Landmarc has a strong network of local SMEs, including social enterprises and veteran-owned businesses, with these types of companies representing around 70% of our supply chain and almost half of our annual spend as at the end of the last financial year.
Pictured: The majority of Landmarc’s SME’s neighbour the 190,000-hectare UK Defence Training Estate which helps maintain a network of profitable local rural businesses.
These relationships are hugely important to Landmarc and to the UK Defence Training Estate, given that the majority of the 190,000 hectare estate is in remote and rural communities. A significant proportion of Landmarc’s SME representation operates in these areas, so our joint role with DTE to help maintain a network of profitable local businesses is essential, not only to support effective service delivery but to be a responsible neighbour by creating more employment opportunities and retaining local skills.
To make the process easier for SMEs to work with Landmarc, we introduced quick payment policies – 30 days compared to 90 days for many similar organisations – to help with cash flow and updated our supplier documentation to make the opportunities that are suitable for SMEs or social enterprises more explicit. We are also able to track how we are awarding contracts to ensure that SMEs or Voluntary, Community or Social Enterprises (VCSEs) can bid for applicable opportunities. This is all covered by our Sustainable Procurement Policy, which ensures that all three pillars of environmental, social and economic sustainability are embedded into our procurement processes and our partnerships with our customers and suppliers.
Buying social
Taking this a step further, Landmarc signed up to the Buy Social Corporate Challenge in 2019, after recognising that there was more we could do to increase the number of social enterprises in our supply chain. This is a Social Enterprise UK initiative that has seen Landmarc join a group of high-profile businesses including BP, PwC and Johnson & Johnson, to collectively spend a targeted £1 billion with social enterprises.
To date, some of the organisations that we have established relationships with include:
- From Babies With Love for maternity and paternity gifts for our employees
- Veteran-owned AAA Caring Caretaker Ltd for FM services
- SmartGo, a social enterprise that provides discounts and incentives to encourage employees and their families to use low-carbon transport
- Wildhearts, for business and office supplies, where our spend will transform an estimated 420 lives annually through their social impact programmes both in the UK and overseas. This includes support for young people from poorer backgrounds to develop key enterprise and employability skills.
We are also a founding corporate partner of X-Forces Enterprise, a social enterprise that helps veterans and wider military communities to be the best in business. As well as supporting their ‘Big Business supporting Small Business’ campaign and business networking events, we are also working with them to bring more veteran-owned businesses into our supply chain.
Overall, we recognise the value that a diverse supply chain can bring to our business, our customer and our local communities and consistently look at ways to use more of our procurement spend to make a positive impact on our economy and on society.