 What kind of world do I want to live in? I think about this question a lot. For our generation and for specifically my group of people, which is refugees, the circumstances might dismantle any vision of the future that we have. You're trying to rebuild, you're trying to make a future for yourself, and then the climate-related disaster comes and you start again. It's not about how it's affecting you now, it's about how it's affecting you your entire life. The first step to understand is that we're all a part of it. None of us are going to be left out by the crisis. We're at a stage where if we don't act now, really there won't be very much left. There are generations that will never see certain things that we grew up seeing in real life. We have to start treating this like the emergency it is. To achieve the 17 sustainable development goals, we have to go from an intention to a serious commitment. Business leaders really need to rethink how they conduct their business and invest in creating systems that are climate-friendly. I would like to see accountability. Structures being put in place where countries aren't just asked to do something, but they're kept accountable to the decisions that they make. There has to be that strong collaboration between government, between corporations, between youth activists to drive change forward. The world I would want to live in is a world where imagining the future is not a privilege. I want to live in a world where people do not give up on hope. Hope that a positive change is possible. The fact that you're listening today means that you are willing to make a change. It is great to be with all of you. This is the Sustainable Development Impact Summit. It's an annual moment during the UN General Assembly where really we think about solutions, what we can do to actually drive the agenda forward. It's an important moment in the calendar that I have had the privilege to join now for many years since its inception. I'm Raj Kumar, President and Editor-in-Chief of DevEx. I'm actually here at the UN General Assembly in the outskirts of a strange hybrid, mostly virtual year covering this event and covering all of the news coming out of the General Assembly. The Secretary General Antonio Guterres, of course, famously has said we are staring at the edge of the abyss. And I think we heard a bit of that in the video that we just watched. But what was so hopeful about the video is there are ideas, there are opportunities and initiatives to find real solutions. And that's really what we're here to talk about today. And that's why I love this summit because we do get to narrow in some really interesting important trends. Today we're here to talk about digital traceability, which is a trend that I'm guessing many people following along are deep experts in, work on every day, but others, it might be new to them. So let me just give you a kind of a crude analogy, just give you an idea what digital traceability might mean, what some of the core elements of it are. Actually, on a recent trip, my wife and I were traveling and her suitcase got lost. Many of you have probably experienced this too. The airline lost it and we had to go find it. Well, digital traceability has three main components. The first would be where is my wife's bag right now, right? You can imagine being on the phone with the airline trying to figure this out. Where is it right now? Current location. Where has it been? Where did it go in the past? And then what's the status of it? Is it broken? Is it damaged or all the contents strewn on the airport floor? These three elements, key to digital traceability, actually might sound very narrow and very technical, but could have huge implications. And they could have huge implications for sustainability in the future of the planet. And that's what we're here to talk about today. So I'm delighted to be a part of this session. If you're just dialing in joining us now, there is a poll in the chat. I invite you to take that poll. We're going to look at the results really soon. I want to mention that this is going to be a very interactive session. We'd love to hear from you. So please pay attention. Lean forward in your chair and let us know what we're missing in the discussion. We've got a fantastic group of panelists that the World Economic Forum has put together for this event today. Let me just mention who they are. And then we're going to get started with our conversation. So I'm delighted to mention that we have Guru Bandikar, who's the Chief Procurement Officer at Stanley Black and Decker. He wears a couple of big hats there. One, he is the Chief Supply Chain Officer for their global tools and storage business. I think a lot of us know Stanley Black and Decker and probably have their products in our homes or our garages. He's also the Chief Procurement Officer there. So as we talk about global value chains, really interested to hear Guru's take. Scott Russell is with us. He's a member of the Executive Board, leading customer success at SAP, the massive software company. And he's thinking a lot about these supply chains, these value chains for their many customers around the world and how you digitize them. So we're really delighted to have him and his expertise here. Barbara Frey is with us. She's the Executive Vice President for Industrial Automation at Snyder Electric. And again, she has focused as a member of the Executive Committee on these exact issues. Supply chains, value chains, really at a moment when we all know the global supply chains are dramatically disrupted. So