Driving Meaningful Change in Your Supply Chain: A Conversation with Bethany Jones

Decarbonising your supply chain is a pretty daunting task. But for a lot of companies, it's the most effective path to driving environmental change. Today, we called on one of our own experts  Bethany Jones, to explore how to implement successful supply chain programmes. Bethany and her team develop and implement supplier engagement strategies, manage data collection, and drive decarbonisation programs across our enterprise customers. Here's how she thinks about effective supply chain engagement.

Where should companies start?

First things first, focus on internal education and stakeholder alignment. We often see a range of priorities even within the core project team. I've found it helpful to categorise these stakeholders into three distinct groups:

• Reporters: the data enthusiasts focused on Scope 3 accuracy, improving data granularity, and reporting integrity.
• Impact drivers: the sustainability champions that are focused on delivering impact, on the ground, with suppliers. This group is focused on driving forwards decarbonisation action with suppliers.
• Tick-boxers (for want of a better term): those colleagues who've been asked to be involved “on top of the day job” and who often initially struggle to see the strategic value in supply chain engagement.

The success of your programme hinges on bringing these diverse perspectives together and aligning on a clear purpose. Without this internal alignment, you'll struggle to communicate a clear and consistent message to your suppliers.

Once you've aligned these different stakeholders, how do you maintain momentum and ensure they remain accountable for delivering results?

The magic ingredient here is measurement. We've found the most successful programmes establish clear, quantifiable KPIs to ensure you stay true to your established purpose.

This can really vary depending on your objectives. Examples include:

• The percentage of procurement spend covered by supplier-specific PCFs (Product Carbon Footprints)
• The average data quality score (e.g. PACT’s Data Quality Indicators or Primary Data Share)
• The number of supplier-led decarbonisation initiatives launched and their projected impact

I'd also emphasise that securing senior leadership buy-in isn't just a one-off checkbox. Regularly revisit whether your programme still addresses their priorities by asking: "Would our executive team see this as strategically valuable? Are we delivering outcomes they genuinely care about?" Without this constant realignment, even the most promising initiatives can lose steam.

Getting buy-in for supply chain engagement initiatives is not always straightforward. What approaches have you seen work when facing resistance?

It’s very common to be met with scepticism! When this happens, the key is to frame sustainability in terms of business value, especially when engaging Procurement. Instead of positioning it as an additional requirement, show how integrating environmental data into Procurement processes enhances supplier decision-making.

Procurement teams thrive on data insights, and supplier environmental data can provide a clearer, more holistic view of supplier performance. What new insights will they gain from this programme? How will it enable true "apples-to-apples" comparisons across suppliers within their purchase category?

There are various measures you can put in place to bring carbon to the fore. Embedding carbon into existing Procurement frameworks - whether through supplier scorecards, RFP criteria, or contract evaluations – ensures carbon isn’t just an add-on, but a core part of supplier assessments.

This shift also strengthens Procurement’s negotiating position. Supplier-level carbon data allows Procurement to identify efficiency leaders, reward suppliers already investing in decarbonisation, and even negotiate better terms based on sustainability-linked cost savings (e.g. lower energy costs, reduced waste, or logistics efficiencies).

Once you have buy-in from internal stakeholders, what obstacles do companies typically face when trying to gather usable environmental data from suppliers?

Getting suppliers to share high-quality environmental data isn’t as simple as sending out a request. Traditional engagement approaches have overwhelmed suppliers with overly complex and repetitive data demands, leading to frustration and disengagement. Keep in mind that “data for data’s sake is the worst kind of data”. We hear the same pain points come up time and time again:

• Resource-intensive process: Many companies still rely on lengthy surveys with hundreds of data points, often requested without clear context or purpose. Suppliers frequently tell us they spend more time completing questionnaires than implementing actual improvements—hardly the outcome we're aiming for.
• Low response rate: Unsurprisingly, this heavy data burden means supplier response rates suffer.
• Inconsistent data quality: When suppliers do respond, the data is often unreliable. Without standardised methodologies or verification processes, companies are left questioning the accuracy of the figures they receive.
• Lack of standardisation: Finally, there's no common structure for these requests. A supplier might receive similar data requests from five different customers, each formatted differently.

What should companies do to overcome these challenges?

At Altruistiq, we suggest shifting from broad data collection to focused, high-impact metrics—specifically Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs).

Let me explain with a practical example: Imagine you sell fizzy drinks. Rather than bombarding suppliers with a 20-page questionnaire, you make a targeted request for a single, standardised data point—their PCF.

Your glass bottle supplier, label producer, metal cap manufacturer, and sugar processor each provide a PCF for their product. This leads to:

1. More accurate reporting: PCFs that meet the required quality threshold can be slotted directly into your Scope 3 calculations, instantly improving emissions granularity vs the secondary Emissions Factors (EFs) that would otherwise be used.
2. Enhanced decision-making: Each PCF reveals critical insights—which suppliers have already transitioned to renewable energy, how much of their footprint comes from transport, and where your biggest reduction opportunities lie.
3. Supplier prioritisation: You can immediately identify which suppliers contribute most significantly to your product's environmental impact.

When you request one, standardised data point that serves multiple purposes, suppliers are far more receptive, particularly given the same data can also be leveraged by their other customers too.

Before we wrap up, what practical recommendations would you give to sustainability teams looking to elevate their supply chain engagement programmes?

There’s no single silver bullet. My top 3 tips for driving higher engagement from suppliers would be:

• First, embrace the 'less is more' philosophy. Focus on collecting fewer, higher-quality data points that directly enable action. One well-structured PCF request will yield more value than twenty vague survey questions.
• Second, transform data exchange into mutual value creation. Suppliers appreciate when data exchange is both ways. When you tell a supplier, "Your plastic bottle's carbon footprint is 0.8 kgCO₂*/kg compared to the industry average of 1.2"* you're providing something useful in return that can be used by the supplier to gage how they’re doing versus peers.
• Finally, shift your focus from reporting impact to reducing it. The companies seeing the best results see data just as the starting point. Use the data collected as a conversation starter with your suppliers: “Why is the PCF of a glass bottle coming from Plant 1 so much lower than Plant 2? Would it be possible to source more from the state-of-the-art plant? Are there plans to install the same technologies at Plant 2?” When suppliers see themselves as valued partners in your decarbonisation story, their willingness to share data and collaborate on decarbonisation opportunities increase.

Hear More: Supply Chain Engagement Deep Dive

Want to explore these topics further? In our latest State of Sustainability podcast episode, Saif sits down with Bethany for an extended conversation on supply chain engagement strategies.

They discuss how to:

• Transform procurement teams from "tick-boxers" to enthusiastic advocates
• Use environmental data to strengthen commercial negotiations
• Build mutually beneficial supplier relationships that drive real impact
• Navigate the practical challenges of implementing supplier engagement at scale

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