Our suppliers and partners
We conduct business with thousands of suppliers every year, from major international corporations to sole traders. We’re committed to meeting our obligations to these suppliers and aim to deal fairly and ethically at all times in our activities. We continually review how we operate to measure our progress against these commitments.
A strong focus is attached to the economic well-being of our supply chain, and a useful measure of this is the percentage of payments made in accordance with agreed terms. We’ve been reporting and improving our supplier payment performance for over five years and are pleased to report an increasing trend in performance – with the latest figures showing 77% payment to agreed terms.
Essentially, we have improved the economic performance and financial health of our suppliers by:
- Reinforcing the basic process to improve supplier payment on time – both internally to our employees and to suppliers. Our supply chain website includes guidance to suppliers on how to get paid on time
- Identifying suppliers with poor ‘paid-on-time’ records and taking corrective action
- Ensuring that a supplier is never dependent on our business by setting strict rules around value of contract versus annual supplier turnover
In the past year, we have stepped up our supplier communication and improved our website content and presentation – the relevant webpages are receiving increasing numbers of hits from suppliers.
We have run several workshops with suppliers to tell them about our approach to sustainability – this was to inspire them to take action to meet Business in the Community’s May Day pledges.