Sustainability in B2B E-commerce (Part 1)

As mentioned earlier on our website, Acorel and SAP jointly started a Shopping Tomorrow expert group titled ‘Sustainability in B2B commerce’ to research how sustainability can be a business driver in the growth of B2B digital commerce. With a selected group of experts from various organisations we will cover this topic in the upcoming months and keep you posted on the outcomes.

Introduction

The expert group, with Acorel as chairman and SAP as host, has organised this research under the flag of Shopping Tomorrow. We offer a unique community within the digital commerce domain to drive innovation and inspire the participants on trends and developments in this field of expertise. Shopping Tomorrow was initiated by Thuiswinkel.org in 2013 and is now yearly supporting a large number of expert groups, each focusing on their own topic.

As stated, our expert group researching the drivers of sustainability within the B2B digital commerce domain. And with this group we will cover the following questions:

• Why and how is sustainability relevant in B2B E-commerce?
• How can we deliver sustainable growth with E-commerce while retaining business value?
• How can we provide insights to our customers on the sustainability of our organization and its products and services using E-commerce?
• How can E-commerce help to reduce waste throughout the value chain?
• How can E-commerce support circular business models?
• How can we monitor, control and share our sustainability KPI’s?

Our expert group currently holds 18 professionals. Each of them working for different organisations in various roles. Roles in which they usually come across topics that combine the digital commerce (or more specifically E-commerce) and sustainability domains in a B2B environment. More information about our expert group can be found on the Shopping Tomorrow website!

Our sustainability pillars

As we are still in the early stages of our research, the first focus is setting up a foundation that we can use to model the subsequent steps. In that process we have been reviewing existing models like the sustainability growth path and the sustainable value framework. While certainly re-using elements from these models, our primary focus is to build our model on 7 ground pillars. These pillars cover the main aspects that companies will encounter when tackling the sustainability topics within their organisation:

• Resource Efficiency: Operational efficiency to prevent waste and pollution
• Brand Reputation: Eco-friendly, inclusive and responsible branding
• Innovation: Reinventing processes, products and business models to increase sustainability and circularity
• Compliance: Comply with current and upcoming legislation and transparency towards stakeholders about the sustainability standards within the company
• Market Demand: Increasing demand from the customers about the sustainability of their supplier and its products and/or services
• Partnership: Joint effort in the value chain between manufacturers, suppliers, wholesales, distributors and the customers to ensure an end-to-end focus on sustainability. One of the most important things that has emerged is that many companies believe that they cannot tackle this issue alone. It will only have a good chance of success if the entire value chain, or a group of companies, can make this joint effort.
• Employee Engagement: Support from the internal organisation with motivated employees that are fully engaged with the sustainable corporate vision

Maturity levels

Next step for our group is to enrich this foundation with B2B relevant real-life examples, practical use cases and inspiring ideas for each of these pillars. From there, we would like to see if we can define practical and understandable maturity levels for each pillar.

Sustainability is a journey, not a destination. Perhaps a common phrase, but certainly calling out for a need to define guiding steps or maturity levels. Existing sustainability maturity models do exist, like the model showing below, often showing multiple levels of maturity with increasing sustainable value in relation to a higher business transformation level.

And again these models will be used as inspiration, but we want our model to reflect that a company should build their own personalised sustainability roadmap that delivers value while developing maturity on multiple pillars at the same time. All that to ensure a healthy balance on their sustainability activities across these pillars and engage their entire organisation and its employees. Defining these maturity levels for each pillar is currently in progress and we hope to share insights on that in the near future!

Next steps

Next step for our group is defining the business drivers and the corresponding value from these pillars. And finally, figure out what role B2B digital commerce can and should play in addressing these sustainable drivers in these customer facing channels.

Would you like to know more about this initiative by SAP and Acorel at Shopping Tomorrow? Then follow this blog in which we will keep you posted on progress and the final results of this expert group!