Lindt & Sprüngli: Fostering Sustainable Procurement
Sustainable procurement is a vital tool for driving innovation and success in business.
In a discussion with EcoVadis' Annette Gevaert, SVP, Alliances & Strategic Initiatives for its EV Talks, Julia Laveissierre Head of Responsible Sourcing at Lindt & Sprüngli Group, discussed how integrating EcoVadis and Sievo transformed its procurement.
Transforming supply chain management
The renowned Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli has revolutionised its approach to sustainable procurement by integrating EcoVadis Ratings directly into its Sievo sourcing platform. This strategic integration has transformed how the company evaluates and manages supplier sustainability across its global supply chain.
The Sievo-EcoVadis connector was key to this, centralising sourcing decisions and making information easily available as part of the risk validation process. This helped to streamline sustainable procurement, reach 76% supplier coverage and build supply chain resilience.
By connecting EcoVadis sustainability data with Sievo's procurement intelligence, Lindt & Sprüngli has centralised sustainability insights directly within its sourcing workflow, eliminating the need to toggle between multiple systems.
The company achieved 76% supplier coverage with sustainability ratings, providing unprecedented visibility into its supply chain. It streamlined risk validation processes by making critical sustainability information instantly accessible during sourcing decisions and built enhanced supply chain resilience through data-driven sustainability assessments.
The Sievo-EcoVadis connector serves as the backbone of this transformation, seamlessly linking supplier spend data with comprehensive sustainability ratings.
This integration enables procurement teams to make informed decisions that balance cost, quality and sustainability performance without disrupting established workflows.
The result is a more resilient, sustainable supply chain that aligns with Lindt & Sprüngli's commitment to responsible sourcing whilst maintaining operational efficiency.
Creating order from chaos
The company chose EcoVadis after searching for a tool which could enable them to measure the sustainability maturity of its suppliers.
EcoVadis's ability to integrate into Sievo, the procurement analytical tool it uses, creates one space that houses all the data needed to make sourcing decisions.
EcoVadis and Sievo created order to unstructured data. This API integration into Sievo created uniformity across the names of suppliers and helped to make the life of the buyer easier.
"Sievo is acting like a data lake," Julia says. "Suddenly, in one place, the buyer can manage sustainability as they manage the rest."
Julia highlighted an example where, in Sievo, it could request a scorecard directly to a supplier, but also have access to the results. Straight away, a buyer could see which supplier has not completed its sustainability assessments – whilst also seeing what the scores are, allowing them to present it back to the supplier.
The benefit of the integration allows Sievo to act as a vital, one source of truth for the business, helping buyers make decisions, whilst also reviewing through the platform's capabilities.
Sievo allows users to easily access the supplier's performance, spend and sustainability.
"The beauty of that is, because this tool is highly adopted for a long time, the buyer suddenly also has access to sustainability and it becomes fully integrated into discussion with suppliers, into category reviews, risk management, that was the beauty of that," says Julia. "One place, they can do everything."
Building resilience through partnership and innovation
Procurement teams are currently under pressure to meet strict regulations and guidelines. For Lindt & Sprüngli, EcoVadis helps when it comes to due diligence, becoming a tool that helps risk validation processes.
When it comes to carbon reduction, Lindt, like lots of companies, looks for contribution from suppliers.
When the company is considering a supplier it has identified as a high risk, it uses the EcoVadis score to help answer due diligence requirements.
Sustainable procurement is vital for Lindt & Sprüngli, with Julia describing it as key to drive the business in the long term.
Sustainable procurement has helped Lindt & Sprüngli build resilience through its supply chain, which helps to mitigate challenges during supply crises.
Looking ahead, Julia predicts challenges will continue. She says that a resilient supply chain is vital to overcome these challenges, adding that partnering with suppliers to ensure the right dialogue is being had is key.
Alongside supplier partnerships, she also stressed that innovation is important. "To be able to be resilient, you have to do business differently than you do today, and your partners or suppliers can't do it alone.
"We cannot just ask suppliers to do things. We need to partner with them - it's a virtuous circle where you create innovation, you can invest and help them to change."
