Green Sourcing and Benefits
You hear it everywhere: green is the way to go. Its sustainable. Its less expensive in the long-term. Its responsible. Two out of three ain’t bad, right? Wrong — we should be shooting for perfection here, and not second place.
Ensure Supply, Save Costs
Sourcing and procurement, as part of supply chain management, involve risk analysis. It doesn’t matter whether we are looking at your neighbourhood coffee shop or the discount grocer in the mutiplex, everyone must acknowledge and assess risk. Ideally, all companies will do something about it.
Green is better in this respect; by ensuring a sustainable supply of goods or services you are addressing risk. This is somewhat of an ideal perspective, but as long as risk is re-evaluated the premise can hold true.
Some other items that need to be considered with supply chain management for saving costs:
- Internal Supply Chain
- Sourcing Strategy
- Domestic & International Balance
- Creativity always helps
From marketing to manufacturing (and a bunch of other words starting with letters other than ‘M’…) there are opportunities. Even bring the Sales group in - strategies for selling can encorporate green opportunities. So, get on it.
Go Green Get Responsible
Not just fiscally responsible, but socially responsible. By switching to goods and other inputs that are not in high demand domestically or globally you can leverage better accessibility to supply and insulate the company from shortage, or scarcity. Initial costs for inputs may be higher; however, over the full spectrum of spend analysis the reduction in risk and supply flow may make positive gains in your favour.
“Green options not only promote innovation and cost savings but cooperation and interaction across departments and divisions of a company — use the green push to bring your company together.”
Environmentally friendly solutions take a lot of innovation to materialize… we are not talking about switching to CF lamps here. Innovation takes conflict and varying perspectives, something that every successful company should have. So, why are you using it?
Green Means Go…
When the tide of change does role through be at the front of the wave and have all of your stakeholders on board. Make sure your employees are informed. Get them charged up. Then do more together than you would have done otherwise.
What if the scale tips and green is rewarded from a taxation perspective? Enjoy the gains you set yourself up for. One way or another green initiatives pay for themselves — and hopefully in more than one way.
