SAP
At the Houses of Parliament in London earlier this year, SAP Executive Board member Adaire Fox-Martin (pictured above) appealed to an audience of the United Kingdom’s leading social-enterprise CEOs and corporate executives to come even closer together to find “a better way to grow.”
Together with Chair Lord Victor Adebowale and CEO Peter Holbrook, Adaire announced SAP’s partnership with Social Enterprise UK, through which the two organizations plan to further scale the burgeoning social enterprise sector.
Social enterprises are normal businesses in that they generate the majority of their income through trade – albeit with several important differentiating characteristics. First, they have a clear social or environmental mission set out in their governing documents. They reinvest the majority of their profits back into their business or mission. They are autonomous of state. And they are majority controlled in the interests of their social mission.
The power of Ariba Network
As the official technology partner of Social Enterprise UK, SAP aims to support such social enterprises by providing them with greater access to markets, talent and technology. Ariba Network, as the world’s largest digital marketplace, can play a leading role in these efforts. By connecting more corporate buyers with social-enterprise suppliers, the platform can facilitate procurement spend toward goods and services from organizations dedicated to delivering a positive social impact.
“We will be using our platform to shift how markets work,” Adaire said. “This is about building businesses that matter. Working with social enterprise suppliers allows companies to use their everyday procurement spend in a way which changes lives, whether that’s creating jobs for vulnerable women, protecting our planet through sustainable materials or reinvesting profits back into local communities.”
Johnson & Johnson, and many other sustainable brands, are opening doors for small and diverse suppliers through Ariba Network, where more than £2 trillion in business-to-business commerce is conducted annually. In the UK alone, more than 200,000 buyers and suppliers are connected to Ariba Network. In the past year, these companies have exchanged more than one million purchase orders worth more than £12 billion. The potential of this partnership is substantial – globally Ariba Network supports 2.3 times more commerce than Amazon, Alibaba and eBay combined.
Connecting procurers and social enterprises
One such social enterprise is Toast Ale, an award-winning craft beer company and social enterprise which aims to reduce food waste by ‘brewing a better planet.’ Food production has a huge impact on the environment. It uses vast amounts of land, water and energy, yet one third of all food is wasted. The brewers, ‘breadwinners’ and ‘customer kneads’ managers at Toast Ale are on a mission to help stop the trashing of the planet.
“Toast Ale is one of my favorite examples of a social enterprise,” says Andy Daly, head of corporate partnerships at Social Enterprise UK. “This brewer donates 100 percent of its profits to a charity that helps eliminate food waste, making it a business that’s changing the world for the better.”
Daly has worked with multinationals such as Johnson & Johnson UK to help open up their supply chain systems to social enterprise suppliers. Johnson & Johnson is just one of fifteen large businesses signed up to the Buy Social Corporate Challenge, a groundbreaking initiative to transform how companies spend their money, going beyond just charitable donations to embed social impact into their everyday spend.
“Johnson & Johnson is one of the best examples of a procurement for purpose company,” he says. “Its supply chain people are charged with developing a diverse social value program through the firm’s supply base. For example, Johnson & Johnson UK buys office supplies from WildHearts Office, one of the UK’s leading B2B social enterprises. They in turn use their profits to support micro-finance programs in developing countries to help women achieve financial independence.”
“SAP Ariba is the jewel in our crown. It’s helping us solve the challenge of making social enterprises visible in the supply-chain network,” says Daly, who was thrilled when SAP came on board as a partner.
“To get to a world where every business has concern for society and our environment at its core, we need to work with others,” says Daly. “SAP is a progressive business which cares about people, not just profits. By becoming our technology partner and joining our Buy Social Corporate Challenge, SAP is setting an example for other businesses to follow.”
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