Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors LLC
Sustainable Business News 
 
Volume 2014, Number 2                                                                                         February 2014  
In This Issue
Featured Article
Ideas You Can Use NOW
Calendar of Events
About Us
We help companies throughout the product supply chain create sustainable businesses.

Our consulting services include creating enterprise-level sustainability visions, goals and strategies; re-engineering internal processes to reflect sustainable best practices; maximizing the sustainability of today's complex supply chains and assisting with communicating sustainability information in writing and in media.

Our training services include webinars and in-person seminars for large to small groups on topics ranging from GHG accounting to Mastering Supply Chain Sustainability and Social Responsibility. We can custom design training to suit your needs.

 

We work in a variety of industries. We are extremely sensitive to clients' budgets and their capacity for change.
 
Whether it's an environmental or social responsibility issue, our team of professionals is ready to help your business. Please contact us to learn how we can help you.
 
Call 212-343-1006 today.

In this second newsletter edition of 2014, we continue with our three-part series on Engaging Stakeholders In Sustainability Initiatives. This month, our Feature Article discusses suppliers. The next edition will discuss other external stakeholders.

In our Ideas You Can Use Now section, we provide some specific tips about how to engage suppliers in sustainability, in a way that is meaningful for everyone involved.

   

Finally, in the Calendar section, we suggest some sustainability-related events in the coming few months that you might want to investigate.

 

We also invite you to visit our redesigned website at www.kuhnassociatesllc.com. There you will find valuable information on sustainable business practices, supply chain sustainability and tracking and reporting your progress ... as well as our provocative blog!
 

Happy reading!    

 

P.S. Keep up with us on:


Twitter:

www.twitter.com/RobertWKuhn  

Website:

www.kuhnassociatesllc.com      

 

Join our Google+ Sustainable Procurement community:

 https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104316087778115933988 

 

Feature Article: Engaging Suppliers in Sustainability Initiatives
 
Investing the time and resources required to meaningfully engage suppliers in sustainability initiatives pays off in the forms of reduced costs, decreased risk, enhanced collaboration and, perhaps even, new products and services developed jointly with suppliers. It's essential that a company engage with a meaningful portion of its supply base to achieve its sustainability goals. But what do best practices say about the goals and strategies a company should employ to create meaningful engagement with this stakeholder group (we'll cover some tactics in the Ideas You Can Use Now section below)?
 

First, it's critical that managers establish goals for their supplier-facing sustainability initiative (this seems intuitive, but you would be surprised how many don't start with this basic step). What exactly are you seeking from engagement? Questions to ask in forming these goals might include:

  • Are we limiting our engagement to collecting data (at this point)? Or are we going beyond tracking and reporting?
  • Do we need to identify suppliers that themselves perform sustainability well and learn from them?
  • Do we need to identify suppliers that are most likely to put our corporate sustainability goals at risk and create strategies to remediate or mitigate this risk? Could these suppliers be in tiers beyond Tier 1 and, if so, what goals can we set for them in the absence of a legal relationship?
  • Is part of our supplier engagement program intended to reward/incentivize suppliers that perform well in sustainability? If so, then what are those rewards?
Once a goalset has been agreed on, then it's a good idea to prioritize the goals, taking into account relevant variables (such as risk level, resource availability, market opportunities). Think hard about which goals would stretch your resources and capacity for change beyond what's possible ... supply chain sustainability can present unique challenges. And check to see if your industry has a group/committee that focuses on supply chain sustainability ... there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

Second, developing meaningful engagement strategies that can achieve your goals is, obviously, critical. For example, if you've prioritized reporting value chain sustainability data, then you need a strategy to engage suppliers continuously in the collection and management of that information. And the strategy might also need to be consistent with other reporting strategies your department or company uses.  

  • The key to developing winning supplier engagement strategies in supply chain sustainability is to create them in the context of a collaborative, two-way partnership.

