Working with suppliers

We use thousands of suppliers around the world. Monitoring standards and performance across many suppliers is challenging but it is essential to protect our business and, most importantly, the patients who use our medicines.

Business practices, cultural norms and legal requirements can vary from one country to another.  Our Global Responsible Procurement Standard makes it clear what we expect of suppliers wherever they are based and we work with suppliers to help them understand and comply with these standards.

Having strong standards is important, but on their own may not be enough to guarantee that all suppliers are living up to our expectations. Our programme of risk assessment, due diligence and audit helps us monitor supplier performance and we include responsible procurement clauses in supplier contracts. If we identify problems, we work with suppliers to improve their performance and we check their progress regularly. If a supplier can’t or won’t meet our expectations we will stop working with them.

This section of our website provides more detail about our standards and the processes we have in place for embedding responsible procurement into everyday business practice across the company. In line with our commitment to openness and transparency, we also report on our progress to date.