Sustainability in the supply chain: why your customers are now asking for data

The pressure on suppliers to provide data rarely comes from a vacuum – it is the logical consequence of the fact that requirements for your customers have tightened. This article explains the mechanism behind it, without overwhelming you with legal paragraphs.

The mechanism: Pressure is passed down

Large companies must increasingly map their supply chain in their own sustainability processes – from several directions at once:

• Own reporting requirements (for large companies subject to reporting), which need Scope 3 data from suppliers.

• Supply chain due diligence obligations, which require larger companies to monitor human rights and environmental risks in their supply chain – including the upstream stages.

• Voluntary ESG ratings such as EcoVadis, which purchasing departments are increasingly using as a standard criterion.

• Platforms like IntegrityNext, through which corporations systematically request sustainability data from their suppliers.

For you as a supplier, this means: The request that reaches you is usually not an isolated case, but part of a structured process on the customer side. Anyone who understands this reacts more calmly – and in a more targeted manner.

What this means for you as a supplier

The most important point: As an SME, you yourself are usually not directly obligated to these processes. The pressure comes through the market, not through your own legal obligation. However, this does not change the fact that the requests are real and recur regularly – often from several customers at the same time, using different formats.

The four channels at a glance

How requests differ by industry

• System catering: Often via EcoVadis and individual questionnaires from the purchasing departments of large chains, less frequently via CSRD-related channels.

• Manufacturing (automotive, metal, mechanical engineering): Strong presence of IntegrityNext and similar platforms, frequently combined with classic quality audits.

• Suppliers to retail and consumer goods: A mix of EcoVadis, individual questionnaires, and increasingly Scope 3 requests for the retail companies' carbon footprints.

These differences explain why a generalized "this doesn't affect me" attitude is risky: The specific channel depends heavily on your own customer structure, but the general probability of receiving some form of request is rising across all industries.

A typical example from the manufacturing sector

A medium-sized metal processor, a supplier to two automotive OEMs, typically receives several parallel requests within one year: an EcoVadis invitation from OEM A, an IntegrityNext request from OEM B, plus an internal questionnaire from procurement during the annual supplier evaluation. At first glance, these seem like three separate projects. Upon closer inspection, all three ask largely for the same basic data: energy consumption, emissions, and occupational health and safety guidelines. Anyone who recognizes this overlap can answer the second and third requests in a fraction of the time of the first.

How to prioritize multiple simultaneous requests

When several customers make requests at the same time, a simple prioritization based on two criteria helps:

1. Business importance of the requesting customer. A customer that accounts for a large portion of your revenue deserves faster priority than a request with less business weight.

2. Formal deadline of the request. EcoVadis assessments and IntegrityNext requests often have clearly defined deadlines, while informal requests leave more flexibility.

In practice, experience shows that those who have a structured database rarely have to make this prioritization under time pressure because the processing time per request is short anyway. The prioritization question becomes relevant primarily for companies that are still working without a prepared database.

What happens if you ignore a request

An often underestimated risk: An unanswered or delayed request is rarely explicitly sanctioned, but it has a creeping impact on the business relationship – during the next contract negotiation, the next tender, or simply in the general impression of being a reliable partner. Unlike a formal breach of contract, this effect is hard to measure, but it is real in practice.

The dynamic is increasing, not decreasing

Even where reliefs are introduced for smaller suppliers – such as the new Value Chain Cap for purely regulatory reporting requests – the remaining channels (EcoVadis, voluntary questionnaires, platforms like IntegrityNext, bank inquiries) remain unaffected. (Details: Value Chain Cap – what it protects and what it doesn't.) The realistic outlook is therefore not "the topic will disappear again," but "the channels will continue to diversify."

The pragmatic approach: one database for all channels

Instead of answering each request individually, it is worth building a structured database that can be reused for every channel – EcoVadis questionnaire, IntegrityNext request, customer questionnaire, and voluntary VS report largely draw on the same basic data (energy consumption, emissions, guidelines). (How to do this in practice: Is your customer suddenly demanding sustainability data?.)

How strait helps

strait captures the operational data that makes up the largest share of most supply chain requests – energy and resource consumption – continuously via IoT sensors instead of manually once a year. The result is a database that simultaneously reduces costs and accelerates every future request from the supply chain, regardless of the channel through which it comes.

How well prepared are you? The Sustainability Readiness Check shows you in three minutes where your data gaps are for supply chain requests.

Ready to answer every supply chain request from a single database?

Take the Sustainability Readiness Check – or book a demo.

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