expected from Procurement are savings, innovation, quality, sustainability, speed, and risk mitigation. Traditional metrics, like EBIT savings, days cycle time, or return on procurement investment, might not fully reflect sustainability considerations. New sustainability teams need to look at other factors to determine how to embed decarbonization into procurement strategy.

2.  Survey your employees to understand their sustainability knowledge gap or identify areas of interest. Surveying your employees will enable you to assess the current knowledge level among your employees, which will facilitate a more informed approach to upskilling. As an alternative to a survey with specific questions, you can provide employees with a more open-ended response form to share their questions, doubts, or areas of interest regarding sustainability topics. Understanding the knowledge gap or areas of interest will help identify and tailor priority areas for the subsequent training sessions, allowing for a more efficient and engaging experience. Below, you can find potential topics to include in an employee survey:  

• General sustainability knowledge
• Climate-related risks and opportunities
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Sustainability reporting and metrics
• Company sustainability strategy and policies
• Company procurement strategy and policies

3.  Educate your employees through trainings and workshops or hire new employees. You can enhance your employees’ knowledge about sustainability, climate ambitions and requirements through structured training sessions. Involving your employees will enhance engagement and ownership which, in turn, will augment motivation, commitment and implementation. Consider initiating both larger workshops and individual compliance trainings survey: 

• Workshops: Conduct larger workshops on relevant topics to your organization and include elements such as group discussions, Q&A sessions, guest speakers, etc. to facilitate an effective and engaging training. 
• Individual compliance and regulatory training: Use individual trainings to reinforce key points and ensure that your employees are aligned with the regulatory sustainability guidelines. Consider conducting this through reoccurring surveys as an integral part of your existing compliance training.

If skills to conduct workshops are not available within the Procurement Team, involve members from other teams to support with workshops (e.g., usually from the Sustainability Team).

Alternatively, you can also expand your team through hiring.

Sustainability Procurement Managers may hold responsibilities such as identifying and driving opportunities for Procurement spend categories to ensure implementation of net-zero commitments. Job responsibilities may include, but are not limited to:

• Conducting sustainability assessments of suppliers, identifying areas for improvement, and working with suppliers on the Net-Zero journey. 
• Developing and implementing initiatives with Procurement managers and suppliers, such as reducing product carbon emissions. 
• Tracking project progress with suppliers through key performance indicators and reporting systems (e.g., annual integrated reports). 
• Developing sustainable procurement policies with interdisciplinary teams to establish sustainability criteria in supplier selection and contracts. 
• Ensuring procurement practices follow the company’s sustainability goals.
• Manage the relationship with external partners and systems, e.g., EcoVadis or Together for Sustainability (TfS).
• Training sustainability teams, Procurement managers, and other stakeholders for adherence to sustainability practices.

4. Foster ongoing engagement and innovation through interdisciplinary teams. Embedding sustainability criteria into your procurement processes involves multiple stakeholders across your organization. Thus, ensuring that all stakeholders are represented fosters a more holistic approach to decision-making and results in more efficient procurement processes.
It can be beneficial to create interdisciplinary teams to leverage different experiences and areas of expertise, which fosters knowledge sharing. For example, a member of the sustainability team can help to upskill the procurement teams by working together.
When establishing your teams, it is essential to divide clear roles and responsibilities among the team members. In the graphic below, you can see an overview of which disciplinary functions are relevant to engage in your procurement departments and their respective contributions. See figure below.

To ensure that your new procurement model gets properly integrated and embedded in your organization, consider:

1. Conducting recurring trainings and upskilling activities for leaders and employees to ensure that knowledge gets reinforced and updated recurringly.
2. Establishing non-monetary incentives for achieving sustainability goals. Examples include employee awards, which can be an effective way of providing recognition for efforts toward your sustainability goals. While this can improve engagement and participation of employees, it also creates a culture where sustainability remains a focus
3. Linking executive remuneration to sustainability criteria, such as a decrease in Scope 3 Upstream emissions. This can be a powerful monetary incentive to drive action.
4. Engage in outside networks for best-practice knowledge sharing. Interacting and collaborating with other companies is an effective method to learn, collaborate, and update your organization’s sustainability competencies. Firstly, it allows you to access expertise and knowledge from peers or industry leaders through knowledge sharing. Secondly, it allows you to take part in collaborative problem-solving which may advance sustainability processes in your organization and operational industry further. Finally, it provides insights into industry trends and emerging sustainability regulations which ensures that your organization’s sustainability practices remain relevant, compliant, and updated.

1. Supplier Emissions Profile 

Data collection is necessary to build the supplier’s emissions profile. Often, this step is one of the most challenging for companies given the vast amount of data to be collected (explore more here). Data collection should be prioritized for suppliers that are expected to have the most significant GHG emissions, and thus the most significant GHG reduction opportunities (BCG analysis).

Ideally, you would collect primary supplier data to establish a first emissions baseline and assess sustainability maturity. If there is no primary data available, use secondary data as an interim solution, while working towards the collection of primary data.

• Primary data is defined by the GHG Protocol as data from specific activities within a company’s value chain. Tools for primary data include data solutions and platforms for collecting the supplier’s emissions information. Explore more here. 
• Secondary data includes industry-average data and other data that is not from specific activities within a company’s value chain. Tools involved in secondary data collection include public data, predictive models, and emissions factor databases with aggregate data. Explore more here.

2. Data Exchange

To collect data, you can use tools with varying degrees of automation, ranging from manual data collection (e.g., excel file questionnaires) to fully automated and integrated solutions. Costs tend to increase with a higher degree of automation and integration. However, efficiency also increases as automated data collection is more scalable, and allows to track data sources and assumptions used. Solutions should be able to record data at a granular level and facilitate updates of data and emissions factors.

Once the supplier’s data is collected, the data should be processed to extract meaningful insights and track and report changes over time. Data processing includes activities such as emissions calculation and reporting.

3. Emissions Calculation

Depending on the complexity of the company, tools for emissions calculation could range from a manual Excel, a software solution, or a solution embedded in data management systems. Two main types of tools can help suppliers understand their GHG inventory:

• Calculators that use collected primary data to generate GHG emissions estimates. For example, the GHG Protocol’s GHG Emissions Calculation tool provides free, Excel-based worksheets using emissions factor sources like the EPA, DEFRA, or IPCC. For more information, reference the GHG Protocol tools here. 
• Simulators providing an estimate of GHG emissions, using secondary data. SMEs can particularly benefit from using these simulators as a starting point to identify hotspots in their Scope 1 and 2 emissions. For example, the SME Climate Hub developed a free Business Carbon Calculator to allow SMEs to estimate their full carbon footprints. For more information on the Calculator, please refer here. Explore more here. 

4. Reporting tools

Reporting tools should communicate emissions baselines to relevant stakeholders. Stakeholders often demand greater transparency on emissions, so data should be monitored and reported. Reporting tools can integrate reporting guidelines and frameworks so emissions can be reported in accordance with standards such as ISO 14064. Disclosure and evaluation platforms are other tools where calculated emissions can be disclosed. The WWF outlines a list of carbon accounting and reporting tools across various sectors here.