Resilient Supply Chain — How Leaders Keep Business Moving
Resilient Supply Chain is for supply chain, operations, procurement and technology leaders who need practical ways to manage disruption, reduce risk and keep business moving.
Each Monday, former SAP Global VP and technology futurist Tom Raftery speaks with the executives, operators, founders and innovators redesigning how goods, information and decisions move through global supply chains.
These are candid conversations about what works in practice—not polished PR narratives or vague predictions. Guests explain how they are responding to supplier failures, geopolitical shocks, volatile costs, capacity constraints, changing regulations and rising pressure to improve both performance and sustainability.
The podcast examines:
Faster planning and decision-making under uncertainty
Supplier risk, sourcing strategy and business continuity
AI, automation, visibility and operational intelligence
Warehousing, logistics and fulfilment performance
Scope 3 emissions, circularity and responsible sourcing
The systems, incentives and organisational changes needed to turn data into action
The central question is simple: what helps a supply chain withstand disruption, adapt quickly and continue serving the business?
New episodes are published every Monday at 7am CET. Resilient Supply Chain+ subscribers also receive bonus analysis, highlights and briefings on emerging industry trends.
Follow Resilient Supply Chain for practical lessons from the people solving real operational problems—and building supply chains that perform when conditions do not go to plan.
Welcome to 2025, and to the 49th episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, my first for the year!
In this episode, I had the pleasure of chatting with Jenna Fink, Principal of Research at Zero100, about the evolving intersection of sustainability and supply chains. With her diverse experience—from Amazon’s high-speed operations to Bayer’s more structured approach—Jenna offers fascinating insights into what drives sustainability initiatives and how businesses can balance priorities.
We delved into some pressing questions: Where is the push for sustainability coming from—employees, customers, investors, or regulators? And how do companies ensure that sustainability isn’t just an added burden, but rather an opportunity to enhance efficiency and resilience?
One major takeaway was the significance of Scope 3 emissions reporting, often seen as the most challenging but also the most transformative for organisations. Jenna shared practical strategies to get started—leveraging existing data, collaborating with suppliers, and finding the internal champions who can drive change.
We also explored the role of AI in reducing waste and improving efficiency. Jenna highlighted projects like PepsiCo’s Perfect Sorting Consortium, showing how AI tools can enable smarter, more sustainable decision-making.
Finally, we touched on the human side of sustainability transformations—prioritisation struggles, cultural shifts, and the value of tying sustainability wins to cost savings or operational efficiency to make the case clear across organisations.
If you’re grappling with sustainability in your supply chain, this episode is packed with pragmatic advice and actionable insights to help you navigate the regulatory landscape and build resilience. Don’t miss it!
Find out more about Jenna’s work on LinkedIn, and feel free to connect with her or myself for further discussions. Let’s make 2025 the year of sustainable progress!
If disruption hit tomorrow, would you know where your supply chain was most exposed? In 15 minutes my free scorecard helps you assess 27 resilience statements, calculate your score, and turn the result into three priorities and a 30 day action plan. You can download the scorecard free at tomraftery.com/scorecard.
Podcast supporters I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous Subscribers:
Alicia Farag
Kieran Ognev
Gary Lynch
And remember you too can become a Resilient Supply Chain+ subscriber - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent episodes like this one and give you access to bonus episodes of topical, timely supply chain resilience analysis.
🎤 Looking for a keynote speaker on supply chain resilience, AI, and sustainability? I help leaders understand the forces reshaping global supply chains, from geopolitical disruption and climate risk to AI and real-time decision-making.
Download my Speaker Pack: https://tinyurl.com/spkrpck
Finally If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on LinkedIn, or send me a message using this link.
My last role at Bayer, I led transformation for manufacturing. So that included both creating a sustainability organisation, and recruiting. And so I actually got to go out to college campuses, meet with graduate students, meet with fresh new engineers, you know, right out of college or about to be out of college and looking to start their career. And that was one of the top questions that was asked is what sort of sustainability jobs are there? Oh, you lead sustainability. What kind of roles are you hiring for?
