Working with suppliers to balance corporate responsibility with price and risk.
“Trading in an ethical and socially aware way is essential for Capgemini and
our Clients in the 21st century. Our ethical principles have been incorporated
in all of our Contracts, Purchase Orders, Terms and Conditions of Purchase, RFI,
RFP and Supplier Selection and Performance Procedures for some time now, and remain
a pre-requisite for business with Capgemini. The Capgemini supply chain processes
and supply contracts will be further uplifted in the coming 12 months to fully
address all other corporate and social responsibility aspects, thus ensuring
that Capgemini and its’ Suppliers are world class in every respect ”
Wendy Irvin, Group Chief Procurement Officer
Our commitment to ethical supplier relations is reflected in our comprehensive set of guidelines on the ethics of purchasing and the selection of suppliers, and we work to ensure that the partners we choose also respect our code of ethics. We also work carefully to ensure a fair and just approach to working with suppliers.
Procurement procedures
Our procurement procedures involve:
- Treating suppliers fairly
- Selecting vendors based on value, performance and price
- Providing justifiable and transparent selection decisions
- Risk Management of Suppliers
- Ensuring contracts with suppliers have relevant clauses relating to our sustainable procurement principles
- Ensuring confidentiality of supplier information
- Maintaining an “arm’s length” relationship with suppliers
- Not taking advantage of mistakes made by suppliers
- Monitoring our suppliers to ensure that they do the same
In addition, our approach follows Chartered Institute for Purchasing & Supply (CIPS) standards.
Capgemini’s Sustainable Procurement Principles
For Capgemini, being a sustainable and responsible business means more than legal compliance and philanthropy. It has always been an integral part of who we are and what we do. We are also signatories to the 10 core principles of the UN Global Compact, which set ethical standards for companies worldwide.
The principles will be updated from time to time. The latest version will always be at Sustainable Procurement Principles
What is sustainability?
There are many definitions of sustainability. We use the definition preferred by the Economist Intelligence Unit:
An approach to business that enhances or preserves the environmental, societal, and human resources on which the company depends for its long-term health.
Our environmental commitments
Our priority is to integrate sustainability into every aspect of our internal operations, as well as into the way we do business with our clients, business partners and suppliers. Our collaboration with clients on sustainable and ethical business practices will help us achieve our environmental commitments
To achieve these goals we need considerable support from our supply chain. We will be working to identify products and services which offer superior performance in terms of:
- greenhouse gas emissions
- energy efficiency
- transportation reduction
- packaging reduction
- waste minimisation
Sustainability in the supply chain
We’re committed to collaborating with our suppliers to make sure we deliver cost-effective, high-quality service to our clients on a sustainable and ethical basis.
We aim to make sure that all our external expenditure complies with all applicable legislation, the UN Global Compact and our own policies.
To do this, we collaborate with our suppliers, contractors and partners in order to:
- understand the potential risks, impacts and opportunities of their activities in relation to the products and services we buy
- agree and put in place plans where there may be significant risks, concerns and environmental impacts
- understand, influence, and in time start to address sustainability concerns
To guide us in this, we’re committed to a set of principles that govern all our commercial dealings with suppliers. These principles cover commercial, ethical and sustainability aspects of everyday business transactions.
Sustainable Procurement Programme
We are collaborating with our clients and alliance partners to develop joint approaches to corporate responsibility in supply chains and have an 18 month programme in the UK in which we aim to work with our suppliers, contractors and partners regarding the areas they are responsible for in order to:
- Understand the potential Sustainability & CSR risks, impacts and opportunities of their activities in relation to the products and services we buy
- Agree and put in place appropriate remedial or avoidance action plans where there may be significant risks, concerns and significant labour or environmental impacts or non-adherence to the principles
- Understand, influence and in time start to address sustainability concerns where possible in the spirit of continuous improvement
- In the event of a highly risky situation being identified and there being no commercial justification, Capgemini may chose not to engage with those suppliers
The programme encompasses:
- Review of our supplier base in terms of risk and size of spend.
- Pilot study undertaken with top 13 suppliers during Q4 2007.
- Full review with 160 prioritised suppliers using our online Sustainable Procurement
Survey to be completed by end H1 2009.
- Follow up activity with all suppliers showing areas of concern to be completed by end Q3 2009.
- Assessment of all new suppliers.
In addition risk criteria have been identified in order to ensure that more detailed assessments of new suppliers can be undertaken if required. Those criteria are extensive and include, for example:
- Long supply chains utilising low cost countries where primary supplier organisation has not assessed and managed risk appropriately
- Excessive use of scarce, endangered or new natural resources
- Category specific standards. Reducing the environmental impacts in particular of items procured can be influenced by the specification for particular category items – for example the procurement of energy from renewable resources, or paper of high recycled content. We have a continually evolving set of standards which we apply to specific category items.
Collaborating with our partners
In addition to more formal assessments of the supply chain we are working with some of our partners to be more corporately responsible and address Sustainability concerns – in particular around the area of Green IT – i.e. reducing the impacts of IT on the environment, through energy efficiency, virtualisation of datacentres and IT asset re-use and disposal, for example.
Sustainable Procurement Survey
If you’ve received an invitation to complete the survey please click here. If you would like to find out more information about the survey please click here.
