Business Leaders consider themselves 'Beginners' at Sustainability.

DNV GL, a quality and risk management organization, conducted an international survey of 1400 business leaders to learn more about how they manage supply chain sustainability.

Most of these companies who were surveyed are seen as industry leaders. Therefore, sustainability has become an important element of their supply chain management strategies in order to gain customer trust, and ultimately market share.

To clarify, the grouping of these 1400 organizations are amongst the top-tier of supply chain sustainability-focused companies. When it comes to supply chain sustainability, “they are more active than average companies and apply more structured approaches” (mmh.com 2018).

Simply, by implementing sustainability into their supply chain strategies, these companies have seen a 65% improvement in brand reputation, a 58% increase in meeting their customers' needs, and have increased their market shares by 32%.

These results are a positive display of the power of profitability in line with people and planet.

But, even still, these industry leaders in supply chain sustainability consider themselves beginners. Elements of sustainability maturity were questioned in DNV’s survey, and 50% of respondents ranked themselves as 'beginners' within their organizational-approach.

Digging deeper into the results from DNV’s surveying, respondent’s feelings of novice sustainability strategy is clarified. Though these organizations are amongst the top performers in supply chain sustainability, the majority is still facing barriers in implementation of sustainability goals, management and auditing beyond their first tier suppliers.

While 81% of respondents had taken sustainable action within the supply chains of their tier 1 suppliers, only 7% of respondents had reached out to their entire value chain of suppliers with audits, actions, RFI (requests for information) and/or goals (mmh.com 2018).

As the consumer concern for supply chain sustainability continues to grow, so does the pressure on big business to act responsibly within their supply chain management strategies. An apparent starting point is the management of supplier relationships: increasing information gathering, impacting supplier quality & performance, and following up on sustainable goals with regular audits.

This kind of holistic approach will take time, education, shift-in-strategy, and technology, in most organizations. Especially those companies planning to reach out to their entire value chain of suppliers. 

FIND THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS ARTICLE HERE