we're eager to get her expertise and take. And obviously a lot of the issues we're here to talk about touch on labor and labor rights and workers and who's actually producing the products in our supply chains. Sharon Burrow is with us. She's the General Secretary at the International Trade Union Confederation. She has spent her career in organizing. She was a teacher. She comes from a long line of organizers and she's worked in many, many roles across the local and global international trade movement. So it's great to have Sharon here too. So I just want to welcome all of them, invite them to turn on their cameras and to join our discussion. Nice to see you all. Maybe we can just start by setting the scene. I gave my very basic example of digital traceability just to try to make it accessible for people. But why is this such an important potentially groundbreaking trend in the way we think about all the goods and services that we use and how it connects to the sustainable development goals? I want to open this up for everyone, but maybe Scott, we can start with you. You've got a good view across many different kinds of supply chains. What does digital traceability really mean to you? Yeah, it's amazing. So first of all, great to be here and to join this great panel. But the question you ask is the right one. We nice speak to leaders across the planet about their businesses. There's no doubt that COVID-19 has consequences beyond health. So for businesses, small, medium and large, they're really what this is digital traceability is about accelerating the timeline when they're thinking not only about supply chain resilience, but supply chain sustainability, accelerating the importance of collaboration, creating opportunities to build sustainable resilient value chains. And I think your personal example, the travel example is a good one. I think most of us have experienced that personal supply chain disruption through the pandemic, through shortages, looking for alternatives, trying to find a way to be able to otherwise get solutions. So I guess businesses are actually no different. When you consider the implications for employees, for customers, or their customers, customers, shareholders, the communities that they operate, they're constantly thinking about how their value chains are delivering to those stakeholders, how they approve improve upon it, and ultimately becomes a digital, flexible, agile platform. So for us at SAP, for example, working with the COVID response alliance with the World Economic Forum, partnering with companies like IKEA, EY, Unilever, but even social businesses such as Unis to mobilize data, infrastructure resources to support hundreds of thousands of social entrepreneurs. It's a really good example of how we can digitize, but also drive sustainability through the value chain. It's really hard to change the global value chain if you can't see it. If you don't know what's in it, where is the product being produced? What kinds of natural resources went into it? How much carbon emission is associated? Sharon, what about the labor component? What can you add to this discussion about why this is important for workers? So if you think about the fact that we're all used to, as you said, Raj, using tracking data for products you buy online or for products you send through the post to a family member or a friend as a gift, just imagine if our due diligence commitments on both fundamental human and labor rights for workers and indeed on climate sustainability, the environmental standards at all fair competition must be based on if we're to repair a broken labor market and indeed stabilise the planet. So imagine if you could do what you just said and actually see not just where the product comes from, but whether there are a guarantee of rights and decent wages and no forced or child labor and indeed that women aren't discriminated against or other excluded workers. That would be incredible because it would make due diligence serious and therefore you could also trace where companies or other actors had put in place grievance procedures to affect remedy. We have to get to a transparent world if we're serious about inclusive growth, about due diligence and grievance to affect remedy around both labor rights and indeed of course those sustainable environmental standards. Sure. Maybe we can bring Barbara into the discussion on this point. If she's with us, I don't see her camera here, but if she is, I just want to ask her about whether that move to a transparent world is upon us. Are we here now? Is the world getting to this point of transparency or is this kind of a far off idea that we're just at the early stages of? And if we don't have Barbara with us, which maybe it looks like we don't, we're all used to these digital challenges, right? Maybe we could use Scott and see if you want to address that. How far off in the future are we talking about? So I think what we've got to realize is moving from intent to reality and so one of the conversations that we have with businesses in SAP where in a really privileged position that we support, the majority, nearly 77, 78% of the world's financial transactions use SAP technology. So we've got traceability, visibility in how we manage resources from a financial standpoint, from an economic standpoint, and actually the technology is available today from a sustainability standpoint. I mentioned making sure that it is from an equality point of view, but whether that is in power in a business at the point of the process, the decision making occurring, and