Tom Raftery:
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode 49 of the sustainable supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and, happy new year. It's the, uh, 6th of January, 2025. This is the first episode of the podcast for 2025, the 49th episode of this version of the podcast. So before it was the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, it was the Digital Supply Chain podcast. I published 381 episodes under that title before last year, rebranding as the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. 48 episodes. Now 49 episodes as the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. So welcome to a new year. A new year of the sustainable supply chain podcast. I thank you so much for being part of this journey. And looking forward to a new year of sustainability stories in supply chain. Kicking off I've got a great episode coming up. Today's episode, I'm talking to Jenna Fink from Zero100. But before that, let me just fill you in quickly on the episodes that are coming up in the next few weeks. So in the coming weeks, I'll be speaking to. Kristin Naragon Chief Strategy Officer of Akeneo, George Wade, CEO of Zevero. Bailey Robin CEO of Seth Weisberg, CEO of ABCO Systems. But as I said in today's episode, I'm talking to Jenna, Fink. Jenna, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?
Jenna Fink:
thank you for having me, Tom. I'm very excited to be here. My name is Jenna Fink. I am a director of research at Zero100. Which is a small but growing supply chain digitalization company based out of the UK. Really though, my passion about this space came from my first job out of college. I was an environmental engineer. I worked for an oil and gas company in Philadelphia. And have spent the better part of my career from there, going back to school to learn all about supply chain and, and really how to navigate Thank you. solving some of these sustainability challenges that we have directly through operating in the supply chain space. So I've gotten to work for Amazon, Bayer, went back to school for my MBA and really glad to be here and kind of take that that wealth of experiences and try and figure out how we can move the needle on sustainability.
Tom Raftery:
Okay, Amazon and Bayer, two very different companies, I want to think. Amazon kind of, high tech, at least tech focused and Bayer, Agri, less tech. What was the, I mean, there must have been massive cultural differences between the two, no?
Jenna Fink:
Very much so. You know, I started with Amazon at their facility out in California. Oak four is a very large, one of the largest distribution centers in the country and fulfillment centers, and it was go, go, go. It was top speed, high volume and an expectation that we're constantly kind of innovating, challenging perceptions, trying new things. But the flip side is they were still coming out of really, you know, a young tech company mindset. That And there weren't a lot of processes in place, not a ton of organisational structure to help manage sustainability top to bottom. And I actually had a really interesting experience there because my first project was to help create a waste management program. At the largest facility in the country, and at the time I was an intern, and so if you look at kind of like the scale and scope of of who they're asking to help solve challenges, it's company wide, but you know, they don't necessarily have the same structures and expectations and programs that you would see at a legacy company like a Bayer. And so I think Bayer was the opposite, you know, you have 175 plus years of experience in various industries and all of the regulatory and compliance structures that comes with that, and so, there were plenty of structures in place to support the compliance challenges that we ran into. But then you deal with the flip side of that, which is the, the bureaucracy and the hierarchy and, and having the ability to make changes within the company because it is so old and structured. And they're really going through kind of an organisational change now to address some of those things. But it definitely it was very interesting kind of conflicts and getting programs stood up and executed into very different types of companies.
Tom Raftery:
Sure, and what would you say surprised you most in your journey from there to where you are today?
Jenna Fink:
The thing that I've been the most surprised by, going from both Bayer and Amazon into a role where I'm supporting clients across the range of industries is how similar our challenges are, especially in the sustainability and scope three tracking space, even though the product, the company, the people are all different. And so at the end of the day, We're all having kind of the same fundamental issues with data management and getting the data right and connecting it end to end and figuring out where to report and that's going to be whether you work in regenerative agriculture or food and beverage or CPG or apparel and, and automotive and industries, the way that you approach them can sometimes look different and obviously the regulatory world is going to look different, but the core fundamental challenges of standing up these programs, Thank you. it's everyone's facing it, and it's pretty consistent. And I was really surprised by that. You know, when you work within a company, especially a company like Bayer, that's just got such a big footprint physically in the US from an agriculture standpoint, you think that that your challenges are maybe unique. You're the first to ever do it. You're the first to ever kind of like enter the space and figure out how to make it happen. And, and that's not the case. And so I've been really happy to see that there are these really cool opportunities to share information and like share best practices across companies that I didn't necessarily have access to or even think about going for, especially within Bayer.
