Sustainable Logistics Procurement

Enhance your sustainable logistics procurement with our Procurement Playbook

Why is the Procurement Playbook needed?

The challenge in procurement is balancing operational needs with minimizing negative environmental and social impacts. Traditional practices prioritize cost and efficiency over sustainability. SFBA's procurement workstream addresses this by raising awareness and enabling professionals to source low-carbon solutions from logistics service providers (LSPs).

Procurement plays a crucial role for freight buyers, extending beyond a mere transactional relationship with suppliers. The SFBA procurement workstream aims to enhance the procurement process, aligning it with sustainable logistics objectives. By integrating sustainability into tendering and evaluation processes, the workstream offers support to make procurement a driver for sustainable practices. It will provide valuable resources, guidance, and tools to assist in sourcing sustainable solutions, fostering collaboration, and enabling effective decision-making throughout the procurement journey.

The aim of the Procurement Playbook

In collaboration with Implement Consulting Group, developed a comprehensive Procurement Playbook. This playbook will serve as a practical guide for organizations looking to incorporate sustainable practices into their logistics procurement processes. Through a series of eight workshops, we engaged stakeholders, shared knowledge, and collectively developed strategies and best practices to drive sustainability in logistics procurement.

Download the Procurement Playbook

Key Highlights of the Procurement Playbook:

  • Streamlining the procurement process for effective sourcing of low-carbon solutions.
  • Pinpointing crucial sustainable criteria to enhance logistics procurement.
  • Practical tools and mechanisms for inclusion of sustainability in any sourcing strategy, RFI, RFP and evaluation.
Download the Procurement Playbook
Procurement landing page

The playbook guides shippers and freight buyers in optimizing sustainable logistics procurement by aligning with recognized standards. Drawing from leading companies' best practices, it provides practical guidance on what changes to the existing procurement processes we need to make and why. The aim is to:

  • Provide a full procurement process based on current sustainable knowledge and maturity.
  • Help build demand signal and standardization through an harmonization of the process and focus on key metrics.
  • Offer a framework for logistics procurement activities that is applicable irrespective of time or location. Future in-depth analyses will further bolster this framework with specific and contextual data.

In the Procurement Playbook, we introduce two strategies for procuring sustainable logistics services: Transformational and Transactional. The most effective blend of these approaches is determined by assessing the strategic importance and market accessibility of the sustainable logistics services under consideration. The Procurement Playbook provides an upgrade of the traditional transactional procurement process through a revision of the following milestones of the process:

  • Sourcing strategy
  • Specification
  • RFI/RFP
  • Evaluation
  • Performance management
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The Sustainable Logistics Procurement helps members with

teamwork (3)

Collaboration

A collaborative program to accelerate transition to sustainable procurement

transportation (1)

Guidance

Guiding shippers and freight buyers on how they can use procurement as a mechanism to decarbonize their outsourced freight

logistics (3)

Sustainable Sourcing

Highlighting the role of procurement in sustainable sourcing of logistics services

The Procurement Playbook enables freight buyers to source low carbon solutions from LSPs

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Based on real-life procurement use cases across all modes of transport

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No sophisticated content – rather concrete and practical recommendations / checklists

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The buyers’ and sellers’ perspective will be included in order to create synergies and make it easy to apply and follow for both sides

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Both, the purchasing and the sales processes of logistics services will be considered. The common touchpoints will be analyzed, and recommendations developed on how to jointly design these touchpoints, e.g., what conversations need to take place at the different touchpoints

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The participants' contributions/information will be collected before / in-between the workshops. They will be summarized, and the content of the guide drafted. During the workshops, the content will be aligned, and the next steps agreed

Discover our Logistics Procurement Trainings on SFC Academy

Accelerating Sustainable Logistics Procurement

Learn how to craft and implement a strategy for decarbonizing your procurement process.

This course is only offered on a per request basis, please contact us for more information.

Introduction to Sustainable Logistics Procurement

See all other projects run by Smart Freight CentreLearn how to integrate sustainability within your logistics procurement practices

Logistics Procurement Webinar Series

Coming Soon

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Learn more about the Sustainable Freight Buyers Alliance

Uniting corporate freight buyers to shift towards zero-emissions freight across all modes of transport in collaboration with their supply chains and partners.

Learn more about SFBA
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