What We Said About Supply Chains In 2021 That Is No Longer Controversial

(MENAFN- 3BL) As previously seen on the CSRHub blog.

By Cynthia Figge
In 2021, CSRHub CEO Cynthia Figge sat on a CPOstrategy Podcast panel with three other CEOs to talk about a decade of digital transformation in procurement. Five years on, the arguments have not aged. They have become the default view. Here are the passages that hold up best, each with its clip.

View the CPOstrategy panel image.

1. ESG is financial

Cynthia Figge (portrait )
CEO and Cofounder, CSRHub

The line that has aged best. Sustainability data used to be a standalone dataset that finance teams did not know how to use:

Watch the clip: Video (28:42) · Moment in the full conversation.

2. Dark data

Most of a supply chain is small companies that publish very little about how they perform. Cynthia called it dark data, and named the two ways to see into it:

Watch the clip: Video (14:21) · Moment in the full conversation.

That second route is what CSRHub is built on. It is also why, at 29:38, she names climate change and Scope 3 as the pressure that will force better supply-chain data. We looked at how much that data varies by source in Scope 1, 2 and 3 Carbon Measurements Show Big Variations Among Data Sources.

3. Screening before the bad event

ESG data used to be backward-looking: something bad happens, then the news ripples through the supply chain. The change the panel described is companies wanting environment, social and governance performance up front, so they can screen for risk before the event, not after it.

Watch the clip: Video (21:17) · Moment in the full conversation.

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4. Board diversity as a supplier metric

In 2021 it was surprising that a customer would scrutinise a supplier's board diversity as a key performance indicator, and that suppliers would be asked to conform to the UN Global Compact and the SDGs. Today it is a standard questionnaire item.

Watch the clip: Video (35:16) · Moment in the full conversation.

5. Another CEO, same conclusion

Lance Younger (portrait )
CEO and Founder, ProcureTech

Asked for his own closing priority, Lance Younger did not pick a technology:

Watch the clip: Video (41:18) · Moment in the full conversation.

The full conversation

The panel: Cynthia Figge (CEO and Cofounder, CSRHub), Ilya Levtov (Co-founder and CEO, Craft), Dr. Aleksandr Yampolskiy (Co-founder and CEO, SecurityScorecard) and Lance Younger (CEO and Founder, ProcureTech), hosted by Andrew Woods of B2E Media for The CPOstrategy Podcast (42 minutes, opens in a new tab). Our original write-up from 2021 is here.

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About CSRHub

CSRHub provides access to the world's largest corporate social responsibility and sustainability database, powered by expert consensus sustainability ratings, information, and tools. Clients use CSRHub's decisive data platform for global benchmarking, supply and value chain risk assessment and compliance readiness solutions. Founded in 2007, CSRHub covers 62,000 public and private companies, and provides ESG performance scores on 42,000 companies from 134 industries in 158 countries. Our Big Data platform uses algorithms to aggregate, normalize and weight ESG metrics from 1,000 sources to produce a strong consensus signal on corporate sustainability performance.

Cynthia Figge is a forerunner and thought leader in the corporate sustainability movement who co-founded EKOS International in 1996, one of the first consultancies integrating sustainability and corporate strategy. Cynthia is CEO and Cofounder of CSRHub. Cynthia has worked with major organizations including BNSF, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Dow Jones, and REI to help craft sustainability strategy integrated with business. She was an Officer of LIN Broadcasting/McCaw Cellular leading new services development, and started a new“Greenfield” mill with Weyerhaeuser. She serves as Advisor to media and technology companies, and served as President of the Board of Sustainable Seattle. Cynthia has an MBA from Harvard Business School. Cynthia is based in the Seattle area.

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