ESG, Buying Mistakes, and AI Eats Itself
World of Procurement Weekly Newsletter for the Procurement Legends
Hey Procurement Legends,
I’m gearing up for some big challenges over the next few months. With a 3 Peaks challenge, a trail half marathon, and a trail marathon. Which means I’ve been consuming a bunch of content via podcasts and audiobook.
I’m also noticing a big increase in the visibility of sustainable procurement decisions, or ESG, whatever you wanna call it. It feels like we’re in a transitory moment in procurement with ESG and Tech at the moment.
I’ll keep the update my end light this week but please go an explore these incredible resources and take part in the Gartner Survey!
Before we get into this newsletter, I want to share something awesome with you.
I’m collaborating with Gartner.
This isn’t paid - I simply loved what Ryan and his team were looking to achieve, and I thought some of you might as well. I’ve always said I’ll bring cool things to your attention, and this is one of them.
I’ve been talking with the Gartner team for around 6 months, answering questions, sharing thoughts, and feedback on their big research piece.
I’m incredibly happy they’ve gone down the route of Procurement Functional Transformation. Its clear procurement isn’t there yet, and their research is second to none. Help them out, get some good insights back, and make the most of a good opportunity.
Gartner sourcing & procurement researchers are currently conducting a survey on procurement functional transformation. To participate in this anonymous survey, which will take approximately 20 minutes, click the link below.
In exchange for your participation, Gartner will share a summary of findings if you choose to share your email address in the survey. Sharing your email is entirely optional. The full findings will be unveiled at an executive retreat on October 10, 2023.
Please click the link below to start.
Trending Articles this Week
put together a funny article over on - check it out. 
“So, I really did feel like I was the 'Eric Cantona of buying' when an account manager walked out of a meeting 6 minutes in (it was a bit of a record for my buying team at the time – and yes we would time such things in a competitive way).”
“If I could only choose one metric to evaluate a company... I'd choose Revenue per Employee. Full stop”.
I’d be considering how I could utilise publically available data on Revenue, especially Revenue per Employee, to:
1 - Determine the financial stability of my SaaS Provider
2- Can we leverage any discount in the deal based on our anticipated contract value
3 - Understanding the upsides of going with this SaaS vendor over the others
Global Insights
SBTi Launches Corporate Guidance on Scope 3 Decarbonisation
The Science Based Targets initiative has launched guidance for companies to reduce supply chain emissions, including analysing suppliers, tracking progress, and introducing workshops and training. Over 4,700 companies have pledged to set SBTi-aligned goals, and supplier disclosure of environmental data to CDP increased by 24% between 2019 and 2020.
Enforcing ESG Obligations in Supply Contracts
ESG clauses in supply contracts can encourage suppliers to improve their ecological and social governance, and EU proposals will soon require companies to seek contractual assurance from their partners to ensure compliance with sustainability goals. Companies must decide whether ESG commitments should be an obligation of means or result, and include specific measurable indicators to assess efforts. Linking consequences to ESG breaches can encourage compliance and provide clear solutions. ESG due diligence can involve experts and auditing firms, and transparency through the supply chain is important.
AI in the News
Artificial Intelligence Contracts: An Issue-Spotter – Part 1 of 3
The article "Artificial Intelligence Contracts: An Issue-Spotter – Part 1 of 3" by David Tollen discusses the importance of customer ownership and control of prompts and training data in artificial intelligence contracts.
The AI Is Eating Itself
The rise of AI-generated content is causing significant changes to the consumer internet, with Google trying to kill the 10 blue links, Twitter being abandoned to bots, and AI-generated junk flooding sites like Etsy. However, studies have shown that training AI systems on data generated by other AI systems causes models to degrade and ultimately collapse, raising concerns about the dilution of the "human factor" in crowdsourced text data.
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Thanks as always, legends.
Daniel
Ha thank you for the shout out. Loving your work on here.