if I can circle it back to your opening example, through the use of technology, we are very close. I can tell an employee of a business at the point that they're making a booking decision to take a flight, what's going to be both the societal impact, what is the organization, the airplane, the mode of carriage, what's going to be the carbon footprint of it, but also are they then connecting to an organization that is actually driving equality and inclusion and bringing that data traceability. Some industries are much more advanced than others, Raj, but I believe the technology is a key element of empowering that, but you've still got to drive usage in daily business, making it a part of our daily business lives and personal lives. So I think, Raj, I would say we're at the beginning of this process because Scott's right. It's not now the technology that's such a problem. It's actually the business practice. If you don't embed these elements in your business plan, if you simply outsource the kind of sustainability or human rights reports we're used to seeing in glossy brochures at an AGM and on the website, then you're actually dodging the problem. If you, for example, have on climate, if you have the border adjustment mechanisms that the European Union is thinking about with CBAM, you're going to have to have traceability. What is the carbon emissions of the product? Is it going to actually just be dumping against clean steel in Sweden where there's a price point or clean aluminium or cement or any other industrial sector? What's the competition for a net zero commitment of a shipping company like MERSC, when in fact their competitors could be shipping products around the world with not just human rights abuses, but indeed an environmental footprint that is simply not acceptable if we're going to stabilise the planet or provide a living environment for working people. So I think it is at the beginning, but I think Scott's right. It's not the technology that will evolve even more very rapidly. It's the business commitment. And so what do you see both of you as the driver for getting that business commitment? So let's say as a consumer, someone following along here in our session says, I care a lot about forced labour. I don't want to buy a product that has forced labour in anywhere in the supply chain. It sounds like you're saying, well, the traceability technology exists today where we might be able to say where this product really came from, who worked on it. But what's the driver to get businesses to adopt something like that that helps that end consumer? What are we missing to get there, Scott? Yeah, it's the right question, Raj, because we can't wait. You know, if you look at other areas of disclosure of other areas of traceability, the financial markets, regulation and others will drive financial disclosure. You look at the way a company, any listed company around the planet reports their results. They are inundated. They are able to tell you to a minute detail their financial performance, their product performance, all of those business metrics. And they are doing so on a backward, on a revision basis, but also on a forward-looking basis. To Sharon's point, the technology can enable this, but you've got to have the driving force. You cannot wait because some regulations are going to be. We've seen that regulatory frameworks continue to move, but I believe not at the pace that it needs to be. The financial framework, I would love to see that our financial frameworks really put the sharehold of the expectations that institutions are having to report and actively manage on this. But again, that's a pressure. And your last example is consumer. Here's the thing, the way I would wrap it up. Businesses can't wait for that external factor. They've got to take on the responsibility to be able to manage and operate with that sustainable transparency, even though they might not need to right now from a regulatory or from a financial management or from a consumer. But I can assure you it will come and come fast. Those who move quickly will obviously be able to lead the way. But I think we're at that crux, that crucial point where don't wait for the cue, take the action upon yourselves. Well, that's a perfect segue to bring Barbara into the discussion. Barbara, I was asking, you know, this world Sharon is describing a kind of a world where there's transparency. We can really see what's happening in a supply chain and how far away we are. And essentially what we've heard from Scott and Sharon, it's not really a technology problem today. It's more of a business problem. How do you feel about that issue? In other words, if a business wanted to really use the latest technology to track and trace their supply chain completely, would the cost of that be significant enough that they shy away from it today and say, well, that's a future issue? Or has the tech gotten inexpensive enough? The sensors, the RFID chips, the blockchain, whatever it is that people are using now, or this is truly an opportunity today? What do you say, Barbara? Look, Internet or Electric, in our own global supply chain, of course, of the sustainability and the transparency you want to have with sustainability also, that you can do the right KPIs overall. We have implemented this already some time ago. So it's about seven DC centers, 200 factories, which are involved. However, we still are in a kind of status where we still see it's not 100% perfect. And also from a technological-wise still, I think there are still certain things we don't do