By Hervé Legenvre
This article examines how Nexans E3 strategic framework applied to procurement act as a source of meaning and purpose for buyers, suppliers and wider stakeholders alike. We describe how this framework is used and we illustrate how the three dimensions are deeply interconnected. We conclude by examining how the E3 scoring system functions as a motivational benchmark, driving suppliers to progress in line with Nexans’ long-term expectations. Nexans is the 2025 winner of the organisation of the year EIPM Peter Kraljic award
A growing number of leading organizations have demonstrated that procurement, when properly positioned, empowered and led, can be a primary engine of innovation, sustainability, and competitive advantage. Nexans offers a compelling illustration of how procurement can succeed in our tormented business environment.
A world leader in cables and electrification systems, Nexans is the global pure player in sustainable electrification, building the essential systems that power the world’s transition to a connected, resilient, and low-carbon future. Nexans operates across five Power Grid & Connect regions and one global Power Transmission Division, serving the global megatrends of rising electricity demand and the accelerating transition to green energy. Procurement at Nexans manages 97 percent of the total organisational spend.
Nexans’ E3 framework applied to procurement combines and integrates Economic, Environmental, and Engagement performance It serves as foundation for a living strategy, cascaded to every level of the procurement organisation, shared with key suppliers, and anchored in long-term relationship logic.
Three Pillars, One Direction
- Economic performance covers the core metrics that procurement has always. Between 2022 and 2024, the Nexans purchasing function generated an average of €67 million in annual cash & purchasing performance, with 66 percent of total spend covered by long-term agreements. These are the direct result of deliberate E3-guided strategy.
- Environmental performance captures the function’s contribution to Nexans’ Sustainability commitment including the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitments. Procurement-driven initiatives achieved already a 17 percent reduction in CO₂ emissions (cradle-to-shelf), a fourfold increase in recycled material use, and an expansion of renewable energy sourcing threefold over the same period.
- Engagement performance measures the quality of relationships with suppliers. 100 strategic and 250 preferred suppliers each have defined joint roadmaps, sponsored from director to executive level in both organisations. The 5th edition of the Nexans Supplier Day hosted over 200 Partners and 80 one-to-one sessions in 2025. (https://www.nexans.com/news/nexans-suppliers-day-2025-from-suppliers-to-partners-time-for-amplification/)
Cascaded Alignment: Strategy into Action
What distinguishes E3 from a simple reporting dashboard is the rigour of its cascading logic. The E3 strategy, processes, and associated KPIs are reviewed and refined annually, then communicated systematically throughout the company and value chain. Business directors consistently report that procurement operates with a “unified voice” across all levels a rare achievement in a global function spanning 3 segments & five regions.
Category strategies are designed to align with corporate, business unit, and site-level requirements simultaneously. Some reference KPIs are shared and monitored to ensure coherence across all units. This disciplined alignment transforms E3 from an abstract framework into a daily operational reality.
Long-Term Orientation as a Competitive Advantage
Nexans’ procurement model is anchored in a genuinely long-term mindset, a clear foundation for tangible competitive outcomes.
Strategic and preferred suppliers consistently praise Nexans for the transparency and forward visibility it provides on future needs and innovation priorities. This long-term orientation enables suppliers to make investments. Long term visibility position E3-based partnership as a source of structural advantage in attracting and motivating the best supply chain partners.
The long-term orientation is institutionalised through several mechanisms. Senior sponsorship from the Executive Committee ensures that strategic supplier relationships are managed at the highest levels. Annual engagement campaigns, joint roadmaps, and multi-year long-term agreements create the visibility that suppliers need to participate in co-development. Some collaborative innovation projects are even designed to deliver breakthroughs three to ten years ahead of implementation.
Creating Meaning and Purpose Across the Ecosystem
A procurement framework that delivers only financial results is incomplete. Supply chain side competitive advantages are built on shared purpose.
