PegaWorld iNspire 2024: Siemens: Sustainable Procurement Performance Makes the Difference

The target picture of our supply chain management organization is what we call the value creator. We want to continuously raise our value add across five dimensions productivity, resilience, quality, innovation and sustainability. Sustainability has gained significant importance in recent times, and to address the increasing demands of all stakeholders, digitalization has become an essential enabler of our sustainability strategy. Our buyers must pay increased attention to sustainability aspects when procuring goods and managing suppliers. This is to ensure that we only work with suppliers who adhere to the principles of the Siemens Code of Conduct for suppliers and third party intermediaries. Additionally, our buyers drive the decarbonization of our supply chain. Managing a multitude of sustainability topics with over 60,000 suppliers is a challenging task, but one that has a significant impact. The SCM Sustainability Platform, or SSP for short, supports buyers in understanding and coordinating sustainability activities. It is the go to place for the most important sustainability topics related to Siemens suppliers.

Within the platform, buyers have the opportunity to access sustainability related information about suppliers and carry out corresponding work processes. For instance, the SSP calculates a sustainability score for each supplier, which can then be used in sourcing decisions. The SSP also plays a crucial role in our efforts to decarbonize the supply chain, since it enables us to manage the carbon web assessment process from the invitation of the supplier to the assessment of the results based on the results. CO2 emissions are determined and reduction measures are consolidated. The assessment results are available for each supplier and assist buyers in planning and implementing further reduction measures in collaboration with the supplier. Siemens conducts hundreds of external sustainability audits at suppliers annually. This ensures that they meet our requirements and specifications in line with our Code of Conduct. This process is fully digitized and provides transparency for buyers, as well as the opportunity to make decisions and track measures. The SSP is continuously being further developed by an expert team and is an important part of Siemens sustainability strategy.

Thanks a lot. Hello and welcome to our session on sustainable Procurement makes a Difference. Tupac and myself will show you today the SSP that you just saw, like the sustainability platform, which supports our, um, buyers in understanding and also coordinating the sustainability activities within Siemens. So my name is Adina and I'm really thrilled to be here today. So thanks for inviting us. And yeah, as a digitalization expert at Siemens, my focus area is basically, um, the supply chain and um, the supply chain processes within, um, Siemens. Thank you. Hello. Also from my side, I'm Tupac.

I'm working as well in supply chain management, and I'm working in a team that is focusing on the sustainability of our supply chains. We have a global team that focuses on integrating sustainability practices in our global sourcing processes. The program that I'm managing focuses on the topic of decarbonization of the supply chain. And today we will explain you how we drive this process using the Pega technology and the SCM sustainability platform. But before we do that, let's start explaining a bit what we do at Siemens, what sustainability means for Siemens, and how we are supporting our customers with our value propositions. For this, I would hand over to Alina. So what is Siemens doing? So once upon a time Siemens was doing washing machines and mobile phones. But nowadays Siemens is a global leader in providing really innovating solutions throughout different industries.

And different industries are, for example, industrial automation. So we are commuting in cars designed by Siemens. Um, the cars are also manufactured basically um, on Siemens automation in the factories. And moreover, in the end also you can charge your car also with, uh, Siemens grid. Um, we are also, um, yeah, working in smart buildings, which are provided by Siemens. Um, and um, yeah, that uses really energy really efficiently and also combines basically the physical and the digital workspace. Siemens is also a major player in the area of mobility. So we are not only producing the trains but basically also the whole infrastructure around it is um, operated by Siemens. So just like a small insight into the Siemens products.

Um, but now let's focus on sustainability. Thank you Elena. So when we talk about sustainability in Siemens, we usually look at this topic from two distinct perspectives. On the left hand side you can see sustainability the sustainability business opportunity. So this is about how Siemens with the portfolio that Alina just showed and enables our customers to be more sustainable. And the good news for Siemens as a company is that even already today, more than 90% of Siemens business enables positive sustainability outcomes for our customers. Which means that this is great news for Siemens and means that the portfolio of the company is also well set for the future. But how we do that is by combining the real and the digital worlds, and we will give some examples about this in the next slide. But before we do that, let's look at the other perspective.

