Building a responsible procurement platform using supplier evaluation data

• Autor(a) principal: Homorozan, Nicolae-Radu
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/134506
• topic: Sustainable procurement; social and environmental impact; supply chain management; supplier selection; SDG 1. no poverty; SDG 5. gender equality; SDG 6. clean water and sanitation; SDG 8. decent work and economic growth; SDG 10. reduced inequalities; SDG 12. responsible consumption and production; SDG 13. climate action; SDG 14. life below water; SDG 15. life on land

Responsible procurement is not just a buzzword anymore, but instead a practice that continues to be adopted by more and more organizations all around the world. With growing consumer awareness and regulative pressure, buying organizations are forced to rethink their procurement strategies and ensure that their supply chains are free of human rights abuse and environmentally harmful practices. However, with a fragmented data landscape on supplier sustainability practices, limited time and resources available for procurement professionals, and an increasing demand from suppliers to respond to customer questionnaires assessing their social and environmental practices and therefore leading to audit fatigue, selecting the right suppliers that maximize social and environmental responsibility is a difficult challenge. Responsibly, a social impact startup founded in February 2021, is tackling precisely this challenge. With a mission to make every purchase in the world responsible, the company is building a platform where procurement professionals can get a holistic overview of their suppliers, with all publicly available data about those, such as certifications, ratings, and risk indicators for issues such as deforestation, water stress, or child labor. This paper describes my projects and responsibilities as an early employee at Responsibly, in the role of a Data Manager, responsible to build and run the company’s data operations team. Within the few months with the company, we have been able to import data about thousands of suppliers into our platform database, and at the time of writing are just about to start trial processes with two potential customers. It is an ongoing journey with a very promising development and growth path.