Starting your sustainable procurement journey: Establishing KPIs

Having the right KPIs allows your organisation to deliver measurable, tangible sustainability results – where they matter 

There is a classic adage about performance improvement that goes, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. Although sustainability is more front-of-mind for businesses than ever, many businesses are struggling to define how to turn an ambition of ‘more sustainable procurement and supply chain’ into practical, tangible action plans and results.

Having the right KPIs for sustainable procurement not only allows organisations to identify baselines and priority improvement areas, but also to communicate impacts and trade-offs of critical sourcing decisions. We have found that many businesses view sustainability objectives in isolation of financial and other targets. A strong category or supplier management plan should include a balanced scorecard of cost, quality, and sustainability objectives that can be assessed together, and any trade-off requirements done through conscious decision making. 

This whitepaper outlines the different types of sustainability that organisations are looking to influence, the principles of effective KPI design and deployment, and specific example KPIs for different categories that can be used to set targets and measure results to overall, help support or kick-start your sustainability journey.