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Julia Köster joined 91��ɫ��Ƶ as a Sustainability Expert in June 2024 and enriches the team with her extensive experience in the field of sustainability.

She brings valuable experience as a sustainability manager in the food industry and knows the challenges of sustainability reporting. Before joining 91��ɫ��Ƶ, she worked on external sustainability inquiries such as the EcoVadis questionnaire. This not only helps her to respond precisely to the needs of our clients, but also to support them in improving their ratings.

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Why is an EcoVadis assessment important for companies?

Many companies initially regard the EcoVadis questionnaire as a purely bureaucratic challenge. There is no doubt that EcoVadis involves considerable effort. Nevertheless, a change of perspective can help to recognize the added value of this process.

EcoVadis offers valuable guidance, particularly for companies that are undergoing an EcoVadis assessment for the first time and have not yet established a strategically documented sustainability management system. This is because the assessment can serve as a basis for setting up a structured sustainability management system. In the companies where I have carried out an initial assessment myself, we have used EcoVadis to create essential foundations within the company. This involved, for example, drawing up relevant guidelines, deriving initial measures and finally transferring these into structured sustainability reporting.

In addition, the EcoVadis assessment can help those responsible for sustainability to drive forward important issues in their company. The aim of achieving a better medal and thus demonstrating your own sustainability efforts to relevant stakeholders — especially customers — can be used to implement additional measures within the company, make different areas of the company more accountable and drive sustainability issues forward in a more targeted manner.

I would therefore like to encourage companies to see sustainability ratings such as EcoVadis as an opportunity — both to implement and optimize internal processes and to communicate progress to the outside world in a transparent and understandable way.

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How can an EcoVadis assessment support companies in times of regulatory uncertainty?

Regulatory uncertainties, such as those currently created by the Omnibus Proposal, present companies with the challenge of flexibly adapting their sustainability measures. An EcoVadis assessment can help to structure existing processes, utilize synergies between different reporting obligations, and ensure transparency towards stakeholders.

Many companies have already started ESRS reporting. If they no longer fall within the scope of the CSRD, they can transfer their previous sustainability efforts to alternative standards such as VSME or GRI - both are accepted by EcoVadis as recognized reporting standards.

It is important to understand that a standardized sustainability report with materiality analysis directly contributes to a better EcoVadis rating. This allows companies to use the content they have already developed to achieve higher scores in the “Reporting” category.

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What opportunities are there to improve your EcoVadis rating?

There are a few things you can do to optimize your EcoVadis rating:

1. Understanding Your Scorecard 

Before companies take measures to improve their rating, they should carefully analyze their own EcoVadis scorecard. EcoVadis itself offers documents and training courses for this purpose, for example. However, these are often very general. If you want to go deeper, you can take advantage of professional advice, which we offer at 91��ɫ��Ƶ.��

It is crucial to understand the key sustainability issues defined by EcoVadis for your own industry. At the same time, it is important to analyze which topics are particularly high on the individual scorecard and where the lowest scores occur. Areas in need of optimization can then be derived from this.

2. Analyze Rejected Documents

A further step is to review the rejected documents. Which documents were not accepted for certain answer options - and why? How can these be improved in order to be recognized in the future?

It is worth taking a close look here and making targeted optimizations. Sometimes it is supposedly minor details, such as the absence of a company logo or a missing date, that can lead to rejection by EcoVadis.

‍3. Understand Scoring Principles And Point Losses

Why were certain answers not accepted in full? Why, for example, was only a score of 50 points achieved instead of 75? 

Often it is specific requirements that were not sufficiently fulfilled. Here are some examples that I frequently encounter in my work with clients:

• Guidelines: there is a lack of quantitative targets or clearly defined responsibilities.
• Measures: What matters here is not the quantity of measures, but that they are strategically distributed in a meaningful way. For a higher score, it is often not enough to demonstrate various measures in just one area. It is crucial that there is at least one relevant measure in each strategically relevant topic area. For example, in the “LAB” area: one measure for Health & Safety and one for Career Management are more valuable than five measures for Health & Safety alone. Those who cover all relevant subject areas will advance more effectively to the next point level.
• Reporting: The use of recognized reporting standards such as GRI or ESRS can have a positive effect on the scoring.

Important to note: The scoring principles can vary depending on the topic. A targeted examination of these principles is essential in order to achieve the best possible result with EcoVadis.

4. Carry Out A Scorecard Analysis And Draw Up An Action Plan

Companies should not make short-term, ill-considered adjustments just before the EcoVadis reassessment, but should draw up a structured plan at an early stage. This forward-looking approach has proven its worth both in my previous role as sustainability manager and in advising our clients at 91��ɫ��Ƶ. We create a comprehensive scorecard analysis for our clients, which is discussed with the company. This results in a concrete roadmap to the next assessment, which specifically addresses the individual potential for improvement.

Interested in an initial scorecard analysis? Book an appointment with us!

5. Ensure Continuous Improvement

After the assessment is before the assessment! EcoVadis compares companies for the medal award with all other assessed companies from the last 12 months - this means that the requirements are constantly evolving. Measures should be continuously improved, and new processes implemented at an early stage. This is the only way to ensure that the rating achieved is maintained or even improved in the next assessment.

With a structured analysis, targeted measures and forward-looking planning, companies can sustainably improve their EcoVadis rating, achieve a better ranking and, in the best case, secure a higher medal.

On average, we can help customers to achieve 8 to 11 additional points in their EcoVadis rating. And in half the time.

Together with us, the Tricor Group was able to improve its medal from Silver to an EcoVadis Gold medal within a few weeks.

“With 91��ɫ��Ƶ, we have significantly improved the efficiency and transparency of our EcoVadis reporting and gained a competitive advantage.”

Markus Wegele
Head of Sustainability 
Tricor Gruppe

Read the entire Tricor customer story here.��

I am excited to see how we can use AI-based ESG software to help customers master EcoVadis even faster and more efficiently in the future.