Achieve sustainability across the supply chain with Rosslyn's data solutions
Sustainability is critical to the future of the planet. We’re seeing the unfortunate side effect of climate change around the globe, with extreme weather causing large-scale disruption across the planet and putting strain on the supply chain.
Rosslyn works with large, multi-national organizations across almost every sector, yet one thing that unites them is their need to have visibility of sustainability throughout their supply chain.
To tackle this challenge, sustainability is required across the entire supply chain, however, there is a real risk of data overload when trying to assess and manage it.
How to assess and measure sustainability
The examples below are just a few initiatives and rankings available to organizations:
- UN 17 Sustainability development goals
- The EU Taxonomy of sustainability activities
- MSCI Ratings
- S&P Global sustainability scores
- D&B ESG Intelligence
It’s fantastic that there are so many resources and ways for organizations to assess sustainability, however, there is a real lack of consistency in how the ratings are produced, what’s assessed and what’s prioritized. There are numerous data points that can influence a sustainability score and it’s only once you dig into the detail that you can assess whether that supplier is acting in accordance with your own policies and procedures.
What Rosslyn can do to help
What’s often required is an aggregated view that combines multiple data sources, with ways to dissect and analyze the underlying data. Rosslyn provides this insight for our clients by aggregating data from a variety of sources both internal and external allowing them to make data-driven decisions.
Rosslyn believes there are three primary sources of information and a combination of all three is important to truly understand a supplier:
- Direct from the supplier e.g. onboarding questionnaires, performance reviews
- Through regular assessments of the supplier e.g. spend assessment, audits, data reviews, etc.
- Via 3rd party specialist data providers e.g. ESG ratings, financial risk reports, adverse media
How to start your sustainability journey
The journey to assess sustainability starts from the very first engagement with a supplier. Rosslyn’s Supplier Information Management (SIM) solution provides a flexible onboarding tool, which can capture a supplier’s commitment to sustainability.
Relevant policies can be uploaded and reviewed by the supplier and evidence of sustainable practices can be provided in response.
Sustainability is an ever-progressing landscape and regular reviews will be required to ensure the onboarding journey still reflects the organisation’s goals and best practices. A great example of this is the EU taxonomy of sustainability activities, linked above, which has been a work in progress for a number of years and is still at the very early stages of adoption. As this and other sustainability models mature, additional ways to measure and track sustainability will only add to the potential for data overload.
Achieve your goals with regular assessments and reviews
Rosslyn’s Supplier Performance Management (SPM) solution can be used to perform regular assessments of suppliers by tracking their performance against set KPI’s . We’re seeing more and more of these KPI’s being driven by sustainability, ensuring that suppliers are meeting and exceeding the goals set out during the onboarding process.
Easy-to-use scorecards enable organisations to rate suppliers, providing insights into where they are excelling and where more focus might be needed. Regular reviews provide trending data that can be used to ensure your supply chain is on a positive trajectory to sustainability. A one-off assessment may be required when first working with a supplier, but continual collaboration will be key to ensure the entire supply chain is adopting sustainable practices. Whilst it’s not a new topic, putting sustainability into action can still be challenging and will need continual management, setting and monitoring KPIs will enable you to do this successfully.
Use your data sources to your advantage
Rosslyn is best known for being a leader in Procurement Spend Analytics, providing visibility of where and who you’re spending money with. The first step in this journey is to get the internal data sources up and running, however, more and more clients are now looking to enrich this data with additional 3rd party specialist data. Previously, the focus may have been on financial risk or adverse media within the supply chain, and whilst these are still important, sustainability ratings are just as critical when assessing supply chain risk.
As highlighted already, there is a wide variety of sources available within the market, and there’s no reason why you can’t use multiple sources to get the best visibility possible. A single aggregated score may be useful for a quick view, but being able to slice and dice this data to get into the detail and make real data-driven decisions is important.
This data is also constantly being updated and requires ongoing monitoring. Rosslyn can help with automated refreshes, ensuring users are always leveraging the most up-to-date information for decision making.
Trust the data experts
Rosslyn are experts in providing data integration, aggregation, and visualisation solutions, and are committed to providing best-in-class solutions for our clients. We’re all on a journey to a sustainable future, and we’re looking forward to seeing how our solutions can provide visibility for better procurement decisions.
If you’d like to find out more about our solutions and how we can help with your sustainability journey, please get in contact.