Procurement, talent and sustainability: what should be the priorities of procurement departments in Italy by 2025?

Economic and geopolitical uncertainty is now a well-established leitmotif of the current century, characterised by multi-sectoral and global crises in the face of which companies often find themselves disorientated.
Also disorientating is the prospect that the new global order is based on challenges that are destined to be long-lasting, making structural elements of crises that only a decade ago we would have considered transient, the result of unfavourable circumstances.
Market volatility, the regionalisation of supply chains and the integration of algorithms and AI into business processes are just some of the players against which companies are being called upon to adopt a new posture, inventing strategies to contain and manage risks. Those who deal with procurement already know this: the world of procurement as it used to exist no longer exists, not even in Italy.

Procurement challenges in Italy 
Procurement in the corporate sphere is a complicated subject, which is not limited to the selection of suppliers and the purchase of the goods and services that the business needs.
In an unstable global scenario, in fact, the control of every element of the production and supply chain has become a key element in the attempt to contain business risks. According to the Amazon Business report on the state of procurement data 2025, 33 per cent of procurement specialists believe that disruptions or delays in the supply chain are the factor most likely to create organisational difficulties at the corporate level in the next two years. A risk also shared by Confindustria, according to which controlling the reliability and resilience of supply chains is more complex for those companies that, over time, have built a 'tight' global value chain, with little supplier redundancy, which would be less resilient and more vulnerable. Vulnerability that in perceived terms increases when the supplier is geographically 'far' away and the company is placed in global value chains, where interconnection with other countries, and beyond, represents both a value and a danger, due to the potentially widespread propagation of any shocks. In Italy, there are many manufacturing sectors included in GVCs: according to Confindustria, before the pandemic, there were more than 69,000 companies in the manufacturing sector that had trade relations with foreign countries, just over 40% of which were involved in global value chains. These are important numbers that are pushing to diversify, also geographically, the supplier network. It was only a few weeks ago that the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy issued a directorial decree for the realisation of programmes to strengthen the competitiveness and resilience of strategic supply chains in the country with facilities worth EUR 500 million.

It will also be necessary to provide adequate tools to track the already active supplier chain.
Monitoring the health of one's supply chain is essential and yet, according to the Amazon Business report, 18 per cent of senior leaders and 21 per cent of decision makers say they do not have systems in place to monitor and manage the risks associated with their supply chains. A lack that also involves Italian companies: according to a research by the Supply Chain Planning Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, 80% of end-user companies apply specific KPIs to assess the performance of their supply chains, but only 11% have a complete and systematic monitoring system. The same research shows that only 30% of companies measure a sufficiently complete number of technical and economic KPIs. Although there is no handbook to protect against direct and indirect risks, some best practices in procurement processes do exist, as well as strategies from which to take inspiration: Fastweb, for example, has launched an online platform to manage internal purchases through Amazon Business, digitising the end customer experience.

The hurdles that those involved in procurement will have to face are unquantifiable, in the meantime it will be possible to refer to precise and internationally recognised standards: in this sense ESG parameters, drawing up sustainability reports and having a sustainable supply chain will also have an impact on corporate reputation. In the 'Sustainable Procurement and Decarbonisation' survey conducted by EY in 2023, 90 per cent of Italian companies surveyed agreed with the importance of having a sustainable supply chain, a green procurement. The need to stay ahead of the curve and reduce one's environmental footprint has also been embraced at EU level, as evidenced by the EU Directive on Due Diligence in Corporate Sustainability (2024/1760), which requires large companies, from 2027, to identify and manage the negative human rights and environmental impacts of internal operations and suppliers.

To learn more about how Amazon Business can help you gain visibility into spending and implement controls on supplier selection, visit business.amazon.co.uk