Social Traders and RobobAI Partner to Provide Real-Time Supply Chain Impact Analytics

Social Traders, Australia's industry body for social enterprise and social performance, has partnered with RobobAI, a global fintech leveraging AI to create transparent and ethical supply chains, to provide businesses comprehensive, real-time insight into the impact of their supply chain spend. Procurement is one of the most effective ways businesses can address major societal challenges, with two-thirds of a company's potential for positive or negative impact coming from its supply chain.

Through this partnership, Social Traders and RobobAI will help businesses of all sizes not only evaluate the level of spend with certified social enterprise suppliers but quantify the direct dollar impact this spend has had on the communities in which they operate. Social Traders CEO Tara Anderson stated that this partnership aligns with their ambition of making business for good, business as usual, emphasizing that social enterprises represent the ultimate example of using business as a mechanism to deliver social and environmental impact.

RobobAI will leverage its AI platform to help businesses easily consolidate, cleanse and classify their spend data with certified social enterprise suppliers, saving them time and effort while improving supply chain visibility. This enables businesses to make more informed, data-driven decisions across social enterprise spending. The timing is critical as mandatory sustainability reporting came into effect on January 1, 2025, initially applying to large businesses and extending to all businesses over the coming three years.

The partnership leverages insights from Social Traders' extensive database of certified social enterprises, which includes analysis of 5,795 social enterprises nationally through their 2024 Report on Identified Social Enterprises (RISE). This represents the largest national analysis of social enterprise to date, showing that social enterprises invest $5.7 billion every year in delivering impact to communities and create 89,000 jobs for people who would otherwise be shut out of work. Businesses can access detailed information through Social Traders' website at https://www.socialtraders.com.au.

Julian Harris, CEO and Founder of RobobAI, explained that businesses will be able to dive into granular supplier and category level detail within clicks, obtaining Social Impact Reports that demonstrate tangible impact outcomes from their spend with certified social enterprises. The partnership creates an opportunity for genuine change by helping businesses shift their spend toward more ethical and sustainable suppliers to create meaningful impact on communities and the environment, particularly as mandatory reporting requirements are expected to include social reporting obligations over time.