This is sustainability in our own operations. And this is all about leading by example and being a company that operates in a sustainable way. And when we talk about own operations, we are talking about our facilities, our factories, our office places, but also about our supply chain and the collaboration with our suppliers. And this is going to be the focus of the presentation today. So moving on. I wanted to show you briefly the degree framework, which is the Siemens global framework for managing sustainability. This framework provides us a 360 degree view on sustainability and ensures that, as I said before, that we lead by example as a company, by fostering sustainability across our operations and also across our supply chain. As you can see in the slide, this program has six distinct key pillars. And we will focus today on two of these pillars that are the ones that are mostly related to supply chain.

But as you can see, these pillars go from decarbonization, going through ethics, governance, resource efficiency, equity and employability. So we really have a 360 view that includes not only environmental aspects but also social and governance aspects. As I said, we will focus today in the presentation in the D letter here that is about decarbonization and the G about governance, because these are two pillars where supply chain management. Our department is playing a crucial role in enabling the company to reach the sustainability targets. One last thing that is important to know about this framework is that for each of the letters that you see here, we have defined concrete ambitions, concrete targets that different departments are responsible for. There is a ownership and accountability behind each of the targets, and there is a global effort to achieve the ambition set by this framework. Before we move into the sustainability in the supply chain, let's briefly mention the customer value propositions that are a result of a sustainability strategy. We have three key value propositions that we offer to our customers. The first one is decarbonization and energy efficiency.

So we help our customers to achieve their decarbonization goals. We basically do what we are doing for our own operations, and we offer it for customers as well. And just to give an example, our customers can use a Siemens software to create a digital twin of their factory, and make sure that they reach the maximum potential of energy efficiency even before building this factory. The second example is about resource efficiency and circularity, and if you have been involved in the topic of sustainability, you might have heard that sustainability starts with the design. So you can use our software also to include sustainability aspects already from the design of the process of the product. So you can use our software to create a digital twin of your products and look at the different components, and then find opportunities for optimization in each of the aspects of the product. And by the time you are producing it, you have already simulated everything in the digital space. The last point that I want to mention this slide is people centricity and societal impact, because what we do in this case is to put people at the center of our customers operations. We have solutions that ensure that our customers have their people working in safe spaces, and also that they have a good user experience when using these spaces.

Just to give an example, we have products that, for example, the simplest example is fire detectors to make sure that there is something happening in a building, people are notified by it and can evacuate accordingly. Another example is that we have software to improve the user experience of the people working in workplaces. They can, for example, reserve a table or a workspace. And these kind of things make sure that the experience that they have in the workspaces is as smooth as possible. But now let's go to the topic of the presentation, which is sustainability in the supply chain and is our main area of expertise. As I mentioned before, we have two key aspects of our sustainability programs in the supply chain. The first one is based on our suppliers commitment to our code of Conduct for suppliers. This is a document that we make all our suppliers sign, and it lists all the requirements that we have for our suppliers in terms of environmental requirements, in terms of social requirements and also governance requirements. And the other point is that we are taking consistent steps towards a net zero supply chain in 2050.

We have also an interim goal to become to achieve -20% CO2 emissions in the upstream supply chain by 2030. But before we jump into the programs themselves, let's understand a bit what we are talking about when we talk about sustainability in the supply chain in Siemens. The first thing that is important for me is that you understand is the impact that a supply chain like Siemens can have. We are working every year with roughly 67,000 suppliers and sourcing from 140 different countries. And as you can imagine, there is a lot of complexity behind such a supply chain. A lot of risk, but also a lot of opportunity. Because if we can manage to foster sustainability in such an ecosystem, we can also create great impact. Just to give a last number, our purchase goods and services represent €37 billion per year. This is roughly 40 billion USD and it accounts to almost half our revenue.

One thing that is going to be a common theme throughout our presentation is supplier engagement and collaboration as key enablers to achieve our sustainability targets. This is because no company can really drive the sustainability of the supply chain on its own. We really need to work together with our suppliers and make sure that they are part of the process. This process starts by setting very concrete requirements for our suppliers. As I mentioned before, this starts with signing the code of conduct. But on top of that, we have a risk based approach that helps us identify suppliers that might not be fulfilling the commitments that they have signed up for. So we have an approach to identify and mitigate potential risks in the supply chain. The second aspect is the current reduction program. This is the program that I'm managing with my team.

