Sustainable Procurement

07 Mar, 2024

Sustainable Procurement

Sustainable procurement strategies that turns environmental data into business opportunities

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A Sustainable Procurement Strategy: Strategic, Conscious and Profitable

In today’s interconnected world, procurement is no longer just about cost savings or efficiency—it’s about driving sustainability, minimizing risk, and building long-term value across your supply chain. Sourcing Champions is here to guide organizations in embracing responsible procurement through strategies that not only ensure compliance with evolving regulations but also empower businesses to lead in sustainability and resilience.

Sourcing Champions supports your sustainability journey by addressing four key areas critical to responsible procurement. First, we help businesses achieve compliance with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), CBAM, CSDDD, and key supply chain acts by streamlining reporting, performing gap analyses, and aligning sustainability narratives with stakeholder expectations. Simultaneously, we assist in turning net-zero ambitions into actionable outcomes by mapping carbon footprints, engaging suppliers in decarbonization strategies, and tracking emissions reductions across Scope 1, 2, and 3 levels.

Additionally, we emphasize the importance of N-tier supply chain visibility, helping organizations uncover hidden risks, ensure deep transparency, and leverage data-driven insights to foster collaboration across the value chain. Finally, our focus on risk intelligence empowers companies to proactively monitor risks, implement tailored mitigation strategies, and integrate sustainability metrics into procurement processes for enhanced decision-making. Together, these core aspects form a robust foundation for achieving your sustainability goals and building resilient, future-ready supply chains.

Sustainability and Risk Transformation with Sourcing Champions

At Sourcing Champions, we guide organizations through a structured, impactful journey to align procurement with the demands of sustainability and risk management under the CSRD framework. Our three-phased approach ensures a comprehensive transformation:

Phase 0: 15-M Sustainability & Risk Maturity Assessment 

We begin by diagnosing challenges through a rapid, insightful assessment. This phase identifies gaps in sustainability and risk maturity, setting the foundation for strategic improvement.

Phase 1: Transformation

We develop a strategic transformation plan to define the path toward the targeted future state.

Phase 2: Sustainability & Risk Management System

Based on the findings, we design a tailored approach to design a sustainability & risk management system. This system ensures strategic alignment with both business goals and regulatory requirements.

Phase 3: Implementation Options

  1. Due Diligence & Risk Identification – Comprehensive identification of risks across the supply chain.
  2. Mitigation & Compliance – Targeted strategies to reduce risks and ensure compliance.
  3. Sustainability & Risk Reporting – Transparent, actionable reporting to drive accountability and showcase progress.

Required Actions for Effective Transformation

  • Align Leaders: Cultivate a sense of urgency and commitment among key stakeholders.
  • Drive Behaviors: Foster a culture of sustainability and proactive risk management.
  • Elevate Procurement: Build expertise, enhance capabilities, and leverage digitalization for procurement excellence.

  • Communication Plan: A well-crafted communication plan ensures transparency and stakeholder engagement throughout the transformation. Clear, consistent messaging will inspire collaboration and drive progress.


With Sourcing Champions, procurement becomes the driver of sustainable value creation, compliance, and strategic resilience.

Let’s lead the change.

“Think Strategically, think responsibly.”

At Sourcing Champions, we empower organizations to navigate the complexities of sustainability and compliance while strengthening their supply chain operations. Our tailored solutions ensure that procurement becomes a key enabler of sustainable, resilient, and compliant business practices:

  1. Supply Chain Due Diligence
    Meet the requirements of current and upcoming supply chain legislation, including CSRD, CSDDD, LkSG, VSoTr, and NTA. Our approach ensures full compliance while preparing you for future regulatory changes.
  2. Sustainability Reporting
    Report your sustainability initiatives in alignment with recognized standards like GRI and ESRS. Stay compliant with reporting regulations such as the CSRD to enhance transparency and accountability.
  3. Carbon Emissions & Decarbonization
    Accurately measure and reduce supply chain emissions while meeting compliance obligations under regulations like CBAM. Take meaningful steps toward achieving your decarbonization goals.
  4. Product & Material Compliance
    Ensure adherence to standards for hazardous materials and ethical sourcing, such as REACH, ROHS, PFAS, PBT5, and Conflict Materials, safeguarding your business and its reputation.
  5. Deforestation & Biodiversity
    Comply with deforestation-related regulations like EUDR to protect vital ecosystems, secure sustainable sourcing practices, and contribute to preserving the planet’s resources.
  6. Supply Chain Visibility
    Gain end-to-end visibility into your supply chain, enabling proactive risk management and sustainable sourcing at every tier.

