Review

Identify gaps and lessons learned

Use your post-review process to reflect on gaps in your approach to sustainable procurement and the lessons learned. This involves an inward examination of your procurement process and an assessment of external factors such as emerging trends and changing market conditions. As you uncover new insights, hotspots, and areas for improvement, updating things like your value chain map and reassessing product and service life cycles becomes an iterative process, furthering your understanding of the sustainability landscape.

A critical part of the reflection process is engaging diverse groups, including both your internal teams and suppliers. This is not only about gaining broader perspectives, but also build stronger relationships and wider buy-in to improvement plans.

Develop action plans to address gaps

Leverage the findings from your reviews to shape action plans that enhance future performance and capitalise on sustainability successes. Consider what led to successful outcomes and how these can be replicated or adapted to other sustainability issues or purchasing categories.

In cases where supplier sustainability performance falls short of expectations, your action plans should outline solutions. For instance, this could be the renegotiation of contracts to include expanded or altered sustainable deliverables. Or, in some cases, you may need a more fundamental change that requires restarting the procurement life cycle, beginning with fresh market testing.

Consistently engaging in this assessment, reflection, and action planning process at the end of the procurement cycle will ensure procurement processes evolve and improve, driving your organisation towards its sustainability objectives.

EXAMPLE: Starbucks seeks to bridges sustainability gaps through innovative procurement

After identifying gaps in their goal to make their cups 100% recyclable, Starbucks co-founded the NextGen Consortum and launched the NextGen Cup Challenge.² This global design competition identified fully recyclable and compostable to-go cup designs. The Consortium continues to supporting the finalists to test and pilot their solutions and commercial viability.³