Sustainability KPIs Trending Upward

Outside of certain industries such as high tech and retail, procurement organizations haven’t universally defined and adopted sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs), according to research by EcoVadis and A.T. Kearney.

Spend Matter reports on the study and says it also finds companies in supplier management are more concerned with “results-driven” KPIs (for example, using results of supplier assessments in general activities) than “process-oriented” ones (such as percentage of suppliers evaluated/audited). This suggests that organizations may not be equipped to hold themselves to a specific measurement standard, the post says.

The report finds KPI metrics are on the upswing, however. In 2009, 24 percent of respondents said they did not use formal sustainability KPIs. By 2013, this number was down to 11 percent.

In an efforts to make it easier for companies in the supply chains of large purchasing corporations to report their carbon and climate change information, EcoVadis and the Carbon Disclosure Project formed a partnership in 2012. The partnership allows responding companies to minimize their reporting by automatically transferring the information in their CDP response to EcoVadis’ system.

Earlier this year EcoVadis and BSR’s Clean Cargo Working Group (CCWG) teamed up to standardize environmental reporting requests for the sea freight supply chain.