Leading supply management suite provider, Ivalua, recently held its annual user conference Ivalua Now as an in-person (but also virtual) event in Washington, D.C. It was another stellar showing of this always well-organized and high-class affair. Ardent analysts participated virtually this year and hope to return in person in 2023.
Ivalua’s Innovation Showcase
The Day One mainstage was filled with customer and enterprise presenters, including Ivalua’s Vishal Patel, VP of Product Marketing, Rolf Haag, Head of Payments, and Thierry Hominal, R&D Solution Owner, who discussed key innovations coming from Ivalua in 2022.
According to Patel, the focus by other customer and enterprise presenters on sustainability and decarbonization is also essential to Ivalua’s innovative roadmap. To emphasize this point, Patel shared a short video with a preview about the organization’s innovation around ESG. The goal is to enable procurement to contribute to corporate ESG goals.
The video featured a user utilizing Ivalua’s carbon reduction dashboard to identify what categories of spend to target for a carbon reduction initiative. The video progresses through the process of choosing an eco-friendly supplier of t-shirts, understanding the level of carbon reduction achieved, establishing a green delivery method, and paying for the items with a virtual card.
Patel walked through four distinct parts of the video to highlight procurement’s critical role in carbon reduction and ESG initiatives through use of the dashboard.
1) The first step is to create a baseline. For every dollar spent, what is the CO2 emissions by category? Information in the dashboard is collected by third-party sources and spans various industries.
2) Procurement can then identify categories and suppliers to target and create carbon savings initiatives. It serves as a way to organize and structure your carbon savings plans, even among multiple suppliers.
3) The dashboard opens the opportunity for discovery of new suppliers based on ESG criteria. With the ability to view climate readings, such as performance and risk, users can discover existing suppliers and detailed information around ESG.
4) The dashboard enables employees to purchase low-carbon items. Patel says the more you spend on low-carbon products, the more efficient it becomes for a supplier to produce them. Eventually, there will be over-demand for these products and those enterprises that have solid relationships with low-carbon suppliers will secure their orders.
Patel closed with a look at Ivalua’s carbon savings dashboard, showing carbon emissions by category and commodity. The dashboard allows enterprise transparency into the carbon emissions of the supply base. Which suppliers are emitting high carbon and which ones represent low carbon risk? What catalog items are low carbon? Track emissions against your target by category.
Other areas of discussion by Rolf Haag and Thierry Hominal, included:
- Ivalua’s roadmap around sustainability is to promote low-carbon spend and direct users to purchase low-carbon items. Without that engagement, it’s difficult to define and execute a carbon-savings strategy. Equally important to the roadmap is supplier collaboration and gaining influence on product materials, inventory management, and delivery decisions.
- A message center built into the solution to communicate with suppliers, including live chat within all modules. It enhances collaborative communication internally and externally with suppliers.
- Use of a virtual card that is dynamically generated and digitally delivered with parameters around usage, amounts, and expiration date. Among the benefits discussed was blending the convenience of off-platform spend in an e-commerce environment, while retaining control of your processes.
The closing message was one of empowerment for procurement to better assess its suppliers and collaborate with them, while driving a big ESG impact.
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