Procurement isn’t normally the first thing that springs to mind when we talk about changing the world.
Maybe it should be.
Every time your organisation buys something, someone makes a choice about where that money goes.
Normally we think about price, quality, specifications, delivery and service.
Quite rightly too.
But why stop there?
Imagine a range of suppliers that can all do the job – with marginal difference in price, quality etc. One employs people from a specific community that you want to support. Another may actively support local organisations, a third perhaps has significantly better environmental practices while the last one is a web based service located in Europe.
Suddenly the purchasing decision becomes more interesting.
This is why I always recommend taking a strategic procurement approach rather than just making buying decisions.
The question becomes:
How can the money we already spend achieve more than one outcome?
You don’t necessarily need a bigger CSR budget. You don’t need another committee. You may not need to spend another dollar. You simply need to think differently about the dollars already leaving the organisation.
And there’s another benefit.
Think about the people in your organisation who make purchasing decisions every day.
Instead of simply “ordering stuff”, they suddenly have an opportunity to directly contribute to your organisation’s purpose and to help make a better community.
That turns procurement into something much more powerful.
Every organisation has a supply chain and this means that virtually every organisation already has a resource it can use to create positive change.
The question is whether we choose to use it.
The Optimistic Cynic 