Over the past few years, a unique confluence of forces has been reshaping the global business landscape. The Sustainable Procurement Barometer, published biennially since 2007 and co-developed this year by EcoVadis and Accenture, benchmarks sustainable procurement practices across industries and explores how they adapt to this changing landscape. Based on online surveys of both buyers and suppliers, followed by selected interviews, the report highlights trends around procurement priorities, sustainability monitoring tools, supplier engagement and internal process integration.

Key findings include:

• More than 70% of companies say “delivering on corporate sustainability goals and commitments” is a top procurement driver.
• 50% of mainstream programs use integrated ESG data to "operationally inform" or "strategically engage" their executive stakeholders.
• Although about 50-60% of respondents have some form of manual or digital integration of ESG into key procurement processes, only 30% of these integrations are reported as being “very or extremely effective".
• Digital integration of ESG (e.g. via API) averages just 10% across procurement processes.

The report also identifies primary obstacles slowing the adoption of best practices needed to deliver on the sustainable procurement agenda are, such as lack of ongoing C-Suite engagement and buy-in, low ESG integration into existing procurement tech stack and limited value chain visibility and engagement. It then goes on to offer best practices for overcoming these and other challenges packed in an insightful formula for success that can help companies unlock the value of sustainable procurement for more resilient compliance, as well as value creation and impact.