Improvement of EcoVadis assessment from bronze to gold
Customer: Present Perfect GmbH
Category: Marketing
Date: October 2018
Present Perfect GmbH (hereinafter: Present Perfect) has focused on high-quality promotional products and trade marketing since its foundation in the late 1990s. As an owner-managed company with around 35 permanent employees, Present Perfect is aware of its social and ecological responsibility. Requested by a customer, Present Perfect was asked to participate in an EcoVadis rating.
EcoVadis is a sustainability assessment platform for global supply chains. More than 40,000 companies use the platform to create supply chain visibility and build trust between business partners. Purchasers of large companies ask their suppliers for an evaluation by EcoVadis regarding the performance of their supply chains, using various CSR indicators. The suppliers answer a questionnaire and substantiate their answers with the help of, for example, procedural instructions and policies. The responses are evaluated by EcoVadis experts and then made available to the requesting company in the form of a scorecard.
„The cooperation with the DFGE has helped us to structure our sustainability management and to lay the foundation for our future CSR engagement.“
Challenge
The core challenge for Present Perfect was to formalize existing sustainability activities and embed them in a structured sustainability management system. Similar to other smaller service companies, Present Perfect considers common CSR activities as a matter of course (e. g. the prohibition of child and forced labour or the possibility to use a whistle-blower mechanism), but not as such in a policy or process description. Although Present Perfect has already implemented a wide range of social and environmental activities – both within the company and in relation to its suppliers – there has been no reporting on its CSR performance so far.
As a result, the previous EcoVadis rating was ‘only’ 43 points, which does not reflect the actual sustainability performance of Present Perfect. With the goal of achieving at least silver status (45-61 points) at the next evaluation, Present Perfect commissioned DFGE to help structuring its sustainability management system. As an official EcoVadis partner, DFGE has many years of experience in providing its customers and their suppliers an optimal support in participating in EcoVadis.
Solution
With EcoVadis Complete to a structured sustainability management
The aim of the joint project was to collect the necessary evidence and to formalize the sustainability management of Present Perfect. This should provide a starting point for a structured CSR management.
After analysing the existing documents, not only missing evidence for existing sustainability activities was identified, but also missing formalized corporate processes. Together with the DFGE, Present Perfect implemented necessary improvement and structuring measures, which revealed more accurate evidence as part of the EcoVadis assessment.
All activities were also linked with a specific Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and summarized in a KPI dashboard for regular review. It also enabled a more efficient response to the questionnaire and an easier uploading of the required evidence to the EcoVadis platform. At the end of the project, Present Perfect received a summary of all suggestions that could be used for their future CSR management.
Result
Improvement within all four EcoVadis categories
As part of the joint project, the following improvement measures could be implemented:
- Membership of the UN Global Compact
- Key figure calculation and summary
- Proof of further measures with appropriate documentation: e. g. Environmental and Procurement Directives, Whistleblowing Procedures, Employee Training on Environmental Issues, Occupational Health and Safety, Anti-Corruption, Supplier Evaluation Sheet, Supplier Code of Conduct, etc.
The formalization and structuring of existing activities as well as the introduction of new processes resulted in a significantly improved EcoVadis rating. Present Perfect has achieved a score of 70/100 in the most recent evaluation and is now holding the EcoVadis Gold status.
‘The outstanding score of Present Perfect shows that even smaller companies can implement a structured sustainability management system with relatively little effort’, says Dr.-Ing. Thomas Fleissner, Founder and CEO of DFGE. ‘We congratulate Present Perfect on achieving the Gold status and are looking forward to further cooperation.’
