I spent some time reviewing the results of the new
Spend Matters
CO2 SolutionMap benchmarking study that investigates how various solution/service providers stack up in supporting Carbon Management (with an emphasis on measurement). The formal release is here and a write-up on our site here -- and all SolutionMap results get aggregated into our TechMatch selection workbench.??
I may be somewhat biased, but it’s a tremendous piece of work. The study is actually related to broader GHG rather than just CO2, but with an eye towards Scope 3 emissions and a supply chain focus (including a few S2P suite providers and supplier management specialists). Here’s what I learned and can share without ‘spoiling the soup’…
- Value chains throw off more than cash/spend, including information (the linchpin of the ‘digital twin’ concept)...and carbon…potentially LOTS of it. Seeing the total GHG footprint, however, takes a lot of work, especially as you look further into your supply tiers, and if you want detailed granularity. In fact, this is very similar to supply-chain risk modeling that requires n-tier supply network analysis (and this is why some supply chain organizations have used their supply network analysis tools to analyze GHG exhaust rather than just ‘cost exhaust’ in their logistics flows)
- The problem statement of “How do I measure and reduce my Scope 3 GHG emissions?” or the subset problem of measuring Scope 3 Carbon emissions, seems very simple and straightforward, but there’s still a lot of confusion and emerging regulations in play
- The broader business context and desired outcomes is also very company-specific. This last issue is why we developed multiple personas to align to these diverse use cases and answer questions such as:
- What if I just want a basic measurement that’s cheap, easy, and good enough for certain customer/regulatory requirements? I just need the “answer” - not the tool (or maybe also integrate the insights into my existing tools)?
- What if I want to go deeper into the granular drivers? And what about if I want to take ownership of the methodology and analytics (and integrate it into my design/sourcing and supplier management processes)?
- How can I get expert guidance and services to help me deliver immediate value or follow-on opportunities to pursue, and also align all the critical enterprise stakeholders?
- These personas also naturally help segment the market along various domains: Buy-side tech providers (S2P, SXM, supply analytics), ESG providers (with varying levels of tech), and even consultancies and other service providers. They all have “option value” and pros/cons to consider
- The market segmentation and the comparative benchmark graphics in the report utilizes straightforward spider charts on more than a dozen requirement areas, and I especially love how the team oriented this analytics-centric capability benchmark using a DMAIC framework (actually it’s a DMAICE framework with E focused on Enablers (and support). Here is a graphic on DMAIC more broadly focused on supply analytics (that I now need to update!), but I’ll leave it to the team to share details on how DMAIC was used in a GHG emissions reduction context
- We also took an “agile” iterative approach to evaluate a large swath of providers, but many more providers now want to get into the 2023 release and we’ve been doing a LOT of discussions with the ecosystem of players on their strategies and partnership options. For 2023, we're targeting firms like
Circulor
,
Certa.ai
,
Greenstone
,
VERSO Supply Chain
,
Watershed
, etc. If there are others worthy of consideration, please let us know in the comments section!
Obviously GHG fits into a broader ESG discussion beyond the scope of this newsletter, but let me just wrap up by saying that procurement has an indispensable role to support the “triple bottom line” value proposition here (e.g., demand management, revenue uplift support, supplier collaboration/innovation, energy management / renewables programs, and GRC support that can save some money too).
Please look out for more ongoing coverage of this very exciting addition to our ongoing SolutionMap benchmarking analyses. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us (or just sign up for our weekly newsletter on our homepage), and I’d like to give special kudos to
Bertrand Maltaverne
and
Nick Heinzmann
who are the research leaders of this impressive effort. It's also great to see a digital ecosystem rise up so quickly to help us all protect our physical ecosystems as supply chain ecosystems are developed.
