All of government, business, institutions, and non-profit organizations are purchasers. Every purchase they make has economic, environmental, and social value-creation power. What if that purchasing power was redirected to support the creation of community capital? There is a tremendous opportunity to supply revenue into what David LePage of Buy Social Canada calls a Social Value Marketplace.
In a Social Value Marketplace, anchor institutions include social outcomes in their purchasing agreements. From hiring local contractors and labour to hiring peopel who face barriers to employment to contracting with social enterprises. They can create a new market for social outcomes. By redirecting current spending they can stimiluate the move from a marketplace solely concerned with economic transaction to one in which social, human, cultural, and environmental capital is also developed.
Social procurement is a way to redirect the world’s spending to the social value marketplace and so fuel healthy communities
SAP is the world market leader in enterprise application software. It helps companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best. 77 per cent of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. SAP itself flows 24.7 billion euros in annual revenue, conducts business in 140 countries, and employs 101,150 people.
It is also working in partnership with organizations like Buy Social Canada to leverage not only its own spending, but to put its platforms to use to connect social purchasers to social-value producers like small and social enterprises. They could facilitate a massive flow of revenue into a Social Value Marketplace.
With more than five years of procurement experience and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, Stephen Young is well placed as the global lead for SAPs Procurement with Purpose program.
The significance of SAP’s work and platforms to connect the world’s buyers to social-value producers, its partnership with Buy Social Canada and other such networks around the world, becomes apparent as our conversation unfolds.
In this episode of Buy Social Canada’s Social Value Marketplace podcast, Stephen explores an emerging global trend that could redirect existing and untold revenue into a Marketplace Revolution.
Learn more about SAP here.
This podcast is brought to you by Buy Social Canada in collaboration with Axiom News. Learn more about Buy Social Canada through their website, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
Listen to this and other Axiom News Podcasts on our Podbean page here.
