Supplier Enablement

Supplier Enablement - B2B eCommerce and CSR

Does Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) extend to cover the relationship between buyers and suppliers involved in B2B eCommerce?

CSR tends to be an agenda for larger companies and governments.

Is size important or should all businesses have a CSR stake in the ground?

Generally speaking CSR statements include references to the environment and what efforts will be made to optimise use of energy and reduce harmful CO2 emissions. So B2B eCommerce and CSR: best mates?

One of the outcomes of B2B eCommerce is a REDUCTION in the consumption of paper. How is that? For each transaction between a buyer and a supplier typically 6 pages of printed documents will be produced. You have 100 transactions and you have 600 pages of paper, 1000 and you have 6000. Ok.

So what if the consumption of paper was REDUCED to NO PAPER consumed? You have just saved a bunch paper, the cost to you etc and made a contribution to the environment.

How much of a contribution?

Ask yourself, when you recycle your bottles and newspapers you don't ask yourself how much of a contribution you are making. If you stacked all your recycling for a year I bet you would be both amazed and proud of yourself that does not occupy a landfill.

So, let's say you process 6000 pages of printed documents a year that is a pile of paper that stacks to 66cm (25.98 inches). It weighs about 27.3 kgs (60lbs).

Imagine the impact when 100,000 of you convert to eCommerce and eliminate the consumption of paper and the numbers are:

600,000,000 pages of paper stacks to 66 kilometers (41 miles) high

If laid end to end that stack of paper is 4 times the circumference of earth

Its quite heavy! Weighing 2,730,000 kgs (3008 short (US) tons).

Not hard to see what difference you can make.

Need some help with your CSR credentials? Click here

posted by FrankB @ Monday, October 30, 2006