A great view at the Procurement Live/Sustainability Live conference last week, but the phrase I kept hearing was “Procurement people don’t care about sustainability”.
I spent my time there moving between the Procurement Live and Sustainability Live floors in a beautiful conference venue in Westminster.
The two communities seemed largely disconnected and the reason is because they are aiming to solve completely different problems. And my frustration is that, instead, our supply chains can be managed holistically.
Procurement talked about spend analysis, AI productivity to increase adoption, trying to untangle complicated workflows.
Sustainability talked about carbon accounting based on models, estimates and average industry data protocols. Factual scope 3 reporting is only feasible via long and tedious questionnaires for suppliers and ultimately company policies are based on the bare minimum of what’s legally required.
It also kept popping up that the sustainability officers’ job is separate from the procurement team, so very few conversations translated one into the other.
And tragically: a procurement technology vendor told me they’re retiring their immature sustainability module because customers simply weren’t interested in developing it. All while technology providers invest heavily into AI to offer out-of-the-box agents, without waiting for customer backing.
In the meantime, sustainability is being sold as reporting, while procurement needs it as an operational capability – right there while making sourcing and purchasing decisions.