SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAINS
“ Corporate sustainability is moving from broad marketing goals to practical strategies that link cost savings with real environmental results”
Saskia van Gendt Chief Sustainability Officer Blue Yonder
Q. HOW DO YOU COACH EXECUTIVES TO TREAT SUSTAINABILITY, RESILIENCE AND COST REDUCTION AS A STRATEGY RATHER THAN A COST BASE?
» From a supply chain perspective, there’ s so much synergy between creating more resilient supply chains and improving their sustainability.
A couple of examples: if you have alternative suppliers or early visibility into where impacts can occur, you can get ahead of potential disruptions. That early activity still gives you enough time to make the lowest-footprint decision.
If you think about a disruption in the fashion industry because of a climate event, or some other kind of road disruption, and a material doesn’ t get to that facility, suddenly your entire production is delayed.
Usually you would find that out in days, but with AI, you can plan proactively. And then you’ re not sending something by airplane. You can plan for a lower-carbon-footprint scenario.
I think that foresight, better planning and end-to-end visibility can enable a more sustainable outcome. What we’ re seeing from our customers is a lot of times the decisions are helping them reduce overproduction, which helps them reduce costs and waste associated with that, and then take miles out of their logistics network, which is reducing fuel costs and reducing emissions. It’ s a nice, mutual benefit between more speed, resilience, lower cost, lower carbon, lower waste.
Q. ARE YOU BECOMING MORE FINANCIALLY LITERATE AS A RESULT OF THESE CHANGES?
» Yeah, we are, and we have been. Because within the supply chain, a lot of companies will come to us looking for the cost benefit of improving their supply chain. And we have to speak in that currency.
We have financial ROIs for the different solutions we recommend, and we know how investments need to scale to achieve the results we’ re getting. Sustainability teams have been asked to do things like ROIs for a long time, but now it’ s becoming that much more critical. When we’ re working with our clients, we’ re making sure that we’ re helping them speak to their CFOs and make that financial case.
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