Tom Raftery:
Nice, nice, and can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what's making people go for sustainability in their supply chains? Is it the employees that are pushing from within? Is it customers that are pushing from without? Is it the investors? Is it the boards? Is it the banks? Is it the insurance companies? Is it all of the above? Or, you know, where is that pressure coming from?
Jenna Fink:
Um I'll answer it as some of the above. I think everyone's got a voice in there, but the voices that move the needle from, from my perspective are going to be 1) your internal employees that have a personal passion in the space. Those are that are like boots on the ground. Working in our facilities that see these opportunities and want to find a way to make a difference and they care about sustainability in their environment in their personal lives. Like these are just people that care deeply about doing the right thing. I'd say the second big factor that i'm seeing is more of an external factor and that's in the regulatory world. You're seeing especially in europe with the EU CSRD changes that are coming down the line that are going to create some more stringent expectations on sustainable reporting and that are going to be more broadly applicable. So you're going to see companies that aren't European based or your based still have to move to these requirements because they want to be able to do business and you're up and similarly, California is looking at measures that again, if you do X amount of business in California, you're going to have to report out. And so the external pressure, I think, is forcing boards and executives to start to take a more proactive approach and think a little bit more about how to do better in the space and do better isn't necessarily creating all of these, you know, maximum efficiency gains and reducing the carbon footprint. Doing better is just figuring out, like, what is our baseline? What data do we have today? How are we reporting this out? How can we make the process to capture this data and report this data easier and better and less cumbersome and time consuming? So that we can focus on implementing those improvements. So I think those are, to me, the 2 big ones that I see. There are obviously a lot of different spaces where you're going to feel that pressure coming. One of the interesting kind of insights that that I've pulled out through a lot of my conversations with clients is on the publicly traded entity standpoint. The board tends to look at these things from a risk and resiliency standpoint. What is the risk play? How do we make a more resilient environment and create more resilience from sourcing standpoint? And use that as kind of the so what, or the why we're doing this. From a private company standpoint, though, a lot of times you're seeing chairman of the board or ownership groups take a more personal stand and say, we're going to do this because this is the right thing to do. This is what I'm going to stake my claim as, as a leader in this space is we need to do this because we want to and because we feel strongly and because maybe we're a privately held corporation, we don't need to have that very visible ROI to our stakeholder group and it allows for a little bit more experimentation kind of within the company because you're not constantly driven to share a financial ROI with a lot of these different things that you're implementing across the business.
Tom Raftery:
Okay, and if I am a company seeing these regulations coming down the line towards me, should I be concerned that there are a flash in the pan and they'll be repealed for want of a better word in the coming months and years as we have changes of guard in different countries?
Jenna Fink:
Yeah, it's a great question. And, for context, I am based out of the US and so we just went through an election here that I think is likely going to make some changes in the regulatory environment, at least when it comes to sustainability and scope 3 reporting specifically for the US but as a whole, you're seeing entire communities and organisations pushed forward. And so, what we're seeing coming out of the EU, it's been in the work for quite a long time, and it's across multiple countries that are invested involved in this. And similarly in the US, while the federal regulations might not continue to evolve and change and likely could be scaled back in the next four years or so, the state of California is moving forward with their regulatory requirements that will likely mirror quite a bit of what the EU CSRD looks like. And anybody that wants to do business I would say in these places that do have a strong regulatory framework will have to move into reporting through these structures. And so if I'm looking at a company that's seeing growth opportunities and seeing opportunities to be, you know, a major global player that doesn't exist without, importing and exporting through California or having a really strong footprint in the EU. And so as you see companies come together and countries come together for things like COP 20, COP 24, 25, up through 29 that we see on the calendar. We're going to continue to see regulations and trying to play the game of, oh, well, maybe it won't impact me. I think we'll likely kind of catch these boards by surprise. And so what I would say right now is it's the time to take action to get your data organised and to find a nice solution to at least be able to do some basic reporting. Because whether or not it's happening where you are today, we're seeing this trend globally of reporting requirements, and it's going to be really critical that we're able to address those as they come up.
