Thank you for visiting the Finch & Beak website. Finch & Beak is now part of SLR Consulting, a global organization that supports its clients on setting sustainability strategies and seeing them through to implementation.
This is an exciting time for us, as our team now includes an array of new colleagues who offer advisory and technical skills that are complementary to our own including Climate Resilience & Net Zero, Natural Capital & Biodiversity, Social & Community Impact, and Responsible Sourcing.
We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to check out the SLR website, so you can see the full potential of what we are now able to offer.
A value chain analysis, usually known as the process by which the strategic activities of a company are determined, related costs and value driver identified and optimized, brings a strategic advantage in driving the sustainability of a company when adapted to ESG criteria and performed in the double materiality assessment.
The double materiality matrix has in fact a strategic role for a business and, at the same time, as explained by ESRS, engagement with affected stakeholders is central to the undertaking’s on-going due diligence process and sustainability materiality assessment¹.
Specifically, the value chain analysis is an added benefit to the double materiality process because it can be used as an input for two crucial activities:
One fundamental step of the double materiality assessment is the stakeholder engagement. A practical way to ensure effective stakeholder selection is to engage with those that have a higher impact on the company’s sustainability performance. However, identifying the right stakeholders can be challenging. To solve this issue, a value chain analysis can be used. One of the steps of the analysis focuses on the mapping of the impact generated at each stage of the value chain and for every material topic. This mapping provides a clear picture of where the greater impacts take place at a stakeholder level and for which topic. If, for instance, most of the impact is concentrated in one or more steps of the value chain, it can be strategically important to engage stakeholders that are part of that steps. In the download of this article is available a ready-to use framework for conducting the impact mapping that can be applied to any companies.
One best-practice example is to map the different impacts of each material topic on the society and environment per value chain activity, such as the bottling company Coca-Cola HBC has done.
The second reason to conduct a value chain analysis is that it can be used to guide the development of ESG Supplier Programs. As highlighted in the previous article, identifying the biggest sources of negative impact in the supply chain is not always easy. Therefore, the value chain analysis functions as an alternative strategic tool: the map of the impact shows which are the steps of the upstream value chain with the highest impact and then the materiality topics are used to drive the corrective measures. In this way a company can be sure to implement the most effective measures with its suppliers to decrease its overall impact.
Do you want to know more about how to accelerate your sustainability through double materiality and value chain analysis? Reach out to Johana@finchandbeak.com or +31 6 28 02 18 80 to discuss how Finch & Beak can assist you.
¹ ESRS 1 General Requirements, page 9.
Finch & Beak
hello@finchandbeak.com
+34 627 788 170