Sustainability

“We transfer economic value in the supply chain by purchasing high volumes of goods and services. We promote co-operation and efficiency in the supply chain, taking into account environmental sustainability and social responsibility becoming increasingly significant elements in discussions with our suppliers.”

“Shopping to change the world” may only be a slogan, but it helps understand how strong a role demand can play in directing the choice of goods and services on offer. This is true in the retail market, but perhaps even more so in business-to-business.

Here at Finmeccanica we have also optimised these activities, which are of such importance for business success, concentrating procurement of all non-strategic goods and services in a single specialist company, Finmeccanica Group Services (FGS) which operates on behalf of all the companies in the Group: it deals with everything from consumables to logistics, from transportation to energy.

FGS now manages over 12% of  procurement operations for Finmeccanica, and has proved to be an important method of improving the Group’s sustainability performance. FGS is actively involved on a number of sides, from increasing the efficiency of the company car fleet to introducing video conferences, from waste disposal agreements to the promotion of green purchases, with the aim of managing the Finmeccanica supply chain in an ever more efficient way.

A virtuous relationship with suppliers is at the root of a company’s competitivity. Transparency and good practice are the best ways of setting up a mutually profitable co-operation. It is for this reason that we make every effort to render the supplier selection and assignment process as clear as possible, clarifying which of the elements for assessment are of greatest value to us.

A concrete example of this are environmental requirements, which we are gradually introducing in an increasingly wide range of procurement processes; this strategy takes the form of a system of incentives for companies whereby environmental certification is rewarded and attention is paid to environmental impact reduction targets.

Another element guaranteeing our respect for the obligations we require our suppliers to take on is the vendor rating campaign used to monitor and assess the satisfaction of internal customers with the supplier in question.

For further information on how Finmeccanica manages its relations with suppliers, please see the chapter “Procurement management” in the 2010 Sustainability Report.