Two procurement professionals from KFC and Pizza Hut explain why sustainability projects only work when they hit the bottom line. Tie waste reduction to cost savings, get CFO buy-in, then reinvest the gains into the next initiative.
Everybody's talking about sustainability and sustainable procurement, which is pretty much on the top of the mind for a lot of procurement professionals right now. In real life, based on your own experience, what actually works and what is mostly noise for you?
Sustainability, because what my previous job is, so happens supply chain is combined with sustainability. In my previous job as, uh, in KFC and Pizza Hut in Asia, uh, the main— the starting point I always try to use is, uh, blending the commercial or the number together. Because we can say a lot of things like saving the world, reducing the waste, but at the end of the day, whether we can showcase our progress, again, it's on the numbers. If we can table the financial benefits The first entry is to clear the roadblock from finance department or the CFO. If they bought— because sustainability at the end of the day is more about using the resources, utilizing them efficiently. So in a sense, we are reducing the wastage. So this is the starting point. And when we pocket those savings, it can be translated into investment for new initiatives, which definitely we can't save everything to the max. There's certain limit of floor which we will reach and that's it. Then we need innovation. And so we can translate those savings into investment. So sustainability, I would say the difficult part of it is so abstract or more like a concept. But if we try to think about sustainability first, of all is not to waste but using things efficiently. So this also aligns with procurement value, which is we are buying at the right cost, which is at the best value to the company.
