Corporate responsibility programmes needs IT service edge

“There’s good evidence that CSR issue are beginning to seriously affect the supply chain,” says Daniel Ball, director of e-procurement specialist Wax Digital. “Only last month McDonalds stopped sourcing tea from Tetley because the company is not certified by the Rainforest Alliance. Likewise, Starbucks terminated the contracts of 14 suppliers after an audit revealed they failed to meet the CSR standards set for its suppliers.” Managing and monitoring compliance across a large supply chain can be a major task, he says, which is why so many companies turn to e-procurement providers – not just to deliver savings and improve spending controls, but to drive CSR through their supply chains. “Wax Digital e-procurement solutions save our customers millions of pounds a year by introducing control and compliance into corporate spend. But they also enable efficient processes to be introduced around areas such as introducing new suppliers,” says Ball. He also insists that while many businesses have historically struggled even to get new suppliers set up on the financial system for payment, modern systems help them to streamline and manage the entire process. “That includes everything from automating the credit check process, to electronically enabling and monitoring the environmental and social checks that underpin a CSR programme,” he says.