How to use this guide?¶
This chapter aims to give some rules and organisation tips to companies that intend to evaluate the maturity of their stakeholders, to get usable answers and have successful results.
Ask open questions only¶
This referential intentionally sums up open questions and criteria to assess them. It does not provide requirements, that already exist in other guides such as the guide for Sustainable IT Procurement. Communicating an evaluation questionnaire with requirements or closed questions would pose the risk of getting answers that would not really reflect the maturity of the respondents. The answers to open questions should be more personal and objective.
Consequently, we urge you not to communicate evaluation criteria to stakeholders but only the questions and their rationales.
Way of evaluating¶
We strongly recommend requiring answers to the questionnaire avoiding answers with single links to the Corporate Sustainability Report (or Universal Registration Document) but synthesizing the information available there that answers the question and giving just the number of the page where it can be found. To do this we encourage you to ask respondents to populate a spreadsheet attached to the questionnaire and to explain that only information provided on the questionnaire will be considered in the evaluation.
When you refer to certification, for example ISO standards certifications, we suggest that you ask for the certificates and check their validity and perimeter (sites versus group).
Of course, companies that launch the evaluation will be free to select only part of the questionnaires and to modify the weights or priorities that we propose here for each criterion. The evaluation process should also take into account the size of the organisation to be evaluated, and the number or type of criteria may be tuned for the smallest companies.
This guide aims at evaluating its stakeholders. Such an evaluation could be subcontracted to external consulting companies, but a self-evaluation of a company by itself is clearly to be avoided, for basic objectivity purposes.
Some answers from evaluated stakeholders could be that they intend to progress on some sustainability axis. For example, some suppliers might answer that they intend to train their staff. Intention is not sufficient. Even if we recommend evaluating maturity, evaluation cannot be done only on “will be” answers but must be based on practices that are in place today.
Perfect maturity is not realistic¶
For any candidate, it is not realistic to reach a perfect 100% for maturity on each - or even on any - of the 10 families of questions and criteria. Some criteria are demanding and fulfilled only in the long term.
The principle was that a criterion that could be fulfilled now or in the near future, should be a subject of the questionnaire. We can illustrate this principle with the TCO eco-label applied to network equipment: even if there is no equipment certified in 2024, three years after the introduction of the requirements for networks in this eco-label, we strongly recommend asking manufacturers for this eco-label in order to encourage them to get certification.
Request For Information (RFI) to anticipate call for tenders¶
We strongly recommend performing the evaluation through a Request For Information (RFI) methodology. RFI and RFP (Request For Proposal) are complementary: the RFI will evaluate maturity with the broadest questionnaire; the RFP will specify precise requirements, that must be consistent with the criteria mentioned in this guide; the evaluation will be of environmental and societal performance rather than maturity; the requirements will become contractual and no longer just for information. The target of this guide is to prepare suppliers for calls for tenders (or RFPs), without waiting until they are launched.
We believe that, because it is not contractual, companies will respond to an RFI with integrity and transparency.
Of course, the evaluation of maturity done during the RFI must not replace the specific evaluations that will be done during the call for tenders.
Involve IT technical teams and Procurement in the evaluation process¶
Procurement, technical and sustainable IT teams must work together to run such a RFI at each step of this initiative. We firmly believe that it is not possible for only procurement, sustainable IT managers or product owners alone to lead such an action.
We also recommend analyzing the answers in tandem so that the evaluation is more objective than it would be if done by only one person.
Feedback and debriefing¶
We urge you not to communicate the evaluation criteria in the questionnaire, but to share them with each respondent during a debrief after evaluation. An evaluation sheet can be used as a support. It can be just one slide, with key messages and a radar chart, composed of 10 axes (one per family of criteria), perhaps comparing the average score of evaluated stakeholders to that one of the supplier being debriefed.
As said before, it is not realistic even for the most mature organisations to score 100% for each family of criteria. The target is not to score but to identify:
- The main strength to secure.
- The improvement areas that would justify a specific action plan.