How to integrate inclusive procurement into your business strategy?

Integrating inclusive procurement has emerged over recent years as an essential strategic lever for sustainable and responsible growth. More than just a societal commitment, it enables businesses to strengthen their supplier ecosystem, encourage professional integration and meet regulatory and ethical expectations. This article offers a structured approach to understand, value and integrate inclusive procurement at the heart of your procurement strategy, whilst measuring its impact on overall performance.

Understanding inclusive procurement

Inclusive procurement is not limited to a solidarity approach: it represents a genuine strategic lever for combining economic performance and social impact.

What is inclusive procurement?

Inclusive procurement refers to a procurement practice that aims to promote professional integration of people distanced from employment, by integrating suppliers from the protected, adapted or social and solidarity economy (SSE) sectors into the value chain. It differs from responsible procurement, which is broader and also includes environmental and ethical criteria.

The objective of inclusive procurement is to guarantee everyone fair access to opportunities offered by public and private markets. This approach contributes to strengthening inclusion within society and actively participates in developing sustainable and shared economic growth.

Which stakeholders are concerned?

Many businesses can engage in inclusive procurement, whether they are large organisations, small and diverse businesses or public stakeholders. They can collaborate with inclusive suppliers, such as ESAT (Establishments and Services for Assistance through Work), adapted enterprises (EA) or SSE structures.

The buyer's role is key in this dynamic: by identifying procurement opportunities from inclusive service providers and adapting specifications, they become a genuine catalyst for inclusion and integration.

Inclusive sourcing: an international trend

The concept of inclusive sourcing is developing strongly in the United Kingdom and other European countries, who see it as a lever for societal impact as much as a performance driver. In France, adoption of this approach is accelerating, driven by public initiatives and platforms like The Inclusion Market, facilitating the identification of inclusive partners for each committed business.

Inclusive procurement: challenges, benefits and regulatory framework

Adopting an inclusive procurement policy fits into a global vision of the responsible company. It's an approach that is simultaneously ethical, efficient and compliant with major regulatory orientations.

Why is inclusive procurement strategic?

Integrating inclusive procurement into the business's global strategy enables differentiation in a context of sustainable transformation of economic models. From a competitive standpoint, these procurement practices strengthen the business's position by highlighting its social commitment, which becomes an important selection criterion for clients, partners and talent.

The contribution to CSR is direct: inclusive procurement participates in professional integration of people distanced from employment, whilst building lasting relationships with diverse suppliers. This inclusive approach also becomes a lever to strengthen the employer brand, attract collaborators sensitive to inclusion values and meet growing transparency requirements.

Benefits for business and society

The positive impacts of inclusive procurement are multiple. For businesses, they promote optimised and more resilient supply chain management. For society, they facilitate access to employment for people with disabilities or in reintegration, whilst boosting local economic activity.

This dual value (social and economic) consolidates relationships between businesses and their territories, whilst encouraging skill development among inclusive suppliers.

Legislative framework in France and Europe

The development of inclusive procurement is supported by an increasingly structured regulatory environment. European initiatives strengthen integration of inclusion in procurement policies across the continent. In France, the SAPIN II law, the tertiary decree and public procurement obligations encourage inclusion through social clauses.

Integrating inclusive procurement into your business strategy

Inclusive procurement must be conceived as a lever for strategic transformation, to be articulated with the business's economic, social and operational priorities.

Auditing and mapping procurement

Integration of inclusive procurement begins with rigorous analysis of existing processes. This involves identifying procurement segments conducive to inclusion, such as services (cleaning, logistics, maintenance), supplies or certain intellectual services.

Mapping expenditure enables targeting positions that can be entrusted to inclusive suppliers, taking into account the territory's capacities in terms of integration. This first step helps build a realistic roadmap, coherent with the business's global performance and societal responsibility objectives.

Engaging stakeholders and training teams

Deployment of an inclusive procurement strategy cannot succeed without the involvement of internal stakeholders. It's essential to raise awareness among prescribers and train procurement teams on inclusion challenges and social sourcing specificities.

Clear governance and transversal management facilitate appropriation of objectives, ensure action monitoring and promote lasting anchoring of this new procurement culture within the business.

Collaborating with inclusive suppliers

To guarantee real impact, it's necessary to identify, qualify and contract with suppliers from the protected, adapted or SSE sectors. These partnerships must be based on a win-win logic: adapted social clauses, regular monitoring, and support for skill development.

By facilitating access to public or private orders for integration structures, businesses become committed stakeholders in more solidarity-based and resilient economic development.

Measuring impact and ensuring sustainability

For inclusive procurement to be sustainably inscribed in business strategy, it's essential to measure its impact, ensure monitoring and anchor it in organisational practices.

Defining relevant indicators

The first step to manage an effective inclusive procurement process consists of implementing clear and adapted indicators. The integration rate obtained through contracts, the number of inclusive suppliers mobilised and the amount of inclusive procurement carried out over a given period are key data for evaluating performance.

It's also relevant to integrate qualitative indicators:

• Stakeholder satisfaction;
• Skills progression within integration structures;
• Impact on territories...

These data provide a comprehensive overview of inclusive procurement from an economic, social and human perspective.

Monitoring and adjusting strategy

Implementation of inclusive procurement requires regular monitoring through reporting tools, management meetings and field experience feedback. These elements feed a continuous improvement process: adapting selection criteria, identifying new procurement positions open to inclusion, refining social clauses.

This dynamic management guarantees strategy effectiveness and strengthens involvement of internal teams and partner suppliers.

Perpetuating inclusion in the business's DNA

To ensure continuity of inclusive procurement, it's essential to inscribe it in the business's long-term procurement policy. This involves regular internal communication, valorisation of results obtained and integration into CSR audits or extra-financial performance reports.

Making diversity and inclusion an organisational reflex means transforming each procurement into an opportunity for collective and sustainable progress.