And this is all about collaborating with our suppliers to reduce and find opportunities to reduce the carbon footprint of our supply chain. As you can imagine, there is a lot of effort behind this, a lot of people involved in these processes. So technology in this case is our best friend. We need to use it as an enabler and also is the backbone to reach these targets. This is also the focus of our presentation today and what Alina is going to show you. We described here the process in three key pillars. So the process as I mentioned starts with the assurance process making sure that our suppliers understand our requirements and also that we have detection modules to make sure that they are working according to these requirements In the center we have the topic of supplier management. This is why we have the SEM sustainability platform that we are going to show you today, to make sure that all the information that we collect from our suppliers is available in one central place and can be used to manage the supplier relationships. And at the end we have the supplier performance.

Because sustainability is a is not a static thing, it's a developing thing. So we have to make sure that we track the performance of our suppliers, that these suppliers are on a development path and that we are always keeping up to date the information about their performance on sustainability topics. So now enough about the slides. I think it's time to look into the platform that we have developed. And for this I would hand over to Elena. Thank you. So as Tupac mentioned, we cannot do it alone. So in the end we need the supplier engagement. And we need a powerful tool.

Powerful tool in this case is Pega, the Pega platform that we build up together with our implementation partner, and which supports us to improve our sustainability and our supplier base, as mentioned by also triggering and monitoring appropriate measures. Just like a short insight, what do we have? What kind of data do we have in the SSP? Um, here the user can find basically all the sustainable, uh, sustainability information in one place. Um, the user can also compare the suppliers, like the sustainability scores, um, of them and the performance. We also have implemented two processes end to end by now. So the user can trigger this to sustainability processes within the tool. And last but not least, the tool gives you really a lot of transparency and insights. So we are also um driving supplier sustainability strategies based on the data that we have in the tool.

But yeah, let's embark on the SSP journey. And, um, yeah, my team and I, we prepared a little video for you how the sustainability platform looks like. So, um, here you can see, um, our landing page and our landing page is not just a homepage. It's basically a dynamic hub. Um, yeah. Where we foster all our KPIs. So here you can see the home section. And above we have all the news. So when the user logs in he sees immediately okay what kind of new releases do we have.

What kind of new announcements. And then we have this three pillars sustainability scoring where we have all the amount of suppliers which are in the tool are those are updated basically every day. And the sustainability score distribution. Moreover, behind the tiles, the user can also find more information like how the score is calculated. And moreover we have these two um processes the external sustainability audit and the carbon web assessment process that we have implemented end to end. And here you have the figures. Last but not least, we have also implemented our STM Virtual assistant. Here the user can basically ask two related questions but also process related questions. Um, yeah.

But before I'm diving into the different modules within the sustainability platform, I think it makes sense to plug that. You just explain the whole picture. Yeah. I think before we continue with two demos, um, we wanted to explain to you what's the concept behind and how from the business point of view, we are using this platform to drive the sustainability of the supply chain. So the platform gives us a central place and a unique place where all our sustainability data from our suppliers is made available for the whole organization. So it also enables us to collect data from different sources, because we have the platform connected to different data management tools that we have in the company, but also we have application interfaces to different SaaS platforms that we are using from our partners, where we are also collecting external data and showing it in the platform. We have defined three key pillars of what the platform offers for us as an organization. I will start with the first one that is sustainable sourcing. So if you think about sustainable sourcing, it's all about considering sustainability as an additional criteria.

Criteria. When you are managing your sourcing process and sourcing process in a company like Siemens has different stages. So you have the phase of evaluating the supplier. You have also the phase of taking the sourcing decision, and also after you have collaborated with the supplier for a while, you might have a development dialog. So the topic of sustainable sourcing is about anchoring sustainability in the different parts of the process, and making sure that this is part of the regular dialogs that you have with your suppliers. And one thing that is very crucial from the Platform is that it's available for all our buyers. In a company like Siemens, we have a relatively big procurement community. This is roughly 5000 people that have buying responsibility, and all of them can access the platform and they have no restrictions. They can see the information about all the suppliers that we have available in the platform, and they can use this.

And when they have to have a dialog with the suppliers, the next step is that it helps us. We have the sustainability score that Alina is going to show you in a moment. So this score is available for all our suppliers, and it's calculated based on the information that we have available. And this can be used as an evaluation factor throughout the sourcing process. As I mentioned before. Then we have embedded sustainability processes. So as I said sustainability is a relatively new topic. And we need to collect information from our suppliers. And we need to be able to have tools that enable us to collaborate with them.