Tom Raftery:
Fair enough, And when it comes to starting out on sustainability, I think many organisations probably feel a bit overwhelmed. So what advice would you have for those looking to lay a solid foundation, for example, in, in supply chain sustainability, especially when building connected data systems, because you've mentioned data quite a bit now, are there any quick wins they should prioritise?
Jenna Fink:
Yeah, so when I talk about sustainability, you kind of have these three big buckets. There's scope one, two and three. And so, scope one and two are going to be the emissions that you're generating as a company, those tend to be much easier to get a handle on and to wrangle because they're within your organisation. They're within your company. And so I find that that's a really nice starting point to at least create an internal baseline. A lot of companies already have some sort of compliance driven reporting in that space today. So start with your accounting teams and your legal teams say, what do we have already? Likely there is an EHS team that is already submitting 90 percent of what you need for continued operating permits and things like that. So it's not like you're starting and creating all of this data from zero. A lot of it you already have, especially in the scope one and two space. That can help you understand where your footprint is as you start to move into what we call Scope 3, which are going to be our indirect emissions. And that's really that upstream and downstream, kind of that end to end, cradle to grave, if you will, emissions footprint of whatever product that you're generating or that you're selling or bringing to market. And so that tends to be where people get really overwhelmed, because you're not just collecting your own data. You're collecting data from vendors, from suppliers, from logistics companies, and that gets really difficult. And so what I would recommend there, if you're really starting to enter into that space, is look for those partners that are already doing work in the space. A lot of your largest suppliers, a lot of your large logistics networks, are already capturing all of that data that you would need to report out. It might look like a little bit different than what, you're thinking it will come back as it might be in a different format. There might be some data transformation that has to happen. But look to those companies that have already started doing that and figure out how to partner with them really start to learn from those in the industry that you work with, and that you partner with already on how you can take what they've developed, take whatever it be, whether it be a playbook or a dashboard or a really great tool to kind of pull this information together and see if you can utilise some of those things. So that would be where I would start from a data standpoint. More from like a cultural standpoint and how to get your organisation engaged. I mentioned earlier, there are going to be people in your organisation that are already evangelising some of the opportunities in sustainability and they might have a personal passion for it. There might even be, you know, an employee resource group that is talking about how to implement sustainable practices in your business. Find those people that care already. Find a way to get those voices heard to identify quick win opportunities that can help really like publicise and get people excited within the organisation. And that'll help you kind of start to move the needle from a cultural standpoint.
Tom Raftery:
Nice. Nice. Yeah. Because I, I had Ken Pucker, who was the head of sustainability for Timberland on my climate podcast a year or two ago now at this point, and I remember him saying that when Timberland were starting out on their reporting, which is 20 years ago at this point, he said that for them, he was amazed to see that when they advertised roles that were available in the organisation, he said the caliber of applicants they got was that much higher because they had a name For being more sustainable, for having a purpose, for being one of the few companies at the time that were actually reporting on their emissions. So he said it really brought down their cost of recruitment and retention, which, you know, is always a big cost for any organisation.
