The ambition was set and the data was solid. Neither was turning into decarbonisation.
The bank had committed to a decarbonised supply chain and had done the hard early work most organisations skip, its emissions measurement was in good shape. But ambition and data don't cut emissions on their own. There was no strategy connecting either one to what a category manager actually does. The targets sat above the organisation, the data sat beside it, and the categories went on buying the way they always had.
We started by finding out why the categories couldn't act.
So we went looking, category team by category team, across the organisation. The blocker was rarely will, and rarely data. It was the absence of a route: nothing to be measured against, no tools to act with, no supplier offer to point to. That told us exactly what to build.
We designed, built and delivered the strategy over two years.
Four strands, working as one system:
- Performance management. A framework that made sustainable procurement something the business could actually manage, with clear measures, ownership, and a way to see progress across every category.
- Data and intelligence. Better supplier data, and the AI infrastructure to turn it into insight, moving measurement off spend-based estimates and onto supplier-specific evidence.
- Capability and tooling. Training, templates and tools for the category teams, from first awareness through to the practical kit they needed to build decarbonisation into live buying decisions.
- Renewable energy implementation. A programme that connected the right suppliers to the right renewable energy routes, matched to their size and market, so commitments turned into actual switching.
A committed target became a delivery programme the business owned.
Category managers went from aware to equipped.
Supplier data became decision-grade intelligence, not a reporting exercise.
Commitments translated into real renewable energy switching across the supply base.