Published on the 07/09/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Ariba, the procurement and business network subsidiary of SAP, is promoting its links with Made in the Free World to stamp out industrial slavery in Australian supply chains…
Cobus de Swardt MD at anti-corruption agency Transparency International will speak in Melbourne this evening about the role of purchasing in stamping out corporate corruption.
It’s music to the ears of Ariba president Alexander Atzberger. With 1.8 million companies and 8 million individuals using the Ariba network to manage procurement and inter-company commerce, Ariba believes that the data insights on its network can also be used to reduce corruption and slavery.
Earlier this year Ariba announced a deal with Made in a Free World which manages a database of companies which are known to engage in industrial slavery so that such insight could be made available to procurement officers using its network. Atzberger said that in the future he could envisage similar insights being provided regarding the environmental track records of companies in supply chains.
As far as the slavery insights were concerned Atzberger said; “It opens up a conversation around slave labour and the responsibility a business has – and also elevates the procurement role.”
Already he said that the many thousands of suppliers which had been referred by corporates onto the Ariba network were already “known entities” and the fact that companies such as AIG, Exxon Mobil or JP Morgan – which are all Ariba users – bought from those suppliers afforded them some measure of credibility.
He claimed that 75 per cent of the Global 2000 corporations used Ariba’s network.
In the future Atzberger said he could envisage something like a TripAdvisor for procurement emerging with purchasers rating and ranking their suppliers, although he said Ariba was not formally planning such a service in the medium term.
Asked whether Ariba itself might choose to exclude companies which had been found to act unethically – such as the 7-11 franchise in Australia which has recently been revealed to be significantly underpaying its employees – Atzberger said that he felt that the participants in the Ariba network would be self-regulating in who they chose to deal with.
“Given the scale of the network I would love to find ways to surface and scale information so that it became more of a self-governing community. Companies can vote with their wallets.
“If you can surface information at the time people are making a decision that can be very powerful,” he said.
