Vizibl has launched a new sustainability solution at its inaugural COLLABORATE Summit. Vizibl Sustainability supplements the Vizibl supplier collaboration platform and enables companies to understand better and track their performance and that of their suppliers against their sustainability goals. Vizibl also announced a new partnership with EcoVadis.
Mark Perera, founder and CEO for Vizibl commented: “Right now, society and business have been forced into a very different modus operandi. The long-term consequences of COVID-19 are not clear as the readjustment continues, yet for supplier collaboration, the pandemic has clearly demonstrated the imperative for streamlining supplier ecosystems, challenging organisations to think differently about how they collaborate and how they must change direction at a moment’s notice.
“Likewise, it has put the spotlight on sustainability. Therefore, not only must supplier strategies now support wider business goals, but organisations must also demonstrate that they – and their supplier ecosystem – consider the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) impact on their operations and society as a whole, both now and in the future.”
Perera has a point. While travel is still limited, the inability to check and monitor suppliers will continue for some time. While some travel may return, for many the cost of leveraging a global platform that validates sustainability metrics across multiple organisations makes economic sense.
This is what these announcements will assist with. It does not put suppliers at arms lengths but enables organisations to build better supplier relationships. This is founded upon independent validation that therefore allows more time to spend on achieving mutual business goals.
Vizibl Sustainability
The new solutions enable organisations to manage supplier collaboration governance at scale. It achieves this by leverages three of the components from the Vizibl platform:
- Vizibl Relationships helps organisations to align with suppliers against sustainability goals and increase collaboration to build better relationships. Organisations can set up suppliers, define sustainability objectives and tracks them using QBRs.
- Vizibl Workspace provides the means to collaborate on projects and tasks in a single location across multiple supplier engagements. Partners can communicate in real-time or host meetings using the platform.
- Vizibl Reporting allows the organisation to track and measure performance against goals. The analytics engine is also able to draw out trends in performance. It can also ingest data from third-party data to enrich reporting and insights using the Vizibl open API.
The platform enables procurement teams to define and map a strategy. They can then manage relationships and performance to help deliver on that strategy across multiple organisations simultaneously. It leverages automation to inform procurement teams and reduce the administration overhead often associated with supplier management.
Perera concludes: “Procurement is changing and Vizibl Sustainability enables our customers to reimagine their partnerships, empowering them to take a radical attitude to how they build better supplier collaborations for a complex future. This is about procurement with a purpose-led approach, moving it beyond monitoring supplier compliance to actively collaborating with suppliers on initiatives to improve environmental, social and economic impact.”
With the current pressure on procurement teams because of the volatility imposed by COVID, Vizibl is also allowing for their time constraints. It provides a Rapid Deployment implementation programme that commits to bring its product live within 30 days. Part of that includes Vizibl professional services assisting with setting up the sustainability and supplier programs based on best practices in the industry.
Bringing in EcoVadis
EcoVadis is a leading business sustainability ratings platform. It contains data on 65,000 companies and has carried out more than 100,000 assessments. It delivers a scorecard to procurement teams for suppliers across four themes using 21 sustainability criteria. The four themes are:
- Environment
- Labour and Human Rights
- Ethics
- Sustainable Procurement
The scorecard ensures that organisations can measure supplier sustainability. This helps to ensure their extended supply chains meet their sustainability goals. The integration between Vizibl sustainability and EcoVadis allows organisations to track supplier metrics including ESG, CO2 footprints, sustainability performance
Pierre-François Thaler, Co-Founder and Co-CEO for EcoVadis commented: “Sustainability and ESG performance are quickly becoming the new benchmark for comparing organisations against their competitors. Innovation and resilience, fostered by sustainability, are how organisations and their supply chains will create value in a pandemic-ready, low-carbon future. We are delighted to be partnering with Vizibl on technology to help organisations more effectively transform sustainability performance into innovation and business value.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Surviving rather than sustainability is top of mind for many organisations at the moment. However, business leaders should not ignore the trends that were occurring pre-pandemic. Advisory firm SustainAbility predicted that technology usage would increase transparency in the supply chain. This latest solution from Vizibl will help organisations achieve that once deployed.
Importantly there is also increasing legislation that is prompting business leaders to pay more attention to sustainability goals. For example, the Netherlands adopted a law in May 2019 that aims to ensure Dutch companies end child labour in their supply chains. Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum highlighted five sustainability laws that will come into force during 2020. While legislations may have slowed with the emphasis on healthcare, 2021 is likely to see more legislation come into force. Better supplier management is becoming a greater concern and one that Vizibl aims to address.
