JAGGAER, the global leader in Autonomous Commerce, today released its inaugural Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) Report. It sets out how JAGGAER source-to-pay technology is playing an increasingly important role in ensuring good stewardship of the world’s scarce resources, and reports on JAGGAER’s efforts and ambitions to advance ESG best practices within its own organization. The Report also provides some specific examples of how JAGGAER is enabling customers to achieve ESG goals such as greater supplier diversity and due diligence through visibility into extended supply chains.
Since its acquisition by Cinven in 2019, JAGGAER has reevaluated its mission, vision and values to encompass ESG principles. The Report sets these out in detail. As CEO Jim Bureau expresses it in his introduction, “At JAGGAER the idea of customer success has always been central to our mission. But the way the world defines success has changed rapidly over recent years. Success is increasingly measured in terms of our impact on the environment, on society and on the ways in which we take care of everyone and everything we touch – our customers, employees, partners, investors and the wider community.”
“Here too, procurement has a very special contribution to make, because what happens in an organization’s supply chain is every bit as important as what happens in the organization itself.”
In 2021 JAGGAER was named as a recipient of the Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s Green Supply Chain Awards for enabling its customers in the following ways, which are set out in the Report:
Environmental: Digital transformation and integration across all procurement functions cuts out paperwork and wasted effort, enabling companies to buy the goods and services they need more efficiently and with reduced environmental impact. This process is being accelerated with JAGGAER’s vision of Autonomous Commerce.
Social: JAGGAER actively supports greater collaboration and networking between buyers and sellers. The company provides greater visibility into supply chains to avoid or mitigate supply chain disruptions and eliminate unethical business practices in the supply chain.
Governance: By integrating operational and analytical data from procurement processes, organizations gain better visibility into spending and therefore enhanced transparency for their financial controllers and internal and external auditors.
JAGGAER has established strategic partnerships with companies such as EcoVadis, TealBook and riskmethods. “These partners all have expertise in specific areas of ESG that bring additional value to our customer offerings,” Jim Bureau said.
Progress 2021 and Action Plan 2022
The Report sets out JAGGAER’s own progress in ESG and an Action Plan for 2022. Michele Hamill, Chief HR Officer at JAGGAER will take executive responsibility for delivery against the plan. In January she appointed a Global Manager ESG to lead on its execution.
“Last year we seized the opportunity to create working environments that achieve a balance between lowering carbon emissions and meeting the diverse needs of our employees. This year we will set baseline metrics to monitor our ongoing progress on health, safety and environmental performance,” said Michele Hamill.
In its Action Plan, JAGGAER will also undertake a more extensive Materiality Assessment with input from a broader range of stakeholders, which will inform the further development of the company’s ESG strategy.
A major highlight of JAGGAER’s ESG efforts in 2021 was the completion of a human equity project aimed at creating a more inclusive working environment. This is being followed up by affirmative action, for example to increase the percentage of diverse new-hire candidates in 2022.
On governance, JAGGAER University has introduced a comprehensive program of courses and training on topics such as business ethics, unconscious bias and human rights. These will be further expanded in 2022.
The company has also made it mandatory to give priority to ESG topics such as diversity and sustainability in its own sourcing and procurement, for example through the inclusion of relevant questions on RFPs.
“We made significant progress on a broad range of ESG topics, both through strong cross-functional collaboration and also by leveraging the company’s core strengths as a leading technology vendor. For example, we adopted a ‘cloud first’ policy and virtualization to reduce power consumption requirements, and we enhanced strict data privacy and information security protocols,” said General Counsel Kevin Smith.
“We are passionately committed to the idea that as individuals, as a company and as a part of the broader procurement community, we can make a positive impact on the environment, society and ethical business practices,” Jim Bureau concluded.
