EVENT PREVIEW
“ It ’ s been a great audience and there have been some really fantastic speakers ”
ROBERT COPELAND CPO , G4S
Accelerating the digital journey As the Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Procurement Company , Ninian Wilson has spent more than 12 years with the group , working in procurement . Wilson explained how Vodafone has benefitted from digitisation to improve the contractual process and has sparked visibility across the business . Vodafone has also noticed the importance of bringing sustainability indicators into procurement processes .
“ If digitisation is the trend of our times , the second one is around sustainability . In the second half of last , we announced that we would be incorporating sustainability targets into all our tender options . Our sustainability comes under three pillars , and those are digitising society , inclusion , and the planet . If you look at a tender document from Vodafone , if it ’ s a high risk of health safety , it ’ s 10 % of the tender weighting , around inclusion it ’ s 5 % and around the planet , it ’ s 5 %. So , around 20 % of the weighting is around sustainability .”
Driving procurement change with ESG investment Robert Copeland talks about the six areas in which he has worked to improve procurement , highlighting that organisations are capable of managing ESG practices for a minute percentage of their budgets — with G4S spending around 0.001 % of its procurement budget on solutions for ESG transparency . Also , on the subject of sustainability , Copeland explains the reason behind the company ’ s widespread support of small-to-medium enterprises ( SMEs ) as the firm takes pride in its reliability and innovative capabilities .“ SMEs are fantastic incubators of innovation . They ’ re agile , they ’ re creative ,” says Copeland .
“ Oftentimes they are lacking funding . But , the majority of companies we have signed up with are SMEs . They are also far more willing to work with us , far more willing to adapt and modify the systems and the tools that become relevant to us .”
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