because it's too expensive. So on one hand, yes, the technology is here. On the other side, there is a lot of problems to be solved. And then there is also process issue. So you have a configured product. There is a QR code on it. It needs to go to the cloud. Then there comes the panel builder in. He does some further configuration on the product. It goes again to the cloud. And finally, it's at the end user, and the end user might not put it to the cloud. So it's really the whole end-to-end chain, which is in the end the challenge. How do I ensure when it goes through different players, this whole product, that I really have the full transparency as the origin of this product? And this is not yet solved from my point of view. So on one hand, clearly, I still think the technology from a software point of view is not always up to speed, at least from our experience where we test several setups. But on the other side, it's also how do I really ensure that the whole chain is lined up so that we really can trace it until the end of the lifetime and we can take it back and can recycle it. That's really a challenge. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense that if you really are thinking about the entire lifecycle of a product at every point along that chain, that is a different level of challenge because you've all kinds of users involved in that, right? I mean, if you think of the supply chain traditionally as being the subcontractors and the workers maybe of an agricultural product, the farmers, that's a challenge. But you're saying all the way to the consumer and then maybe to the recycling center and back to another business. You can see how that is a real issue. It would be a big service opportunity. So if you know exactly where your product is, you can approach in the lifecycle also these customers and it becomes a great service business. So that is also a business upside to it. Right, so we talked a little about the cost and implementing these technologies. There's a cost, but there are opportunities around reducing counterfeit products, right, around understanding service earlier, recalling only the right individual products and not having to recall everything. I know there's one example on a blog that's on the World Economic Forum website that says there was a massive problem with lettuce that was contaminated with E. coli. And essentially the government had to recall all the lettuce because they didn't know which people in which towns got which contaminated lettuce. So a huge amount had to be recalled for health reasons and they could have avoided that if there was this kind of digital traceability. I think Scott, maybe you wanted to add something to this idea. Yeah, the only thing that I would add is and to to extend upon what Barbara mentioned is a lot of the challenges businesses have is being able to measure what sits outside their enterprise because their value chains obviously go across multiple organizations. And there is no doubt, you know, we're very passionate about the business network and being able to have a collaborative. I mentioned at the beginning, true collaborative open networks of not only of sharing of the data, but then enforcing some of the standards that we now expect. And one of the opportunities that I see is it's not just from a sustainability, but also for your inclusion strategy. So what what can be done makes social enterprises a large part of your inclusion strategy of your value chain, which doesn't add financial resources doesn't add technology infrastructure. It's all about making helping you meet your sustainability goals, but doing it also with improving the health and well being of people in the planet through your inclusion strategy. And we've got we did an article today that we with with the forum and I around Cooley Cooley, which is generating millions of dollars of revenue for their farmers thanks to social entrepreneurship. So I don't want to lose sight of that because I think it's so critical on that inclusion and that sustainability, not just from an environmental but also from an inclusiveness. Yeah, just think about the agricultural sector it's something like a third of all food on the planet that gets wasted right and this is the kind of issue where maybe you can reduce that waste even marginally. Using digital traceability that'd be big I want to welcome guru I know that others want to jump in I want to hear from you too but guru is just joined. And I want to mention to all of you we have a poll up in the chat, if you haven't yet answered the poll question answer the poll question, we're going to hear from guru and we're going to see the results after guru so maybe we can just get your overall take. You're you're at a massive global corporation, you know big supply chain this has been the year of supply chain disruption, trying to figure out you know how do you get products so that you can get things out to consumers. And here we are talking about digital traceability and the sustainability opportunity the development opportunities how do you see this broad opportunity around digital traceability. Yeah, so thank you and thanks for the opportunity but digital traceability I mean there's no doubt right that traceability is important. As we talk about ESG ethical sourcing responsible sourcing it is important for us to know where our sources of products are coming from. So there's no doubt about that. What we are trying to evaluate and and we have no doubt also internally is there is a huge productivity opportunity if we could track the