Value chain assessments are a crucial tool for businesses committed to sustainability. A value chain consists of all the steps involved in bringing your product or service to life, from raw materials to customer use. It encompasses your suppliers, your own operations, and even how customers dispose of your product.
This entire chain significantly impacts your environmental and social footprint. While you have direct control over your own operations, influencing practices upstream (suppliers) and downstream (customers) can be challenging to measure and control. And traditional value chain assessments can be cumbersome and time-consuming, often relying on manual data collection through emails and spreadsheets. This is where streamlining your value chain assessments with value chain software comes in – especially where Scope 3 GHG emissions are concerned.
The value chain: a double-edged sword for business risk and environmental impact
Value chains hold immense power in shaping a company’s performance across Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors. From an environmental standpoint, the resource extraction, production processes, and transportation choices throughout the chain all contribute to a company’s carbon footprint and waste generation.
Social impacts also reside within the chain, including labour practices at supplier facilities and potential human rights considerations. Furthermore, a company’s governance is reflected in its transparency regarding these issues and its ability to influence sustainable practices throughout the chain.
Managing risk across a complex value chain requires proactive engagement with suppliers, promoting ethical sourcing, and implementing responsible waste management practices. By taking ownership of their extended footprint, companies can mitigate ESG risks, enhance brand reputation, and contribute to a more sustainable future.
One of the most significant ESG impacts within a value chain comes from Scope 3 GHG emissions, which encompass the indirect greenhouse gas emissions that stem from an organisation’s activities, but occur outside its direct control. These emissions arise throughout the entire value chain, including those associated with suppliers, customers, transportation, and waste management.
While Scope 3 emissions often make up the largest part of a company’s total emissions footprint, measuring and reporting them accurately often proves a significant challenge. This stems from limited transparency within the supply chain, making it hard to track and quantify these indirect emissions.
This issue can be solved by using the Value Chain Assessments & Surveys module within Ikano Insight’s IBM Envizi powered platform, which provides an automated way of capturing all types of data in this context.
5 ways value chain assessments will help your business
1. Increased efficiency and reduced costs
Automated assessments eliminate the need for manual data collection and consolidation. Imagine the time and resources saved by having suppliers directly input ESG data through a user-friendly online portal. ESG Optimiser from Ikano insight offers exactly that – a digital platform that simplifies the process by providing a secure interface for collecting and storing ESG data – with its dedicated value chain assessments module.
2. Improved data accuracy and quality
Manual data entry through emails and spreadsheets is prone to errors. Automating this eliminates the human element, ensuring data accuracy and consistency. The IBM Envizi platform allows stakeholders to input both qualitative and quantitative data against customised survey templates, further enhancing data quality and facilitating analysis.
3. Enhanced communication and collaboration
Automated, high-quality assessments foster better communication and collaboration throughout your value chain. The Value Chain Assessments portal allows stakeholders to ask questions and provide comments directly within the platform. This facilitates a transparent and efficient flow of information, allowing you to address any concerns or clarifications promptly.
4. Deeper insights and informed decision-making
By automating your assessments and transforming data collection, you gain access to a centralised repository of ESG data across your entire value chain. This comprehensive dataset allows you to identify areas of high environmental impact or social risk within your supply network. With this knowledge, you can make informed decisions to prioritise improvements and develop a more sustainable ESG strategy.
5. Reduced risk and improved compliance
Maintaining a single system of record for all your ESG data, eliminates the risk of data loss associated with scattered spreadsheets and emails, and additionally provides an auditable record for all framework and compliance submissions. For a value chain context, the IBM Envizi platform allows suppliers to upload supporting documents for verification and subsequent auditing, further strengthening your compliance position and ensuring adherence to all reporting requirements.
Struggling to analyse and share your ESG data effectively?
Harnessing and communicating ESG data from multiple sources in your value chain can be complex, and consolidating data in an easily auditable manner is a highly technical challenge.
With our IBM Envizi powered ESG Optimiser solution, all of this is done on one platform. You’ll have a single data set to refer to and the ability to automatically report to internal and external stakeholders, ensuring compliance and empowering decision making and action towards improved performance.
Introducing the ESG Optimiser module: Value chain assessments & surveys
This ESG Optimiser module is a fully integrated part of the IBM Envizi platform, offered by Ikano Insight, designed to automate your value chain assessments for all crucial ESG data types, and is useful for Scope 3 GHG emissions. This powerful tool offers several key features:
- Stakeholder commenting: Facilitate communication within your value chain by enabling stakeholders to ask questions and provide comments directly within the portal.
- Customisable scoring system: Develop a unique scoring system to assess and benchmark the ESG performance of your suppliers based on their survey responses.
- File uploads and supporting documents: Allow suppliers to attach supporting documentation, such as reports or policies, for each survey question, providing additional context and enhancing data verification.
By streamlining your value chain assessments, you gain significant advantages in terms of efficiency, data accuracy, and collaboration. Ikano Insight’s ESG Optimiser module provides the perfect platform to achieve this and empowers you to make a positive impact on your environmental and social footprint. Book your demo today!