For Procurement Professionals
The Nexans Living Voices survey results are striking. Eighty-one percent felt encouraged to find better ways of doing things. These are not trivial differentials. They reflect a function in which people understand how their daily decisions connect to outcomes they believe including energy transition, environmental progress, and the development of world-class industrial partnerships.
Many events and initiative reinforce this sense of professional identity and collective purpose. The annual Purchasing Week is one illustration highlighting Purchasing stakes and providing all stakeholders the opportunity to attend to daily sessions so to foster cross-functional collaboration.
For Suppliers
For suppliers, E3 creates a framework of mutual commitment and shared ambition. The joint roadmaps, co-development projects, as well as co-investment in circular economy initiatives transform the buyer-supplier relationship into partnerships. The E3 scoring system discussed in detail below provides suppliers with a clear development pathway and an external validation of their progress.
The annual Nexans Suppliers Day provides structured, high-value forums for knowledge exchange, ideation, and co-creation. The Book of Solutions, a repository of successful initiatives designed to be replicated across business units, means that supplier innovations do not remain isolated experiments but become scalable solutions that deepen the partnership and broaden its impact.
For Wider Stakeholders
For investors, regulators, clients, and communities, E3 demonstrates that Nexans’ economic performance is not achieved at the expense of environmental or social responsibility. Nexans also publishes a CSR Supplier Portfolio net risk that reflects progress at all levels, from Group to Region, Category to Supplier. The framework’s integration of Science-Based Targets, EcoVadis assessments, Responsible Minerals Initiative compliance, REACH chemical regulations, and on-site auditing supports that credible, auditable account of supply chain sustainability. The Double Materiality Matrix helps the full scope of Nexans’ environmental and social impacts from water management and biodiversity to worker safety and circular economy be addressed in a systematic rather than selectively reported way.
Integration in Action: The Circular Economy Example
The greatest test of any integrated framework is whether its dimensions reinforce one another in practice — or whether they remain siloed objectives that compete for resources and attention. The Nexans circular economy programme provides a compelling demonstration of true integration across all three E3 pillars.
The Circular Economy as an E3 Convergence Point
Consider Nexans’ goal of achieving 25 percent recycled content across its products by 2028knowing that it already quadrupled its recycled content in the last 3 years. This objective is simultaneously touching on Economic, Environmental, and Engagement performance.
- Economically, recycled materials help securing Nexans long-term capacity (example with virgin copper for which 18% of market demand will be unmet in 2030), mitigating raw material cost exposure, decreasing dependence on volatile primary commodity markets, and improving margin through the development of premium decarbonised products. The first cable, developed and produced entirely from recycled materials in Brazil exemplifies how circular economy investment can translate into commercial differentiation and competitive advantage.
- Environmentally, circular sourcing directly addresses Nexans’ Scope 3 emissions commitments under the Science-Based Targets initiative. Relevant illustrations are not only covering its direct material scope, the increased use of recycled copper is fof instance leading to 37% lower carbon footprint than virgin but also its logistics scope recycling of wooden drums with closed-loops that can rise up to 90% in some countries The traceability systems developed for recycled materials is is not only credible but also auditable. The Copper Mark certification framework aligns key suppliers with industry best practice.
- In terms of Engagement, achieving cable-to-cable recycling loops rather than mere downcycling requires the orchestration of an entire ecosystem of partners. Nexans has mapped its complete supply ecosystem to identify partners capable of filling competence gaps. In one case, a two-year collaboration with a supplier originally specialised in virgin plastic production evolved into the co-development of recycled PVC sourced from home-based cancer dialysis waste materials turning a medical by-product into a valuable industrial input. This could only have been achieved through the long-term trust and co-investment logic that E3 formalises.
The circular economy example is particularly instructive because it exposes the impossibility of separating the three E3 dimensions from one another. Circular targets can only be achieved if suppliers are willing to invest which requires the trust built through long-term Engagement. Those investments only make commercial sense if the Economic case is clear which requires sound pricing mechanisms and long-term agreements. Finally, the Environmental credentials are only credible if supported by the traceability, certification, and governance structures that procurement governs. Remove any one of the three pillars and the initiative collapses.
