Responsible Sourcing

Responsible sourcing is the procurement approach that has the most positive environmental, social and economic impacts possible over the entire life cycle (ISO 20400). Most importantly, it helps manage sourcing in complex and fragemented supply chains. In other words, organisations adopt this strategy when they wish to actively procure products and services for their operations in an ethical, sustainable and socially conscious way.

The global expansion of supply chains is exposing companies to increased risks. Stakeholders (customers, employees, NGOs, trade associations, labor unions, government observers, etc.) ask comanies to be responsibile for their supplier’s environmental, social and ethical practices.

For instance, one bad incident with one supplier can result into huge adverse impacts on the organization. In addition, it may damage a company’s reputation and brand image and result into non predictable costs.

Therefore, companies make responsible sourcing an essential part of their procurement and supply chain management processes.

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Responsible supply chain is a way to build competitive advantage. For example, this happens in sectors where production is frequently outsourced, such as clothing, footwear, electronics, or food processing.

Why to ask for Get It Fair

GIF ESG Rating scheme enables buyers to get reliable and verified information regarding the exposure level to ESG risks in the supply chain. Therefore, it allows organizations to:

  • improve suppliers’ selection. Firstly, GIF allows to add social responsibility criteria (social, safety, environment) to traditional criteria (cost, quality, continuity, delivery time)
  • better define expectations on supply chains ESG risks. GIF enable to minimize the exposure level to risks related to social responsibility aspects
  • improve suppliers’ satisfaction. Above all, GIF consists of one Framework, one Due Diligence process and multiple recognitions;
  • raise suppliers’ awareness. GIF encourages suppliers to develop their own responsible practices rather than imposing requirements on them
  • provide suppliers with commercial incentives. The GIF ethical label and its direct link between the final customer and suppliers offers incentives to create responsible supply chains
  • increase suppliers’ loyalty and commitment. The GIF Ethical label enhance the stability of customers – suppliers relationship
  • enhance suppliers’ risks monitoring and improvement. In addition, GIF programme requires periodical verifications
  • improve benchmarking effectiveness. In short, GIF scoring oriented metrics allows to compare the exposure level to ESG risks among suppliers irrespective of sector, size and location