Every company relies to some extent upon goods and services procured from other organizations, which are collectively referred to as suppliers.
Common examples include energy, water, computers, transport, machinery, furniture, accounting services, and materials required to make products.
All companies are mutually accountable for the environmental and social impacts caused by the production and delivery of the goods and services they depend upon. Only when a company has effectively avoided or addressed such negative impacts can it consider itself to be Future-Fit.
This goal requires a company to implement policies and procedures that continuously seek to increase the future-fitness of its purchases, with a particular emphasis on anticipating, avoiding and addressing issue-specific supply chain hotspots.
To be Future-Fit, a company must do three things:
- It must have policies and processes in place that enable it and its employees to anticipate where negative supply chain impacts are likely to occur;
- It must avoid them where possible; and
- It must take measurable steps to address concerns that arise.