Best Use of Thought Leadership
With the effects of climate change becoming increasingly evident, the time to act is now. Government, business, and industry must work together to reduce carbon emissions and halt global warming. It is not competition that is needed, but collaboration – sharing knowledge and insight to collectively progress towards a net zero future.
How? Well, this is where procurement comes in. Whilst many organisations are getting to grips with their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, of which they have direct influence over, more are struggling to effectively address their Scope 3 emissions.
Scope 3 emissions can account for as much as 70% of an organisation’s carbon footprint, therefore addressing these emissions is what will really turn the dial in achieving net zero targets. Moreover, sitting predominantly within the supply chain, Scope 3 emissions can be best addressed through procurement, and the management of the third-party spend and supplier base.
Working with some of the world’s largest and most complex organisations, Proxima helps organisations deliver profitable and purposeful change through procurement. This means that Proxima is well-placed to link procurement and tackling Scope 3 emissions. As part of this endeavour, Proxima is a member of The Scope 3 Peer Group – a community of 1,200 practitioners spanning the world’s leading organisations, designed to accelerate progress on reducing Scope 3 emissions in the supply chain by sharing expert insight and best practice across sectors.
Proxima, in collaboration with the Scope 3 Peer Group, noticed a commonality in the questions being asked across organisations – Where should I start? What do I do next? How much are others investing? How many people have they dedicated to decarbonisation? As such and underpinned by Proxima’s extensive experience of assessing organisational maturity from a procurement perspective, the need for a tool was identified. One that enabled organisations to calibrate and demonstrate where they were making progress, and where they needed to focus efforts, within the context of targets and peers relevant to them.
As a pro bono project, Proxima partnered with the Scope 3 Peer Group to develop The Scope 3 Maturity Benchmark – a mechanism to help organisations measure organisational maturity and readiness to tackle Scope 3 across seven macro-operating model pillars. To date, The Benchmark has provided insights to over 150 global organisations, each receiving a free, personalised report with recommendations on how to improve towards a future state, empowering them to tackle decarbonisation, build the business case for internal change, and develop their transformation roadmap to net zero.
A year on from launch, The Benchmark is providing ongoing value for those organisations completing it for a second time, serving as a measure against planned progress and refocussing the effort required. The tool underpins Proxima’s sustainability services, enabling targeted, insightful programmes of work to be proposed and delivered as an outcome. As a firm, Proxima is extremely proud of the progress made because of The Benchmark, and we look forward to this continuing.
View the Proxima profile in the MCA Members Directory.