Beyond purchasing

34 It’s not easy being green | Section V
Importance when selecting a supplier for a major contract
Quality
67% 26% 6% 1%
Price
55% 33% 11% 1%
Supplier's record for reliability
and service levels
Supplier's record for speed
41% 41% 14% 3% 1% 1%
24% 41% 26% 6% 2% 1%
Existing relationship with supplier
15% 37% 39% 7% 2%
Supplier's reputation for employee
welfare/ human rights/ CSR
Possibility of privileged access to supplier's R&D
11% 21% 27% 23% 14% 4%
10% 25% 31% 16% 12% 5%
Supplier's environmental record
10% 20% 32% 20% 14% 3%
Supplier's general brand reputation
Proximity of supplier to operations
10% 35% 35% 12% 7%
9% 28% 36% 15% 10% 2%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
% of respondents
Very important
A bit important
Important
Not at all important
Moderately important
Don’t know/ Not applicable
on the life­cycle costs of assets,
instead of only upfront costs, helps
greatly in this regard. Consideration of
broader organizational goals can also
help. In government, for example, Mark
Pedlingham, Executive Director of
Markets, Suppliers, and Skills at the
United Kingdom’s Office of Government
Commerce, notes, “you can look at the
boundary you draw around
procurement. If you look narrowly you
may end up with one particular answer.
If one of your government policies is
around local employment though, you
might consider that it was more cost
effective to use local labor because the
cost of delivering that employment
would be higher another way.”
As Gardy says, “in many cases it is not
necessarily easy, but that is not an
excuse not to address it,” especially as
procurement’s contribution to corporate
sustainability looks set to become
an increasingly important part of its
performance and an area where it can
make a marked contribution to
corporate strategy.
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