The E3 Scoring System: A Benchmark that Motivates Progress
The E3 framework is given operational teeth through a structured scoring system that evaluates supplier performance across all three dimensions and communicates results transparently in annual one-to-one sessions. This scoring mechanism is central to what makes E3 a genuine benchmark as well as an aspiration.
How the Scoring System Works
All preferred and strategic suppliers, a group of 350 organisations representing the backbone of Nexans’ supply ecosystem are evaluated using the E3 model. Scores are presented and discussed during structured one-to-one meetings, conducted according to a standardised format that facilitates objective dialogue. As of 2025, twenty suppliers have achieved the demanding status of full E3, a milestone that requires demonstrated, measurable performance across all three dimensions simultaneously.
Why the Scoring System is Motivationally Effective
Several features make the E3 scoring system effective as a motivational benchmark. First, it is transparent and co-constructed: suppliers receive clearfeedback on their scores, understand the expectations associated with each level, and engage in dialogue about their improvement roadmap. This is fundamentally different from procurement audit models where assessors evaluate suppliers against criteria that are one-sided.
Second, the scoring system is anchored in the relationship logic of E3 rather than being a purely policing mechanism. The goal is not to penalise underperformance but to create conditions for joint improvement. Senior sponsors, most of them at Executive Committee level, are assigned to each strategic supplier, a governance logic that signals the seriousness of Nexans’ commitment and creates executive-level accountability on both sides.
Third, the award of E3 status carries genuine commercial significance. E3-certified suppliers are recognised through the annual Supplier Awards programme, gain access to deeper co-innovation opportunities, and to mutual preferential consideration. This creates a positive incentive structure in which suppliers progress not because they value the benefits of achievement.
Fourth, the scoring system operates within a rich ecosystem of support mechanisms. Nexans Suppliers Day sessions, innovation and decarbonisation workshops which provide suppliers with the practical guidance they need to improve their scores. Nexans does not set benchmarks and then leave suppliers to reach them alone; it invests in their development as a condition of the partnership.
Lessons for Procurement Practitioners
The Nexans E3 framework is not an off-the-shelf solution that can be transplanted unchanged into another organisation. It is the product of a six-year strategic transformation, built on strong data foundations, an engaged and skilled team, executive sponsorship, and a developed culture of long-term collaboration. Nevertheless, it offers a set of lessons that any procurement practitioner can apply, regardless of industry or scale in order to address both long and short-term stakes in a permacris world.
- Integrate your performance dimensions. The most persistent weakness in procurement scorecards is the tendency to treat cost, sustainability, and relationship quality as separate tracks with separate owners. E3 demonstrates that integration reflected in shared KPIs, joint roadmaps, and cross-dimensional scoring is both achievable and commercially superior.
- Invest in long-term visibility. Procurement organisations that provide suppliers with multi-year visibility on volume, specification, and innovation priorities gain preferential access to talent, capacity, and ideas. Short-term sourcing logic is self-defeating at scale.
- Design your scoring system to motivate, not to audit. Supplier assessment is most valuable when it creates a clear development pathway, transparent dialogue, and genuine incentives for progress.
- Create meaning for your people. Purpose-driven frameworks attract and retain better talent, which in turn delivers better commercial results.
- Think in ecosystems, not transactions. The most ambitious sustainability and innovation goals such as cable-to-cable recycling loops, next-generation decarbonised products, supply chain resilience require the orchestration of networks of partners rather than the management of individual contracts. Procurement that can map, develop, and coordinate such ecosystems holds a qualitatively different kind of competitive advantage.
About This Article
This article is based on the EIPM Peter Kraljic Award 2025 assessment of Nexans’ Purchasing organisation, conducted by the European Institute of Purchasing Management (EIPM). The EIPM Peter Kraljic Award is one of Europe’s most prestigious recognitions for procurement excellence. The assessment draws on interviews, performance data, and benchmarking against best-in-class procurement standards across multiple dimensions.
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