Sourcing Champions partners with organizations such as Ecovadis, Sphera, Prewave and IntegrityNext to transform procurement into a strategic lever for sustainability, compliance, and value creation. Let us guide your journey to a responsible and resilient future. 

At the core of Sourcing Champions’ approach lies our innovative 15-M Maturity Assessment. This comprehensive evaluation provides a solid foundation for aligning procurement with sustainability and compliance goals.

The Roof of the 15-M Maturity Assessment House

  1. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG):
    ESG principles form the cornerstone of sustainable procurement. Our assessment evaluates how well your organization integrates ESG into procurement processes, identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement. This ensures that ethical, social, and environmental considerations are prioritized across the supply chain.
  2. Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD):
    The CSRD is a pivotal regulation for modern businesses. We assess your readiness to meet its reporting standards, helping you align your procurement practices with transparency and accountability requirements. This includes compliance with ESG metrics and frameworks like GRI and ESRS.
  1. Costs:
    Sustainable transformation must be financially viable. Our assessment explores cost structures within your supply chain, identifying areas where efficiencies can be gained while maintaining compliance and sustainability goals. Balancing cost with value creation is central to procurement excellence. We factor in upcoming regulations, such as CBAM, along with sustainability considerations to provide a comprehensive view of total cost of ownership and long-term financial implications.
  2. Risk Management:
    Managing supply chain risks is crucial for long-term resilience. We evaluate potential vulnerabilities, such as regulatory non-compliance, environmental impacts, or supplier disruptions, and offer strategies to mitigate these risks effectively.
  3. Stakeholder Engagement:
    Effective stakeholder alignment is critical to the success of any sustainability initiative. Our assessment reviews the engagement of internal and external stakeholders, ensuring that procurement aligns with broader organizational goals and fosters collaboration across teams.
  4. Data Collection and Reporting:
    Data is the foundation of informed decision-making. We assess your current data collection and reporting capabilities, ensuring they meet the demands of transparency and compliance. This includes evaluating tools and processes for tracking ESG performance, emissions, and supply chain activities.

Partner with Sourcing Champions to assess, enhance, and elevate your procurement strategy, ensuring alignment with sustainability goals and regulatory expectations.

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Sustainable Procurement: Carbon Analytics

03 Nov, 2022

Get to know your Scope 3 numbers today

Try it with your data, free & without commitment

Achieve Sustainable Sourcing with Scope 3 Carbon Accounting

If you’ve made it this far, we doubt that you need to be convinced of the calamity of climate change. Risks need to be mitigated and the environment needs to be protected. Perhaps you are exploring routes to reach Net Zero, and perhaps you’re wondering how to get started.

Shifting your organization’s focus to sustainability boosts reputation, increases performance, and improves the product quality. With the ever-growing media presence and stakeholder preference on sustainable issues, this almost goes without saying.

Hence, embedding sustainability into the pillars of your procurement activities is how Sourcing Champions taps into real competitive advantages for your organization. This is where noteworthy bottom-line transformations are made, such as improving innovation and expanding risk mitigation coverage. The first step of a sustainability-driven transformation is to create transparency by gathering and utilizing supply-chain data, with the support of a best-of-breed procure-tech software solution. This crucial step is of growing importance in the face of the ongoing shift from voluntary disclosure to regulatory requirements. Thus, for a limited time, Sourcing Champions, in partnership with Ignite Procurement, is offering to calculate and analyze your organization’s Scope 3 carbon emissions, free and without commitment.

Start on the right Carbon Foot

There are numerous environmental focal points that must all be tackled in due time, but we begin with your carbon footprint. Carbon emissions are a significant contributor to adverse environmental impacts. They’re a by-product of how we’ve been making, shipping, and/or providing energy-intensive products and services. As a direct result, the Paris Agreement, which is a legally binding international treaty, intends to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Achieving and living by this objective requires that GHG emissions need to be reduced by 45% by 2030 and that there be a full transition to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Your carbon footprint can be divided into three categories, called scopes. Scope 1 includes the direct emissions produced by the activities of your organization. Scope 2 includes the immediate indirect emissions, produced to fulfill operational needs. In your value chain, scope 1 & 2 can be combined under Operations. Still this combination does little to outweigh the largest portion of an organization’s GHG emissions: Scope 3. This category covers all the emissions associated with your indirect impact upstream and downstream of your value chain, within your organizational boundaries. There are numerous elements to this scope which will subsequently enter the spotlight. Today, we focus on the most broad and significant emission source: purchased goods and services. Furthermore, this is an area where a sustainable procurement approach has the greatest potential to positively influence GHG reductions.

