What are the key success factors to ensure the program success?

To maximize the impact of your EcoVadis assessment program, it is important to consider the following key success factors:

- Communication
It is essential to tell your trading partners why this assessment is important for both you and them and how you will integrate the results in your procurement decisions.
All businesses have inherent sustainability risks and the EcoVadis Rating provides the requesting organization with a trusted assessment of its business partners, while giving the rated companies the opportunity to report on sustainability on a continuous basis and reuse the assessment results responding to multiple requests.

- Processes
It is important that your company has clear and transparent rules for selecting the trading partners to be rated and integrates the EcoVadis Rating into procurement processes.

While setting up a program for your trading partners' sustainability assessment, ask yourself how to best align it with your organizational structure and available resources, for instance:
- What approach to companies onboarding is most in line with your procurement structure (e.g. by procurement categories, locations, divisions, etc.)?
- What frequency and approximate number of companies in an assessment campaign will be realistic for you to handle (e.g. 50 per month or 200 per quarter)?
- What key functions need to be involved (lead buyers, internal compliance, etc.)?
- Whom internally can you identify as potential "early adopters" ensuring the program's success?
- Have you thought of incentives and objectives to ensure a high level of engagement of the active contributors of your program?

It is also important to set realistic sustainability performance targets for your trading partners. For instance, it could be to achieve the sustainability performance level of "Moderate" or work on a corrective action plan and engage in a process of continuous improvement. Clear targets will lead to a successful integration of the EcoVadis Rating into your procurement processes and decisions.

- Organization
Centralized coordination, C-level sponsorship and strong support from the procurement team are key factors to ensuring the program's success.