Making informed sourcing decisions
begins with sourcing
the right information
A consumer products company set ambitious ESG goals. But did its suppliers share them?
YOU CAN’T REACH NET-ZERO WITH ZERO SUPPLIER INTELLIGENCE
The Situation
Zero carbon and zero waste are lofty goals, but the escalating climate crisis demands that kind of ambition from businesses and, increasingly, consumers demand it, too. Companies can identify science-based targets and implement sustainability initiatives within their own organizations, but they also need to consider their suppliers. Do their standards align with yours—or could they hinder your sustainability efforts?
A global consumer products company prioritized sustainability and set science-based targets within its organization, but it also worked with a vast global supplier network. Many of these suppliers were implementing their own sustainability programs, and the company wanted visibility into how these initiatives aligned with its own climate-focused goals. It needed to develop a baseline of the relative maturity of these suppliers’ programs. This could help the company avoid transactions that would make it harder to reach certain goals or even negatively impact its brand and reputation.
With thousands of suppliers to account for, reaching out to each one didn’t make sense. The company was already working with Deloitte’s Audit & Assurance team on related environmental, social, and governance (ESG) work. We presented a service intended to provide insight into its suppliers’ ESG metrics and, at the same time, provide a deeper analysis into how peers within the larger industry are approaching important environmental benchmarks.
THE SOLVE
FOCUSING ON THEIR TARGETS CAN HELP YOU HIT YOURS
The Impact
Companies can’t reach their climate-focused goals if the suppliers they work with aren’t moving in the same direction.
Our solution helps our client to make sourcing decisions informed by suppliers’ environmental impact and ESG commitments—and makes it possible to gather that intelligence quickly in an automated, scalable way. Case in point: Our client initially set out to collect this information on its own, manually, and after nearly a year was unable to reach the number of suppliers our solution accessed in just a few weeks.
We provided a look at the big picture along with individual assessment reports for each supplier analyzed. And as contracts come up for review, this information can become a topic of discussion and potentially inspire changes in practice for suppliers that want to continue doing business with the company.
The benchmark analysis can also inspire changes in practice within our client’s organization through insights into how the company’s sustainability metrics and initiatives measure up against those of its peers. This can help guide our client’s decision-making process and enable it to remain competitive within its industry while continuing on its path to net zero.