What is the collective impact of all sustainability initiatives on company’s sustainability goals?

Problem

FreshCo. has set out its sustainability goals for 2030. However, they have many sites in a number of countries that vary in their sustainability KPIs performance. In order to be able to reach their 2030 goals, they need to know what sites should be the center of attention. The results of the SprintlyWorks team project allow FreshCo. to see what sites they need to focus on and where, approximately, will the proposed initiatives leave them in 2023.

Situation

FreshCo. has set out targets in 2020 in order to improve their sustainability. They are using a reporting system to track the components of the sustainability KPIs. Since the sustainability KPIs and the reported components are rather new for the sites, the site managers and personnel do not fully understand how to calculate the KPIs. Therefore, when the sites were asked to submit their sustainability initiatives, many of the slides contained mistakes in the KPIs calculations, as well as other errors. SprintlyWorks team was then hired to standardize the slides and calculate the impact on the sustainability KPIs.

Our approach

SprintlyWorks team conducted a time-boxed, client-focused sprint to produce tangible results that enabled faster decision-making and progress on the topic. The project consists of 3 phases:

• Preparatory stage - understand the KPIs calculations and go through the proposed initiatives
• Carry out the interviews of each site and get the correct data and initiative information
• Input the impact of the initiatives into an Excel sheet and calculate the sustainability KPIs forecasts. Come up with recommendations as to what FreshCo. should focus on

Methodology

Phase 1: Preparatory stage

Understand the KPIs calculations and go through the proposed initiatives

• Calculate the KPIs for 2020 to fully understand all components of the KPIs and to comprehend what needs to be asked in the interviews
• Go through the initiatives and prepare questions for the interviews regarding the initiatives themselves and the measures needed to assess their impact
• The questions were sent to the sites in advance

Phase 2: Carry out the interviews

With the questions prepared in the previous phase the interviews were conducted the interviews were conducted:

• The results were used to clear up misunderstandings in the initiatives presentation
• Furthermore, the main goal was to get to measures that would be directly translatable to impact on the sustainability KPIs in question

Phase 3: Calculate the impact and come up with recommendations

Sustainability KPIs were calculated based on the information in the cleaned up initiatives presentation. An overview of interesting initiatives and then initiatives with the most impact and sites with most room for improvement were presented:

• The initiatives presentation was cleaned up and re-arranged by type of sustainability KPI impacted, in order to facilitate inter-site learning
• The impacts of initiatives were put into Excels and the values of the site and group sustainability KPIs were calculated
• Based on the calculations the must impactful initiatives and “worst offender” sites were highlighted
• Interesting initiatives were outlined along with final recommendations for each of the sustainability KPIs

Results

SprintlyWorks team calculated the impact of the sustainability initiatives proposed by the sites on the sustainability KPIs in the years 2020-2023 and made a prediction for 2030 values. SprintlyWorks team was also able to standardize the sustainability initiatives and re-arrange them in a more suitable form. This enables FreshCo. to see which KPIs are on track to reach their 2030 ambition and where there is work to be done. Furthermore, since part of the intelligence report also shows what sites are the sources of poor sustainability performance, it gives FreshCo. a clear idea of where their efforts need to be aimed to reach their 2030 sustainability targets.