Unlocking Impact: How Procurement Professionals Drive Sustainability, Diversity, and ROI with Focal Point

Sustainability and ESG reporting are being adopted at rapid speeds. Diversity and Inclusion is on everyone’s mind. And organizations are waking up to what procurement professionals have known for years: choosing the right vendors and suppliers opens doors to social and environmental impact.

We’re well past a time when procurement was solely the champion of savings. Procurement has been elevated to a strategic front of innovative businesses. CPOs are now working hard to go beyond only managing budgets, to achieve critical ESG, DEI or carbon reduction goals, and coordinate complicated workflows that go across business users, functions and capabilities.

Here are our three top tips to help procurement professionals strategize, plan and take action for maximum impact when collaborating with cross-functional business users.

1. Manage your intake to achieve ESG, carbon reduction and DEI goals.

Supplier insights provide valuable data for tracking and managing ESG, DEI and sustainability goals. The right software tool can identify how much budget is spent on vendors that align with the company’s goals in specific areas. By providing procurement professionals with transparent information on supplier diversity, Focal Point fosters an environment where inclusivity becomes a measurable and achievable goal. Our Frames tool allows professionals to track information on suppliers, how much is being spent on diverse suppliers and within what category.

Reducing carbon emissions is a pressing global concern. Focal Point excels in this area by centralizing vendor information, including their reported ESG scores, making this data easily accessible and well-documented. With a comprehensive database of supplier information, organizations can calculate their carbon footprint more accurately, enabling them to set realistic reduction targets, track progress effectively and manage their intake and workflow according to their goals.

2. Plan accurately to save proactively and maximize ROI.

Effective budget management begins with accurate planning. A streamlined intake tool that is integrated with existing data and systems provides a clear view of how money is spent per vendor, category, and even your ESG or DEI goals. This allows procurement professional to plan accurately and analyze past results to identify the ROI of their budgets.

Having centralized software tools gives procurement teams and other business users a single entry point for procurement requests, with those requests routed appropriately to the best

resource, so minimum decision-making is required, reducing the time needed for manual data entry or resource allocation.

Stay ahead of any potential risks by tracking your budget live and filtering by vendor, status, stakeholder or category to make data-informed adjustments.

Setting up automatic reporting means there is an artifact of all efforts, making ROI easy.

3. Optimize your workflow for maximum productivity

An optimized workflow not only saves time, it also builds transparency, and reduces the cognitive load on your teams, effectively increasing motivation and reducing stress. One of the key advantages of a good software tool is its ability to reduce process friction and ultimately shorten timelines. An efficient workflow management system also reduces project timelines by automating tasks, and because manual work and process friction are reduced.

Successful procurement begins with a deep understanding of business user needs. Once you collaborate with other business users to define goals, a good tool lets you capture all relevant information through data integration, such as your ERP/S2P systems.

Use this with a digital reporting function to have efficient meetings where you have all of the necessary data to make informed decisions.

Focal Point empowers procurement professionals to go beyond being seen as saving and spending money. By streamlining processes, enhancing transparency, and connecting data points and systems, the procurement function becomes a catalyst for achieving sustainability, diversity, and budgetary goals across business users.

Contact us today to request a demo of Focal Point and learn more!