Taking sustainable procurement one step forward

My name is Cyril and I’m head of Global Procurement here at Criteo. I joined the company six years ago and I have to say, it’s been great witnessing how much we’ve grown on topics linked to Environmental Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In the Criteo ecosystem, our team works to empower internal stakeholders so they can pilot their purchasing needs more effectively and autonomously. There, we have implemented processes and tools that allow Criteos everywhere to be set up for success. We are a team of 10 to handle a portfolio of over 2,000 suppliers, so you can imagine how important it’s been to define a coherent and effective procurement policy.  

Scrutinizing our partnerships closely 

When talking about risk management, one often goes immediately to security or financial risks, but CSR-related risks also ought to be acknowledged. That’s been our main mission over the past years; to reduce the risks linked to our supply chain and assess whether our suppliers were still aligned with our values or not, especially in terms of CSR and environmental sustainability. Criteo has committed to investors to make our business model and company more sustainable in the long run, submitting our targets to SBTI. Now more than ever, we must all row in the same direction and contribute, starting with our supply chain. Since I joined, I’ve seen our CSR team grow bigger and our corporate objectives with it. Partnering with them has brought me to question our ways and see where we can improve as we did when establishing our own criteria to evaluate, not only environmental sustainability but the global CSR approach of all our partners.   

Setting ambitious yet realistic goals 

Not long ago, our team took part in a training on sustainable procurement. We deep dove into our current process, assessing it from a practical perspective, and questioning how mature we thought we were considering our global targets. To me, it’s not about claiming that we have a Sustainable Procurement Policy; it’s about making concrete progress in that area. So, with that in mind, we decided to make our scoring evolve and define accurate KPIs to help us monitor our actions and their real impact. We’ve already gone from a process that was neither auditable nor trackable to an automized solution that efficiently helps us set ambitious yet realistic goals and monitor our achievements.   

How sustainability made us grow more efficient 

New European norms are coming, that will push us to do more. Regardless of this legal framework though, it’s been a while since Criteo made environmental sustainability and CSR a real priority for the company. We've done the work to be fully equipped with clear goals in mind and have real ownership of our internal ecosystem. I believe we are prepared to push further and meet our ambitions. From where I stand, sustainability has led us to refine our approach, improve our processes, and grow more efficient. I believe our SBTI targets unites us around a common goal, fostering cross-team collaboration so we can embrace and drive change. Paradigm shift always takes time but I'm confident we’re on the right track balancing ambition and caution to build something greater that will last through time.