How a multi-enterprise supply chain business network can support your journey to a more sustainable business

Spotlight on ESG

Over the past few years, the focus on supply chains has been centered around the disruptions and challenges that companies face in running them efficiently. With port congestion, factory shutdowns, and geopolitical events creating chaos, supply chain leaders realized the urgent need to digitalize and improve their processes for increased agility and resiliency. However, as these challenges continue to persist, the focus is starting to include impacts that supply chains may have on the environment and society. 

For example:

• Organizations' supply chains often account for more than 90% of their greenhouse gas emissions¹
• New government regulations are accelerating the requirement for greater supply chain transparency (ex. U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act)

As businesses work to understand their environmental impact and ensure fair labor practices, many supply chain leaders are looking for ways to better support their ESG initiatives while still managing costs, working capital, and meeting customer demands.  

The business challenge 

There is a stakeholder conundrum. On the one hand, consumers, customers, investors, employees, and countries are encouraging companies to be more socially and environmentally responsible. On the other hand, shareholders and CEOs are being asked to cut costs and focus on company performance. In a recent survey of 400 American CEOs, 59% saw ESG taking a back seat due to soaring inflation and a shrinking economy³. This makes it difficult for supply chain leaders to invest in ESG resources and technologies while being asked to improve efficiency and profitability. 

And when supply chain leaders do want to improve their global supply chains, they face a variety of challenges. First, supply chains are complex and often global. They involve multiple partners from logistics service providers (LSPs), forwarders, carriers, warehouses, distributors, and multiple tiers of suppliers, making it difficult to obtain visibility and control over supply chain operations. performance targets. Second, many companies lack the end-to-end visibility they need to make impactful decisions. For example, a Deloitte survey found that while companies are prepared to report their Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions, a vast majority (86%) reported challenges measuring Scope 3 GHG emissions⁴. And third, organizations don’t directly control the vast amount of their supply chain data. In fact, 80% of supply chain data and processes exist outside the organization with network partners such as manufacturers, tier 1-2-3 suppliers, forwarders, carriers, customers and more.

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But it doesn’t always have to be an either-or trade off. Companies can maximize the use of their data to make informed decisions that could help improve their environmental and societal metrics, profitability, and cash flow simultaneously by optimizing their operations and developing a smart supply chain with a multi-enterprise supply chain business network. 

How a multi-enterprise supply chain business network can help 

A multi-enterprise supply chain business network can support organizations in providing data and insights to track ESG progress and help improve profitability in supply chain operations.  . It does this by connecting partners, streamlining processes, and leveraging advanced technologies. Below are ways that a multi-enterprise supply chain business network can help your organization. 

First, a smarter supply chain can help you identify potential inefficiencies and waste. Supply chain inefficiencies could impact business performance, as well as your ability to understand where you have opportunities to minimize your environmental impact. For instance, many supply chain functions still rely on manual and paper-based processes but transitioning to digital solutions allows you to automate tasks and can reduce paper use. Another example is data and process silos which can create visibility gaps. These gaps can delay problem identification leading to longer dwell times, variable lead times, increased inventory levels, and unnecessary expedites to avoid product shortages and late deliveries. Lack of visibility across partners also results in inefficient container utilization. To help address these challenges, companies can leverage a multi-enterprise supply chain business network. This allows them to gain the needed data to help identify opportunities for optimizing their processes, save costs, and reduce their CO2 emissions and waste.

Some companies also are interested in tracking and monitoring the impact of their operations by establishing ESG targets to measure performance. A multi-enterprise supply chain business network can support connecting, transacting, and collaborating with network partners to collect data, identify opportunities for improvement and establish action items toward those ESG targets.

By capturing and measuring your environmental and social data, your ESG goals can be leveraged in decision making. By incorporating ESG related data into decision making, you can adjust your strategies and tactics as needed to help reach your ESG and business objectives.

Infor Nexus™ and its multi-enterprise supply chain business network

Infor Nexus™ can help you implement a smart supply chain with its multi-enterprise supply chain business network. These are some of the ways that Infor Nexus’ multi-enterprise supply chain business network can help you achieve your business goals:

• Driving improvement with supply chain visibility: Supply chain visibility can help enable greater agility and velocity, driving on-time in full while reducing expedites and not tying up working capital in excess inventory.  
• Optimizing container utilization: Better container utilization can help cut down transportation-related carbon emissions. A network view of orders and partners allows for greater consolidation opportunities.
• Tracking and monitoring transportation carbon emissions: Companies can gain better visibility to emissions by carrier, route, and lane, helping to identify priority areas and to make informed decisions in planning and executing transportation moves.
• Supporting your activities around supplier ESG compliance requires active supplier engagement and transparency. Supplier management solutions can support companies to achieve this with proactive alerts while streamlining processes and potentially reducing the need for supplier audits.
• Improving supplier performance with supply chain finance: Through supply chain finance provided by banks, suppliers can receive early payment on their invoices at a discounted rate based on their performance in a buyer’s ESG program.  

Summary 

A multi-enterprise supply chain business network can simultaneously support supply chain leaders in tackling the challenges of improving their business performance and in tracking and reporting of their environmental metrics. It supports businesses to work collaboratively with partners and to help create a responsible supply chain ecosystem that can be mutually beneficial for everyone involved. 

Learn more about Infor Nexus by visiting https://www.infor.com/solutions/scm/infor-nexus.