Yes, it's okay (and appropriate) to create a few engagement strategies that are top-down, mandate-based. But you'll find that many suppliers engage better when the value to them is made clear and tangible. It's especially true at this point in time, when suppliers are generally fatigued by requests for data, participation in committees and other activities without there being any incentive or reward (other than, perhaps, maintaining a business relationship). Beware of unfunded mandates! 

 

Supplier engagement in sustainability initiatives is both art and science (but fortunately not rocket science!). Keeping the above principles in mind when you design and deploy your program will help ensure success.

 

>> Get in touch if you'd like more details; I would be happy to share more insights. Call me at 212-343-1006 or email me at robert@kuhnassociatesllc.com.

 

Hydropower
Ideas You Can Use Now!

Here's a short list of tactics we've seen work well in advancing supplier engagement in sustainability initiatives:

  • Realize there are three steps to this task:
    • identify which suppliers will participate (and who is a participant and who is an observer - see previous newsletter)
    • select suppliers
    • engage using the principles from the last newsletter
  • Start with a pilot program limited to Tier 1 suppliers. You can move beyond this group later.
  • Include service and indirect suppliers if appropriate. And remember to target traditionally underrepresented suppliers (HUBs, MBEs).
  • Create a sound protocol for your supplier-facing sustainability documentation:
    • RFPs and bidding docs
    • contracts
    • supplier codes
    • questionnaires
    • site visit and interview reports
    • scorecards and other performance-tracking documentation (even if it's IT-Based)
  • When tracking progress in supplier engagement in sustainability, remember to measure two things:
    • Your team's/department's activities in this realm (e.g., budget, # of team hours devoted to supplier engagement) - these are the INPUTS in the engagement process
    • Supplier achievements (e.g., scorecard results, # of new sustainable products) - these are the OUTPUTS of the engagement process 
>>If you have questions or comments on these or other "best practices" in supplier engagement, please contact us. We have the ability to craft solutions for you. Contact us now by calling 212-343-1006 or emailing us at info@kuhnassociatesllc.com.
Calendar of Events
 
Here are a few of the many interesting sustainability events happening in the coming months that we think are worthy of your attention.

  

March 5 - 6, San Francisco, CA - Responsible Sourcing Summit 2014 convenes subject matter experts in the field of supply chain sustainability. Speakers include DuPont, Google Inc., BASF, Environmental Defense Fund, and others. Visit http://industries.ul.com/blog/responsible-sourcing-summit-san-francisco-ca to register.

 

March 17 - 19, Hiroshima, Japan - 2014 Biennial Conference on Sustainable Business, Energy and Development in Asia offers a platform for scholarly and applied conversations among a wide variety of stakeholders concerned with the continual challenge of advancing the sustainable development and business agenda. Academics, researchers, students and representatives from industry, government and non-governmental organizations share their findings and learn from each other. For more information visit http://www.presdafoundation.org/sustainable-business-conference/.

 

March 25 - 27, Seattle, WA - Sustainable Packaging Coalition Spring Conference 2014 will deliver sustainability-centered dialogue, focusing on real-world leadership examples that have resulted in breakthrough sustainability success. Joel Makower, Chairman and Executive Editor of GreenBiz Group, Inc. will keynote the event. Visit http://conference.sustainablepackaging.org/ for more information.

  

June 11 - 12, New York, NY - AGRION Disrupt 100+ will assemble 100+ leading innovators and 600 managers of large companies to discuss sustainability, renewable energy production and storage, smart cities, resilience, and more. Visit http://www.agrion.org/new-york2014/for details. 
Thanks for reading! Please contact us today to discuss anything you've read here, suggest a topic for a future Newsletter edition or learn how we can help you build a more sustainable business.

Call 212-343-1006 or email us at
info@kuhnassociatesllc.com for more information.

Sincerely, 

Robert W. Kuhn, President and Senior Advisor
Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors LLC
www.kuhnassociatesllc.com
Copyright 2014  Kuhn Associates Sustainability Advisors LLC
Reproduction without prior permission prohibited.