ENTREVISTA
Procurement strategies: Supplier-enabled innovation and sustainability
Critical sustainability issues can be addressed when companies work with suppliers in new ways and adopt processes that enable supplier-enabled innovation,” says Mondi’s chief procurement officer Beatrix Praeceptor. For those with a passion for end-to-end optimisation, procurement today offers exciting career paths as well.
Beatrix Praeceptor is chief procurement officer at Mondi Group. Her goal is to embed a supply chain-oriented mind-set throughout the business. Why? Because procurement is a key lever for profitable innovation and sustainability, she says. In the following interview, she describes how.
Beatrix Praeceptor, chief procurement officer at Mondi Group
Does procurement have a role to play in innovation and sustainability?
Beatrix Praeceptor: There is more potential to work with the supply base to answer the questions we need to answer as businesses and society. For example, when a big resin suppliers tell me their main innovation topic is to make their products more sustainable and, on the other side, we’re working to make packaging more sustainable, I see an opportunity to be partners in innovation. Supplier-enabled innovation is an opportunity to build structures and relationships that enable the exchange of innovation.
What is supplier-enabled innovation?
Beatrix Praeceptor: Supplier-enabled innovation means that you build working relationships with selected suppliers, with full transparency around areas of innovation where you match, so you can enhance innovation together.
Sometimes, supplier-enabled innovation calls for different kinds of contracts. If you tender a supplier every year, and you can throw them out in a month, then why should they share their best innovation ideas with you? You need a different mode of working, with contracts that still have competitive costs, but where the supplier has security that investing in the relationship with you will also bring them long-term benefits.