containers and the products and where it where it is at at any given time. We can start streamlining our supply chain so of course ESG is important but productivity is a critical part of it as we sit here today. Yeah, give us the sorry to interrupt but just give us a sense of the scale you say it's a huge opportunity around productivity how big what's is this something I'm curious if it's big enough that all the executives who are following should be leaning forward in their chair and taking notes. So if you are in glow in supply chain world today you probably know that today as of this morning that a 72 ships docked outside of LA Long Beach. This is the highest number ever. Right. Each one of these ships are carrying roughly 25,000 containers. We have 4000 containers in there right now. What we do know kind of is what's in those containers. If we had better traceability. We knew exactly where those containers where how where they were lined up and when they would free us up as we approach this end of the corner, which is important calendar for all corporations right we would really be able to track and trace and understand how we could utilize this data much more. In addition to again ESG is absolutely critical important but there's a huge untapped opportunity. Now the challenge is standards right interoperability standards across different supply base different companies different shipping and logistics providers and that interoperability standard doesn't exist and that's. I'm excited to be part of the web and the Bain work on digital traceability and co chair that effort to develop those standards that can have practical implication to our world. And presumably we're talking about two levels of standards there's standards around kind of the technology of traceability and then there's standards for each individual sector like sustainable fish right or other products and agriculture. Let's throw up the poll results if we can, and then that I'd love to get maybe we can start with Sharon her reaction to them. So the question is to what extent do you think digital traceability can help create more sustainable and responsible value chains, and more than half a majority think traceability is the key enabler. And let's say 46% so fairly close it's important but it's only a part of a broader set of solutions. At least nobody thinks it's unimportant right we had 0% traceability is unimportant sharing how do you respond to those numbers. Well I think both those perspectives are right. You know, if you actually don't have the broader set of solutions and you just heard it. An ESG approach as well as the business operational model, then in fact just having traceability is not going to solve the problems of individual businesses or for people or the planet. But I wanted to say that in terms of the questions around, you know, where businesses have power or governments for that matter who are contracting out. Then there are two issues here one is scots. How do you actually know who raises their hands and you know an open government platform that you see now emerging around government contracts and so on can have the same capacity for people to put up their hands and say we've got a problem with that product. Did you know there's forced or child labor. Did you know that you know they're using killing killing chemicals or whatever. But at the same time, when a business knows that one of their suppliers or more than one of their suppliers whether they're individual or collective suppliers across corporations simply doesn't meet the standard or doesn't log their results or tries to be obscure then procurement contracts are in the hands of business. Or as I said government so you can dump those suppliers you can move out to another contractor if in fact you have made it part of the responsibility that you expect from the contract. So I think this again it comes back to is business gearing up for this in an in an area that is not just about traceability but the enabling solutions that then can be tracked. If I can add to that Sharon sorry if I can just add to that and making the decisions at the point you know having the data and the process so you make that decision when you need to make that purchasing decision may when you need me to make that So critical. Right this has to become part of your regular business process right if it's on the side if it's a separate review once a quarter right it needs to be mainstream. I think you're giving us two key two key things to consider one you've talked about transparency is kind of an overarching Well and maybe the word I would use to summarize your comments right now is accountability that ultimately there has to be some accountability in the system it's one thing to trace it. But if you find the product contains forced labor or it contains you know too much carbon emissions beyond what the company has suggested they're going to use. You've got to find a way to hold the system accountable. We've got a minute or so left as we close out this public portion of our session. And I know the people who are probably following this along from around the world are enjoying a lot as I am I hope you are so a big thank you to those who have been joining from all over the world. We will now be transitioning from this session into a Chatham House rules discussion, which is going to allow for a little bit more engagement with the other members who are here on the call. And we're going to just pause for about 10 seconds and then we will begin this this next segment so give us 10 seconds and we'll go.