50
SUPPLIER DIVERSITY:
SEMPRA ENERGY’S
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
No. 19 Top 50 Companies for Diversity
No. 6 Top 10 Companies for Asian Americans
No. 1 Top 10 Companies for Supplier Diversity
Business Type: Energy
Corporate Headquarters: San Diego, Calif.
Number of U.S. Employees: 13,581
Annual Revenues: $11.7 billion
What does it take to earn the No. 1 spot on the
DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Supplier
Diversity list? Clearly, it means having senior management committed to the importance of supplier diversity be an integral part of business strategy. To understand
Sempra’s deep commitment to supplier diversity, consider
Donald E. Felsinger
Chairman and CEO
Shawn Farrar
Director of Corporate
Diversity Affairs
that the company has a separate
department dedicated to supplier
diversity, requires second-tier supplier diversity of all its vendors, and
proudly communicates supplier-diversity initiatives to all employees.
“Supplier diversity is one of the
core values of our company, and as
such, the mission is driven from the
president of our company down to
the manager level,” says Frank
Urtasun, director of diverse business enterprises. “This makes a big
difference in the success of a company when the expectations are set
from the executive level through to
all the vice presidents and directors
and managers. It gets everybody
rolling in the same direction.”
Sempra requires all first-tier vendors to make sure that at least 25
percent of their business is with
diverse suppliers. More than 21 percent of its procurement budget goes
to Tier I diverse suppliers, 16. 5 percent to minority-owned vendors and
5 percent to women-owned vendors.
Two percent of its procurement
budget now goes to Tier II diverse
suppliers, 1 percent to minority-owned vendors and 1 percent to
women-owned vendors, but those
percentages are expected to rise.
“Do we have people that say they
can’t do that? Yes. Do we accept it?
No,” says Urtasun. He recalled a former second-tier supplier that was
Native American–owned—Cook
Inlet Energy Supply—which grew
to become a $100-million company.
“We took them from a company with a one-page business plan
and helped them grow,” says
Urtasun, noting the company was
sold last year. “The bad news is we
lost them as [disadvantaged business enterprise]. The good news is
they were so appreciative of what
we did to help them that they
started to incubate some DBEs of
their own. And there are DBEs
that we are already working with
on the ground level.”
