DFGE is the first German-speaking consulting partner of EcoVadis, and has just consolidated its offer to support EcoVadis respondents.
Greifenberg/Munich, 6th May 2016 – DFGE – Institute for Energy, Ecology and Economy – was founded in 1999 as a spin-off of the Technical University of Munich and offers complete consulting, software and audit solutions in the field of sustainability. DFGE partners with internationally-recognized reporting frameworks to better support companies in their sustainability management and reporting, including EcoVadis. DFGE has put together dedicated services to ease the EcoVadis participation for companies.
1 – An offer covering the EcoVadis process
DFGE’s offer is perfectly aligned with the EcoVadis process. EcoVadis offers a collaborative platform that links buyers and suppliers from different companies. Buyers ask their suppliers to be rated on their sustainability performance by EcoVadis experts. Suppliers first fill in a questionnaire to which they attach supporting documents. Then, EcoVadis analysts complete a documentary audit on Labor Practices & Human Rights, Environment, Fair Business Practices and Sustainable procurement, following a dedicated methodology. The results are published on the collaborative platform in the form of a scorecard, featuring a rating (from 0 to 100) overall and on each of the four themes, as well as feedback on the strengths of the company’s sustainability management system, and the improvement areas. On this basis, supplier companies can implement improvement plans.
DFGE’s offer includes support to identify the right documentation to answer the questionnaire through various formats (training, response check, etc.) DFGE also helps companies set up improvement plans to drive their CSR performance and benefit from a stronger and more efficient sustainability management system, so that they can obtain the best CSR score that their organization merits.
2 – The DFGE Starter Package
The DFGE starter offer consists of a Response Check in accordance with EcoVadis methodology. DFGE will review the pre-filled questionnaire of companies to identify missing references, advise on document format, indicate when questions should be answered to activate others, specify if the answers are not clear.
This will enable companies to make sure they are in line with the EcoVadis requirements, especially regarding documentation. Indeed, documents are key to prove that the declarations are valid. The response check is part of services that were trained and approved by EcoVadis.
“We have noticed that suppliers required more support. Besides our own help center and supplier engagement team, we are happy that our trusted partners can provide response checks: They will result in improved questionnaires, giving the suppliers the opportunity to focus on their sustainability strategy and performance” states David McClintock, Marketing Director at EcoVadis.
3 – The DFGE Complete Package
With the DFGE Complete offer, companies will benefit from an answered questionnaire and a CSR improvement strategy. DFGE, trained and experienced in EcoVadis requirements, will help identify the documents that can be provided, will collect them and attach them in the right places in the questionnaire. Therefore, the answers of companies will automatically be improved.
In a second step, DFGE will prioritize the most relevant improvement actions on the basis of its knowledge of the company, and focusing on the EcoVadis scoring methodology.
Companies can then focus on the actual implementation of such actions, which drives their sustainability performance.
“We built our EcoVadis offer of course according to their process, but also according to our Sustainabililty Intelligence approach. Our purpose is to reuse existing documents for several standards and requests, and to link them together, so that companies can focus on their sustainability management while we take care of the reporting” explains. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Fleissner, founder of DFGE.
4 – DFGE Services
DFGE offers free EcoVadis webinars on a regular basis, during which the general principles of EcoVadis are presented and explained. One is dedicated for beginners to give tips on how to improve the quality of answers to the questionnaire; the other aims at improving their sustainability performance by leveraging the reporting to other standards. If organizations need to know more and learn how to fully master Ecovadis principles or to have dedicated feedback on their sector for instance, DFGE also offers onsite training sessions.
Finally, the EcoVadis assessment covers the whole sustainability management system of the company. DFGE can easily tackle dedicated improvement actions like assessing a carbon footprint, participating to CDP or UNGC, consolidating a policy set, setting up dashboards for KPIs and documents.
Detailed descriptions of the EcoVadis support offerings can be found online at www.dfge.de and www.ecovadis.com
About EcoVadis
EcoVadis is the first collaborative platform providing sustainability ratings and performance improvement tools for global supply chains. EcoVadis’ easy-to-use CSR scorecards help companies to monitor suppliers’ environmental, business ethics, and social practices across 150 purchasing categories and 110 countries. Over 130 industry leaders such as Deutsche Telekom, Henkel, Merck, DB, Knorr-Bremse, Deutsche Post-DHL, Nestle, Air France-KLM, Renault-Nissan, ING Bank, Schneider Electric, Heineken, Johnson & Johnson, and Nokia use EcoVadis to reduce risk, drive innovation and foster transparency and trust among over 25,000 trading partners. More at http://www.ecovadis.com
About DFGE
DFGE – institute for energy, ecology and economy – was founded in 1999 as spin-off of the Technical University of Munich and offers complete consulting, software and audit solutions in the field of CSR. Our offer Sustainability Intelligence features management and reporting solutions related to CSR and sustainability topics (among them being greenhouse gas emissions), and refers to international norms in this field. Our clients comprise international companies (DAX and fortune 500), SMEs, governmental organizations or territorial authorities. For more information, contact us: or visit our website www.dfge.de
The DFGE disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy or completeness of the given information. All opinions and estimates included in this report constitute DFGE’s judgment as of the date of this report and are subject to change without notice. DFGE shall have no liability for errors, omissions, or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof.
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Contact us for further information
DFGE – Institut für Energie, Ökologie und Ökonomie
Kreitstr. 5
86926 Greifenberg
Telefon +49.8192.99733-20
