| | February 201519CIOReviewwell-known technological innovations to help clients make real progress in their supply chains: 1 ­ Big data and advanced analytics We have co-created a large database of energy, water, and waste reduction levers based on over 100 McKinsey client engagements along with the experiences of our early clients, and developed a "lever engine" that suppliers can use to determine which projects are most relevant for their specific facilities (e.g., just like leading retail websites use a next product to buy engine to say "people who liked X will also like Y", we've worked with our clients to tell their suppliers "people with equipment & processes like yours have delivered value by doing X & Y). We've also leveraged this database to allow our clients' suppliers to quickly and accurately perform the analytics to estimate the cost savings, capital investments, and sustainability improvements associated with each potential project.2 ­ Software as a Service Working with several corporate and NGO clients, we're deploying the data and analytics above through a web-based, self-service tool (called RedE, https://apps.mckinsey.com/RedE). RedE uses the "lever engine" described above with a visual workspace to manage implementation and a series of dashboards to monitor impact in near real-time (e.g., how many tons of CO2e came out of my supply chain this month?). Delivering this platform through the cloud has allowed our clients to accelerate the pace of supplier involvement in their programs by more than 10X compared to approaches that rely on physical site visits3 ­ Social platforms and the sharing economyRedE's dashboards allow a company to easily monitor and benchmark supplier performance relative to peers, making it possible to performance manage a distributed global supplier network on resources that have historically been largely "invisible" in the supply chain. Because RedE is an open ecosystem of buyers and suppliers, and since each "buyer" helps add to the "lever engine" that gets disseminated through RedE, this best-practice aggregation helps all users drive the performance of their supply chains. Further, buyers can "pile on" to requests to shared suppliers that are using RedE, driving adoption (built-in data protections ensure that suppliers' resource and cost savings are fully disguised or aggregated before being shared).Walmart has been a major first mover in this area, testing and refining RedE in a handful of categories and now committing to roll it out to 70 percent of its direct sourcing business. This scale up brings real potential to drive millions of tons of CO2 out of their Scope 3 emissions, sends a compelling message to both their suppliers and customers that they are serious about the impact of their operations, and potentially delivers even more impact in their "Scope 4" emissions (e.g., in the proportion of their suppliers' business that's not with Walmart, but that would benefit if the supplier becomes more resource efficient across its entire operation). Our hope is that innovative tools and approaches, such as the collaborative, two-way ecosystem created by RedE, can help companies elevate supply chain resource efficiency from an emerging CSR KPI to an indispensable practice­putting those that actively lead on such programs at a competitive advantage over those that don't. We have developed a "lever engine" that suppliers can use to determine which projects are most relevant for their specific facilitiesSteven Swartz
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