These processes are embedded in the platform. And we will show a couple of examples about this. And these processes range from conducting inviting our suppliers to conduct self-evaluations, like for example, the current web assessment where we ask our suppliers to share insights about their decarbonization plans. And also we have some more detailed processes, like for example, conducting on site audits to our suppliers, where we send an external auditor and we have a look at how they are working and making sure that they meet all the requirements from our code of conduct. These two processes, we will show you how they are embedded in the in the platform in a few seconds. Also, the last topic is what we call transparency and supplier development. As I mentioned, sustainability is not a static topic and we need to make sure that we include it in all the conversations with suppliers. So what we do with the platform is making this information available and transparent for all our buyers, and we make sure that the information stays up to date, and that we can use this as a basis for the dialogs with the suppliers and as a basis for the development of the supplier. Moving forward in the business relationship that we have with them.

So I will now hand over back to Elena to see some more information and some more demos. Yeah. So I would like to show you right now the module supplier, um, sustainable sourcing, like the first pillar that Tupac just showed to you. So I will just start the video off. So the user can click on the suppliers, uh, module. And within this module the user can find basically all our suppliers. So over like 67,000 suppliers are in the list. And the user has information like the ID, the supplier name, the country and of course the most important information, the sustainability score. And those are basically the criteria which are flowing into the sustainability score and the purchase order volume.

Um, the list is really great because we can also add additional fields like responsible buyer or additional dates that the user needs. Um, it's also quite flexible in adding new fields and filtering and searching. So um, it's really very helpful for the end user. But now let's search for a supplier. You can also search by name or by ID. And let's have a closer look to the supplier profile. So if the user clicks on the supplier the user will see then the sustainability score. This score is quite good. As you can see it's in the green area with 88.

And on the right hand side you have the criterias which are flowing into the score with a specific rating. And the ready for business status for example, is for us a very important criteria. So therefore if there is no ready for business, we are not calculating the score. Corporate responsibility self-assessment and responsible mineral sourcing. These figures are coming from another system and they are updated on a daily basis. And last but not least, the External Sustainability Audit and the carbon Web assessment process are end to end integrated in the tool. So therefore those two figures are generated in the tool. So they are coming directly. That's the SSP is basically the source of this data.

Moreover um the user can also find below some supply information like business partner ID which is reported for Siemens or the responsible buyer as already mentioned. And the user can also within this module, the user also can nominate a supplier for an audit. For example, here you can see the supplier is not nominated for an audit. That's why we don't have a case. So simply just clicking the nomination button and then the supplier is nominated in regards to the carbon web assessment. Here you can see here we have already a case. And we have also an answer. So the supplier responded and great results here. And by simply also clicking the case, the user is guiding to the Carbon Web Assessment module.

And within this module you will see the responses. You will see the nomination details. So here you is the heart basically of this module. But I will show you more details on this one. Um, a little bit later on because I think it's important also for you to understand the carbon web assessment process in order to go on with the demo. So I would like to hand over to you. Yeah. Thank you Alan. So we are going to take this process as an example of what we are doing with the platform.

And this is a process. It's called assessment process. And what we are doing here is inviting our suppliers to share insights about their organization roadmaps with us. We ask them a set of questions. This includes different decarbonization measures that any company can take to improve the carbon footprint of their own operations, and we are taking them through this process and asking them which ones of these measures they have already implemented, and also not only from the perspective of today, but also since we have long term relationships with their suppliers, we also want to understand what they have implemented today and what they are planning to implement in the future. So this is a process that we are running as a decentralized process. So any responsible buyer is able to nominate a supplier to participate in this process. And the process is shown in the slide starts with the nomination by Siemens. This is done in the sustainability platform.

And it is done based on the information that we have about the current footprint of suppliers. So we can look at the list and sort by the biggest current footprint. And we can start by nominating the suppliers that have the highest impact in the carbon footprint of our supply chain. The next step in the process is the registration. So if the buyer, if the suppliers are first time users of this platform that we are using to host the assessment, and they have to do a quick registration Process, and then they go into a self-assessment. That is the crucial part of this process. Where is where the suppliers go through the whole questionnaire of potential decarbonization measures that they can implement, and they give us information about the degree of implementation of each of these measures. So they can tell us, for example, with this measure, we haven't started. This measure is fully implemented.