Scope 3

Sourcing Champions’ Carbon Reduction Program

At Sourcing Champions, we bring passion to procurement. One of our passions is transforming procurement organizations by implementing innovative solutions featuring sustainable strategies. Sustainable sourcing and sustainable procurement are significant competitive advantages for a company, delivering long term procurement gains and contributing to corporate growth. Too often the latter is thought to be a benign blanket statement – a mindset which is at the root of many failed transformation projects. For this exact reason, Sourcing Champions steers you away from uncertainty by taking the time to establish well-defined objectives and to communicate a clear picture of success amongst the project team, management, and governance. To achieve those goals, our Sustainable Procurement Transformation Program combines software with environmental and procurement expertise to help you collect, measure, and understand detailed scope 3 environmental data to really reduce your impact. ​ The approach consists of a four-step transformation plan that guides your organization along the integration of sustainability into the pillars of your procurement activities.

Step Zero: We launch the plan by integrating the digital software solutions that will equip your procurement team with the right tools and access to knowledge to make long-term sustainable impacts

Step One:  With the aid of Ignite Procurement, we can rapidly analyze various large data sets to determine where your Scope 3 emissions are coming from, even breaking it down by spend category.

Step Two: We establish a tailored strategy that defines a purpose proposition with clear prioritized initiatives, SDG targets, and short- & long-term sustainable procurement objectives, whilst aligning with solvent procurement strategies and investor incentives. The supporting digital tool for this step is ValueDesk, a solution for sustainable and collaborative value creation.

Step Three: Our consultants leverage their experience to support your procurement teams as they work with your suppliers to collaboratively establish a sustainable action plan.

Step Four: We ensure that sustainability has been effectively woven into the pillars of your procurement activities. This is achieved by tracking and measuring responsible impacts through KPI’s, and by promoting transparency through internal and external ESG reporting mechanisms. In other words, incorporating ESG performance into long-term business plans and maintaining supplier collaboration in sustainability action plans.

Sustainable Procurement Transformation _ Carbon

Step One: Scope 3 Emissions Calculations

The first step of a sustainable carbon reduction transformation is to become acutely aware of your current and future emissions in terms of quantitative data. This can be achieved by methodologically consolidating supplier-specific data, secondary averages, and the spend value of purchased goods and services. Such calculations require digital solutions to be in depth, efficient, and engaging. Through Sourcing Champions, you have access to a collection of digital tools that bring transparency, traceability, and sustainable transformations to your supply chain. Thus, step one is preceded by matching your organization’s needs and objectives with the resources granted by our digital partners.

Ignite Procurement is a best-of-breed software solution for spend management and has also developed the capabilities to perform carbon analytics for sustainable procurement. Here are 6 reasons why Ignite Procurement is the best solution.

1- It is blazingly fast, returning estimates on your emissions within a day of uploading your procurement data.

2- It is fully transparent. No black-box AI involved.

3- It is flexible. The model can be adjusted along the way to increase the accuracy according to the specifics of your company.

4- Ignite combines different calculation methods to rapidly provide your GHG emission data per NACE and SIC. This data will allow you to discover which industries, projects, categories, or suppliers are driving your emissions.

5- Ignite’s carbon accounting is aligned with GHG protocol and can be deployed in reporting. This will improve your transparency which will help you to report your sustainability performance and meet your compliance needs.

6- Ignite utilizes conversion enrichments to automatically track and measure CO2 emissions. This will enable you to lead collaborative efforts with suppliers and monitor your journey to Net Zero.

Ignite Carbon Analytics snapshot

Why start now?

Because step-one is currently free of charge & free of commitment.

Truth be told, the inevitable boost in momentum behind sustainable procurement and supply-chain regulations is being held back by the small amount of existing case studies. We know that may be what’s holding you back as well. Therefore, Sourcing Champions, alongside our partners at Ignite Procurement, are offering a Carbon Analytics test, free and without commitment. Our objective is to expand our range by testing our carbon analytics capabilities in a variety of industries, while providing you with the opportunity to get to know your Scope 3 emission numbers. Together we can then explore routes to take your organization to Net Zero. By committing your organization to sustainability, right from your sourcing activities, you are not only fostering a competitive advantage, but you are also establishing yourself as an industry leader.

Try it with your data, free & without commitment

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