SPENCER PENN
STRATEGIC SOURCING
SPENCER PENN
TITLE: CO-FOUNDER AND CEO COMPANY: LIGHTSOURCE
INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
Spencer Penn is co-founder and CEO of LightSource, a next-gen procurement operating system. He previously led procurement at Tesla and is a Harvard Business School alumnus
The role of digital tools With these requirements in place to make responsible sourcing a core priority, companies are increasingly turning to digital tools when choosing suppliers, to help find partners who share similar values.
These tools are helping to map out a supply chain and identify any high-risk areas that might need extra attention.
LightSource is one such tool, providing an AI-powered SRM system, that includes supplier performance and scorecarding, while also extracting data from across broader contract and data sources.
While the tech can certainly help to build consistency into decision making, by itself it cannot drive change.
CEO of LightSource, Spencer Penn explains:“ If you tell an individual,‘ hey, make a reasonable judgement between cost and ESG’, everyone will make their own decisions, that may be inconsistent.
“ However, if you have a platform and a process that codifies those tradeoffs, it gives management the ability to think about environmental strategy from the 10,000 ft view.”
LightSource helps companies“ turtles all the way down” as Spencer says. As a multisided platform, not only can procurement teams use it for interfacing with suppliers, but the suppliers themselves can use it to collaborate with the Tier 2’ s.
“ In doing so, if ESG matters at the OEM level, it can be instilled through technology upstream through the tiers.”
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