This measure is just at the beginning, but in one year we are planning to have it fully implemented. And then we can use this as an insight for the next step that is evaluation and development. So there is an application interface that brings us the information from the self-assessment back to the platform. And then all our buyers that are in contact with that supplier have access for this information to this information. And then they can use it as a basis to evaluate the performance of the supplier. They can see if the decarbonization plan of the supplier is ambitious enough or not, or if we need to include some topics in the negotiations that we have with them. The last aspect is in the process is monitoring. So we are feeding the information that we collect in the sustainability platform into a dashboard that then gives the respective organizations the insights into how they are doing in terms of the organization of the supply chain. The last arrow that is looping the process back to the beginning is a reassessment.

So when we are having long term relationships with suppliers, it's important that we keep the information up to date. So when it has been a while since we get the last answers from them, we are asking them to update the answers because as I mentioned before, we also ask for forward looking answers and we want to make sure that what they have promises to us one year ago is actually implemented in the end. So there is an iterative process to always keep this information up to date. Before we go into the demo, we wanted to highlight to share a few highlights about this approach, because we think that there are not many companies running this process, and we think that it's important to also share what we have learned Um, about running these kind of discussions with suppliers about decarbonization. As we mentioned before in the presentation, collaboration is key. So there is no company that can achieve the decarbonization of the supply chain on its own. There is not even a department within the company that can do this on its own. So we highly recommend collaborating not only with suppliers, but also internally within the company, with departments like the Sustainability Office or a product lifecycle management colleagues, or even in some cases where it's relevant, the R&D colleagues. Another topic that we learned is centralization of the process.

This is something that you could do with a couple of people sitting in the headquarters and inviting de 1000 top emitters, supply chain, and then having this as a centralized process. But what we learned is that it's crucial to have the responsible buyer running this process themselves, because they are the closest one to the supplier, and they can make sure that the supplier actually answers to the question. So involving the buyers is really important in this process. The second topic is focusing on the hotspots and quick wins. As you can imagine, there is a lot of effort behind running these kind of discussions. Having the suppliers complete the assessment, evaluating the results, then having a development dialog with the suppliers. So you have to make sure that you prioritize and you focus your efforts in the most important suppliers and the ones that have the highest potential for improvement. As you know, decarbonization is a bit of a race against the clock. So we need to make sure that we make progress fast.

And for this, you can prioritize the highest emissions emitting suppliers in your supply chain and also particular material groups that are very high in carbon emissions, like for example, steel in the case of Siemens is one of the commodities where we have the most amount amount of CO2 emission. The last point about this is the topic of quick wins. So in the spectrum of decarbonization measures that you can take, there are some that are very easy to implement and some that are a bit more complicated and required certain investments from the company. So we recommend to start with the quick wins so that you can build some momentum. The suppliers can get in the journey of improving the current footprint of the supply chain. And then once you have implemented the quick wins, you can focus on more complicated measures. The last point is about anchoring. I've mentioned this before, but I want to reiterate it here how important it is to have this information anchored in the different parts of the sourcing process. It's not only about the sourcing decision, it's also about the dialogs that you have with the suppliers, the negotiation dialogs.

Also, when you are doing a supplier development plan that you include this kind of aspects because it's important that you include this long term perspective to the topic, because no company can do this from one day to another. So you need a development plan over the years. And now let's go to the final part of the presentation. And for this I will hand over to Elena again. Thanks. So, um. Yeah, let's have a look on the carbon web assessment module. Um, here you can see the bar. Now we are clicking on the carbon web assessment.

And, um, yeah, we have the same look and feel. Also the carbon web assessment. We have a list with the Sprint volume. We have the country, we have the supplier classification. And of course we have the emission data. So the emission data is calculated on a quarterly basis. Also calculated within the system is based on the products with the highest emission and with the highest purchase volume. And based on this emission, the supplier classification is determined in order that we know, um, what kind of survey we need to send to the supplier, that if it's an IT provider or it's like a service provider, it's like a different question we need to ask. Right.

Um, let's yeah, let's nominate a supplier just as an example. Um, now I'm. Yeah. Just clicking simply on the nomination button and a case is created. Um, on the left hand side, we have like, really the basic data of the case, the case number, we have the supplier name. You have to status. The status is right now in nomination you have the emission baseline, the PVO like the purchase order volume. And here the user can just simply input the supplier contact information. It's already pre-filled in the live system.

