Amazon Business offers new tools to help you achieve ESG goals through procurement.
Until a few years ago, “corporate responsibility” focused primarily on maximizing shareholder value and complying with regulations. However, corporates have recently shown an enthusiastic commitment to achieving environmental, social, and governance goals. Achieving ESG goals is not only good for business, but it also makes people feel good. After, it shows that businesses with sustainable practices have better operational performance, liquidity, and stability.
According to Amazon Business’s “2022 State of BusinessProcurement report, three of four essential procurement goals center around supporting corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals, such as supporting local, diverse, and sustainable businesses. New tools and processes have made it easier to use procurement to achieve ESG goals. The larger the organization, the more impact realigning the procurement will have.
BUYING AT SALE, LOCAL
The U.S. Air Force used Guidance Buying to sort vendors by distance to a given base. Since implementing the program, the Air Force has spent 1.29 million dollars with small, veteran-owned, and women-owned businesses.
Antwaun Griff, Amazon Business’ general manager of socially responsible buying, says, “Our customers come from every part of the world economy.” The Guided Buying tool can help companies steer their purchasing toward local businesses, small and diverse sellers, or products with sustainability certificates.
Griffin says that the challenges customers face in achieving their ESG goals are identifying certified suppliers, maintaining sufficient staff for their sustainability and DEI programs, and standardizing and implementing policies and practices across their enterprises. “Our goal is to make it easy to maintain, grow and standardize their initiatives within their organizations.”
The guided buying feature is a long-standing core part of the service. Businesses can allow employees to order products while also controlling which types of products they can collect. Amazon further refined its program in 2021 by creating credentialing and allowing businesses to index products based on three ESG metrics: locally sourced products from socially-disadvantaged companies and products with sustainability certificates. This powerful tool helps companies align their procurement towards ESG goals easily. Griffin describes himself as an accelerator. We want to help our customers achieve their goals, maintain and grow initiatives within their organization.
Pacifica Senior Living operates assisted-living facilities throughout the Southwest and Southeast. Business Prime streamlines the process by identifying preferred products and suppliers while meeting its internal guidelines on healthcare and safety. Jack McCarty is senior vice president for sales and marketing at Pacifica Senior Living. He says, “We love being able to support local vendors or small businesses.” I don’t need to research; it’s already done for me. We will buy from a smaller vendor if I find one with the same price as the giant conglomerate. We’ve also increased our diversity spending by about 25%.”
REAL-TIME VISIBILITY
Griffin says that gathering data to report is a significant challenge for customers. Our analytics and visibility report allows you to track diversity spending, sustainable purchasing, and per-day, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
Amazon Business offers a variety of ways to help customers achieve their sustainability goals. Frustration-Free Packaging allows businesses to get products without the extra packaging used to make them stand out on store shelves. This means shipping is more efficient, and less plastic and ink are used. Amazon Day allows customers to choose a date for delivery, which leads to fewer deliveries and fewer boxes being used. (Amazon Day deliveries use 30% fewer boxes.)