Manufacturers are making strides to reduce their plastic footprint. Mondelez International plans a 25% reduction in rigid virgin plastic between 2020 and 2025, and both Mars and Unilever are dedicated to using 100% recyclable, reusable or compostable plastic packaging.

An obvious reason for this is to preserve the environment, but the effort to slash plastic can also help to manage risk and spur growth. Manufacturers that ignore plastic regulations, on the other hand, are subject to fines and reputational harm. In short, a business’s attitude to plastic can ultimately impact its share price.

Teams assigned to shrink plastic usage can find it difficult to budget, forecast and make nimble decisions. Too often they lack accurate supplier data. Unless businesses can adopt strategies for obtaining the necessary supplier information, they chance missing plastic footprint reduction targets. Following are three tips on how to get this accomplished.

Understand what you’re facing. A recycling team working to make packaging and products more recyclable, reusable or compostable needs to rethink designs and materials as well as its recycling infrastructure. This demands collaboration. It’s imperative that suppliers contribute their best ideas, information, products and services to the effort.

Communications with suppliers can be less than ideal when there’s a shortage of dependable data. If, for example, an employee has incorrect contact details for a particular supplier, they’ll need to take manual and time-consuming steps to find the right person. In the case of a European supplier possibly using per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in their packaging, it becomes necessary first to determine the identity of all one’s packaging suppliers in Europe.

Ultimately, poor supplier data aggravates the supplier relationship. So, given that businesses depend on suppliers to help lessen plastic use, why aren’t they providing them with a better experience?

The good news is that some of the world’s biggest brands are creating the conditions in which this is possible. Businesses like Mars, Unilever, and Mondelez International are building a firm foundation of supplier data upon which they can offer suppliers a collaborative experience. These manufacturers understand that they need to help suppliers help them — because when suppliers are given a helpful work experience that’s built on good data, they can contribute positively to their customers’ corporate goals. 

Achieve customer-of-choice status. The goal is to be considered by suppliers as a “customer of choice.” Imagine that a supplier has two customers who are comparably large and important. One pays late, has unreasonable demands and never responds to queries. The other treats the supplier as a partner, pays quickly, believes in common goals and communicates well. When it comes to innovating plastic-free packaging, with whom is the supplier more likely to collaborate?

A recent HICX study found that while 49% of suppliers would go the extra mile for their biggest customer, as many as 73% would do so if it was a customer of choice.

Change digital processes — and people’s mindsets. How, then, can businesses refine the supplier experience? The answer is to make supplier data 100% dependable by digitally transforming the processes by which suppliers are managed. This requires establishing systems for capturing the most accurate supplier information, then continuing to ensure it’s pure so that the partners agree on a single source of truth.

Digital transformation “from the data up” helps businesses tell who all their suppliers are and what they’re doing. Digital workflows make it easier to work together, enabling such improvements as decreasing the number of systems to which a supplier must log in, allowing it to swiftly check the status of an invoice, and quickly responding to other questions. Treating suppliers like partners leads to better cooperation and, ultimately, a reduction in plastic.

Brands can further enhance suppliers’ experience by changing their mindset. The old way of working, in which buyers make unreasonable demands of their suppliers while squeezing them on price, are over. Today’s reality, largely driven by COVID-19, is that we rely on suppliers as much as they rely on us.

Suppliers have a choice. When there’s competition for finite materials and innovative ideas that will help businesses lessen their plastic footprint, suppliers can choose whom they do business with. Those buyers that want to be customers of choice can start by treating suppliers as partners in the same ecosystem.

Ultimately, if businesses can keep their supplier data accurate by improving their digital processes and mindsets, they can reveal opportunities to work alongside suppliers to achieve the most positive plastic-reduction results.

Costas Xyloyiannis is co-founder and chief executive officer of HICX.