Um, but now for the demo we needed to enter it so all the data is already prefilled. So the supplier, the buyer just needs to check the data and basically just they need to submit the button to submit the nomination. And as soon as they click the button, the supplier receives an invite. So the supplier receives an invite, um, that they need to log in into the supplier system. Um, and there they will need to answer the questions in regards to their CO2 reductions. Um, here we have more invitation. The status is right now, not an invitation anymore. The invitation is sent out to the supplier. So you have some basic data, denomination details.

Um, but yeah, I think the most interesting part comes now. It's like the third pillar that, uh, Tupac just explained where we understand what the supplier has answered and also discuss discuss it together with the supplier in order to try to do a common effort to reduce the CO2 footprint. So, um, as already mentioned in the carbon web assessment module, we have this list. So this list is great because we can also set up a default list which always opens up, which we just did here in this live demo. And um, yeah, let's have a look on a supplier who has already answered this kind of survey. And here you will see again the case. The status is responded. You have the nomination details that were sent out to the third party provider. And, um, yeah, the survey details are on the left hand side.

Um, and here basically the user can find in the end the CO2 reduction data from our suppliers. So here is a summary of the questions that were answered here. Um, also the reductions are calculated. And the most important part is the business questions. So um yeah we just have a look a quick look into the logistics here. Um, you see the questions and here you see the degree of implementation. So like how far um, is the supplier with implementing these measures. So we are checking it how far they are like today in one year, in three years. And when these measures were implemented and based on this data, the whole calculation gets triggered.

Like above. You can see like the previous year, the current year, you can see the performance based on the questions answered. And you can see also the emission reductions. And with this view it's kind of easy then for the buyer to yeah, you can also download it as a PDF and go into the discussions with your suppliers and analyze the situation and see what kind of improvements they can make, or also get some lessons learned from your supplier and share with other suppliers, for example. Yeah, I hope you enjoyed the demo in our sustainability platform. But yeah, before we are closing the session, um, we would also like to share with you. Um, yeah. Our journey, our roadmap. Um, so basically, we kicked off, um, this journey back in 2022 with our implementation partner, Evelyn.

And, um, then back then we started introducing the sustainability scoring, like, you know, this fun chart with the colors. And, um, also we have introduced this to processes and yeah, right now with 5000 users in 65 countries and over 67,000 suppliers, we introduced a platform back in 2022 globally within Siemens. Um, in 2023, we finalized the end to end implementation of this two processes, the external Sustainability audit and the carbon web assessment process that I just showed you. And we also finalized the integration with our huge Siemens IT ecosystem. And um, as well with our third party providers via the APIs. And yeah, what brings the future? Of course, we will introduce a new module which we will call supplier development measures. Here we would like to make the life of our users easier. Uh, for example, um, we want to give them like a recommendation.

Like what kind of supplier should I nominate. Like what kind of supplier has like a really high emission and was not nominated by now. And yeah, also we want to further dig deeper into the supply chain. So we ask also the suppliers of our suppliers to take the survey. And last but not least, um, we would also like to set up the targets within the sustainability platform. Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure to present you today, and we are now happy to answer your questions. We still have seven minutes, so if you have any questions, just come to the mic, state your name briefly which company you are from. And yeah go ahead.

My leg's asleep. That's why I'm walking weird. Um, so actually, I had a question, um, on the users that you had, you said you had 5000 users, but you have 67,000 suppliers. So I was curious. All those 5000 users are internal supply chain resources. So are the suppliers accessing a Pega application or are they is it just a survey like a some form that they get and it comes back into the system. And are there plans if they're not currently users of the system for, you know, self-service capability to be rolled out to them? At the moment, the platform is only used by internal users. This is the procurement community, these 5000 people that we talked about.

And the current assessment that we mentioned is a SaaS platform provided by one of our external partners, and it's not based on Pega, but we have an application interface that sends the invitations out. Then the suppliers work in this external Platform. Then there is another application interface that brings the information back to the Pega Platform. If we are going to open it up for external users, we don't know yet, but at the moment it's only available for internal use. Okay, cool. Um, second question I had was, uh, of all the internal resources that you had, you said that they accessed these systems in order to make decisions about their purchasing options and conversations they have. Uh, is this information being fed into those systems as, like, a type of insight proactively, or do they come to this system, gather the information, then go back to the other? Like I'm just trying to understand the swivel chair nature of it, if that, uh, is even an accurate representation of how they use it. I think this is related.

