Corporate Citizenship

Companies can no longer afford to ignore what is going on in their supply chains - both goods and service providers. Corporate and brand reputations demand that a company’s values are an integral part of business practices wherever conducted.

Our approach in Corporate Citizenship is to work alongside established commercial and quality management systems. We aim to win the confidence of procurement managers, help them meet their commercial goals while equipping them to deal with the complex range of economic, social and environmental challenges.

We offer support services in the six key areas that we recommend companies to address:

Be clear about the principles and values you apply
Set clear standards, usually through a supplier code linked to your own code of business principles and benchmarked against international standards and country laws. We have helped draft and benchmark codes for companies such as Marks & Spencer, Diageo, and Centrica.

Map your supply chain
Know where goods and services are sourced from both globally and locally. Procurement managers in companies such as Cadbury Schweppes have mapped their supply chains with our help, looking at overall spending and their importance to the brand. We worked with Unilever to map local supply chains in countries such as Ghana and Indonesia.

Analyse the risks of non-compliance
Our risk assessment tools identify the types of risks that a company might face through non-compliance with its own supplier code. Based on detailed research of economic and social conditions in specific countries, this allows resources to be focused on high-risk inputs.

Communicate with your suppliers
Engagement has a crucial role to play in changing supplier behaviour. We help clients train suppliers at country level. For Vodafone, we supported two major conferences of global suppliers addressed by the chief executive to discuss its draft supplier policy and its implementation.

Embed standards into your management systems
We develop tool kits and presentations for procurement managers and then train them in communicating with suppliers and integrating ethical standards into existing systems.

Monitor, assess and report performance
Monitoring performance and keeping track of the changing external environment in which suppliers operate are vital. We provide clients with briefings and alerts on key issues and advice on KPIs for supply chain performance. We also advise on and write the supply chain sections of social and environmental reports.