Sustainability programmes have become a common feature on corporate agendas for good reason. Yet many organisations fail to engage suppliers as part of their strategy to achieve ambitious sustainability targets. This instantly limits the potential for success.
Supplier Collaboration isn’t a ubiquitous concept in the world of corporate sustainability where companies have established full CSR departments to drive such initiatives.
However, recent data exposes how companies are failing to meet basic standards in corporate sustainability. A survey of Europe’s 50 largest companies by the Climate Disclosure Standards Board revealed 78% are still failing to adequately report environmental and climate-related risks, despite EU guidelines. That’s in 2020.
Meanwhile EcoVadis identified “sustainable procurement” as the lowest scoring theme in its 2019 Global CSR Risk and Performance Index, at just 38.2%. A score below 45% represents medium to high risk of procurement instability, reputational risk, and overall business disruption.
Of course it’s no coincidence that companies are struggling with both sustainability and supply chain engagement on the issue. McKinsey calls supply chains the “missing link for sustainability”. This is true for all industries but especially so for consumer company supply chains where:
The importance of supply chains to meeting sustainability objectives cannot be overstated; 80% of all global trade passes through supply chains according to HSBC. Sustainability isn’t simply a moral or reputational concern, it’s essential to supply chain resiliency. For example in 2014, GrainCorp of Australia suffered a 64% drop in profits due to the impact of drought on grain deliveries.
Enterprises are starting to recognise the business case for supplier-led sustainability. Unilever has invested over EUR300m into projects that protect against future disruption from water scarcity. Coca Cola has invested $5 billion into its African supply chain to secure more sustainable and reliable product ingredients.
That’s why today, we’re launching Vizibl Sustainability. A supplier collaboration platform to help you build a more sustainable supply chain and help your organisation become greener outside the supply chain.
Vizibl Sustainability does this by allowing enterprises to align, engage and deliver on ambitious sustainability programmes through more effective collaboration across the global supply chain. Think of it as supplier collaboration governance at scale. All from one platform.
We’re also integrating with our new Sustainability and ESG partner, EcoVadis, so our users can benchmark and track supplier performance on environment, labour and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement within Vizibl. It means you can qualify the right supplier collaborations, get better visibility into supply chain sustainability and ultimately deliver on your sustainability objectives.
Our professional services team have devised Rapid Deploy service to get a data instance of Vizibl Sustainability up and running in your organisation within 30 days. Our team will build a long term partnership with you to support your supplier collaboration strategy and maturity.
Find out how Vizibl can help you and your supply chain become more sustainable here.
Published October 2020.