We have a separate tool that is used for sourcing decisions, and I think there is an implication. It's another Pega application, which is great. It makes the life easier to combine. the data and also the transfer. So yeah, basically we have the API set with the external provider like Supplier Plus which Tupac just mentioned. And we have then the internal like the whole architecture, we have also the internal connection to all this procurement tools like for example sourcing decision tool. So as soon as the score is also is changing, this is daily sent to our sourcing decision tool. And the buyers can see like what have changed. Like what was what has changed and what needs to be done.

And then one last question, I promise, um, for the uh, obviously, you know, when you do on site audits, they're much more detailed, right? More in depth. So you use this tool to help you identify what are the optimal, you know, where you want to put your resources to do those, uh, those deeper audits. Um, do you use any type of like Decisioning Lead Process AI, uh, to, uh, like, bring those forward. I know that you can nominate individually based on the score, but do you also use any type of, uh, analytics to, you know, to bring the ones that you think might be the best places for you to invest those resources? At the moment, what we have is an interface with our external partner that is conducting the audits. So there is a standardized, um, audit report that has a different scoring system for each of the criteria that we are auditing. And we bring this information back to the platform so that any buyer can see the result of the audit. And then for the audits, of course, you sometimes find opportunities for improvement.

So there is also a measure management system where the buyer can see all the open action items that are a result of that audit. And then they can manage this and follow up with the supervisors on those topics using the platform. But I think there is no AI involved at the moment. It's not really AI, but we are. Yeah, basically we have some rules behind it and we have some recommendations. So if a supplier is for example, in a high risk country has like, I don't know, a threshold in regards to the pvoh and I don't know, um, there are other rules. So in the end the supplier gets then recommended automatically by the system. So it pops up at the buyer side so they know exactly who they want should nominate in this case. So there are some rules but it's not Generative AI I understand.

Yeah. Actually one last question. Um, for the case types that you're planning to implement in the future, are you going to use Blueprint? Yes. Great answer. Thank you. You have a question. So my question is when you're getting the surveys from your supplier, how are you validating Dating that they told the truth, that they're not gaming the survey. Yeah, we have different processes for this.

So there are some plausibility checks that are included included in the process. So and we also are disclosing this information externally. So everything that we collect from these suppliers at the end part of our auditing process that we run every year, there are some plausibility checks that look for weird patterns in the answers of the suppliers. Like, for example, if they tell us we are not measuring our carbon footprint, but then they tell us that they have implemented a ton of measures and they are really the best in class supplier in their industry. Then we flag these measures and we have a deeper look. And also, of course, we use the opportunity of sending the external auditors to those suppliers to actually validate what they told us in the self-assessment. But as I mentioned before, this is a risk based approach. So you cannot validate each and every answer that supplier gives us. But we have some risk management methods implemented to make sure that at least three high risk answers that we validate them.

Still have one minute. There is one more question. Sure. This is from Truist. So how do you how do you track uh, a company has met that you have SLAs or how do you track the staff, whether they have done the assessment or not within the timeline? So normally a case will have certain timeline. I want to the supplier to get it validated within the timeline. How do you track that. Yeah.

We have any alert system, something like that that does the from Pega or some other system does the alerts. Yeah. We have some automatic reminders in place. So we have a reminder cycle. So for example in the in the case of the carbon wave assessment we send a reminder after four weeks if the supplier hasn't reacted then that's the first automatic reminder. There is a second automatic reminder. And then for the third one we invoke the responsible buyer because we think that after two reminders, it doesn't make sense to keep sending automatic reminders. So then we involve the buyer, and we ask them to contact the supplier personally, and then have a discussion with them about the importance of this assessment. And if after four months we don't get any answer, we flag that supplier has not responded and then they get a bad score, so to say, in the sustainability score, because they were not willing to participate in the program.

The second question I have, how do you get the feed? It's real time feed from the SaaS system that you get it or it's through API calls. Yeah, it's an almost real time, I would say, like the API is around once a day and they bring back all the answers that were collected on that day, and then those are popped up in our system. Okay. That's it. Okay. Thank you. So I think we are running out of time. There are 30s left.

So maybe we use this opportunity to thank you again for participating for joining interest for. Yeah. Thank you.