Jenna Fink:
Absolutely. And interestingly enough, my, my last role at Bayer, I led transformation for manufacturing. So that included both creating a sustainability organisation. And recruiting. And so I actually got to go out to college campuses, meet with graduate students, meet with fresh new engineers, you know, right out of college or about to be out of college and looking to start their career. And that was one of the top questions that was asked is what sort of sustainability jobs are there? Oh, you lead sustainability. What kind of roles are you hiring for? I mean, it was, I was floored every time I went to a campus and these are, mind you, like, Rural agronomic colleges across the Midwest US. This is not, you know, an NYU or, or a Berkeley, you know, these are still schools that are filled with students that care deeply about agriculture that wanted to know what Bayer's perspective was on sustainability and how they could be involved in it and what resource groups existed. And so absolutely, I second the perspective there that, that really strong talent wants to know that what they're doing is going to be a net positive.
Tom Raftery:
And if we look at some of the technologies that are out there, obviously, everyone's talking about AI these days. From Zero100's research, what do you see as the most promising use cases for AI in making supply chains, not just faster or cheaper, but more sustainable?
Jenna Fink:
Yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways that you can kind of slice and dice where AI is applicable. Interestingly enough, what we're seeing in some of our research is that the majority of the AI use cases that we've found have been in the waste reduction space. So, 24 of the AI use cases that are involved in sustainability are specifically looking at waste reduction and how to either reduce the amount of product generated, or to better utilise excess material or excess inventory to not create a waste. And so you've got things like plastics reduction and and how do you take a look at industrial sorting and plastics reduction? And PepsiCo actually did a really interesting project it's called the Perfect Sorting Consortium. And it was a product that actually looked to leverage AI to better sort, waste materials from a facility, and they work with a number of different partners in their industry to look at how do we better separate out materials so that we can maximise our recycling from within production and make sure that we are instead of taking up that human judgment piece using data as step one and then layering on the human judgment piece to best separate out materials. And so I thought that was a really fun one because it feels tangible, right? Throw everything in your recycling bin and you just hope it goes somewhere and something happens with it. I think those of us that have worked in the sustainability and materials space for a while know that that's not always the case and, and we really struggle with just as an industry struggling with maximising the reutilisation of materials that go through recycling industry. So being able to layer on data and an AI tool that can help look at that is a huge step and an opportunity for advancement. So I think that's a cool one that I'm really excited about to see. They haven't reported out on the results of that yet. It's kind of an ongoing project, but really excited to see kind of what they come out with and whether that's a really viable opportunity.
Tom Raftery:
One topic I'd love to dive into is the, because you mentioned it yourself, they're the human side of these changes. When you've worked on sustainability transformations, what have been some of the unexpected human or organisational challenges you've faced and how were they overcome?
Jenna Fink:
I think I'm not sure unexpected or not, but I can say without kind of without fail that the biggest challenge that we had from an organisational standpoint is helping folks prioritise sustainability over other difficult priorities. If you get into kind of the nuts and bolts operations of a team, these supply chain teams are working their butts off. I mean, truly, these are folks that are on the phone with the customers on the phone with drivers, putting together demand plans, putting together, you know, working in these SNOP meetings, they are working their butts off to make sure that the right product gets to the right customer at the right time at the highest quality. And I have every supply chain team I've worked on has been full of people that are passionate about that space. The challenge when we come in and ask to capture additional information with sustainability, go to new training, go to our customers differently with a different offering is that people really struggle to say, why should I prioritise this over my day to day work? I've got enough work already and I feel passionately that like the work I'm doing is providing a better experience to the customers, creating a better product. I don't see why this should override the other work I'm doing. And frankly, I'm so overburdened that I don't particularly want to add to my calendar. And so I think to help overcome that, there's two pieces of it. One, you need executive sponsorship. Absolutely critical that you are able to speak to the importance of sustainability at the highest levels in your organisation. And that can be a CEO scorecard that can be tied into targets for bonuses and bonus structures and compensation things. But the second piece is that it's really important to tell the why of these sustainable practices and make sure that they're business friendly. A lot of the time, some of the really cool use cases I've seen for being more sustainable, especially in the logistics space, this is a really big one. Logistics and inventory management is that the more efficient you can be. The more sustainable you're gonna be. We look at truckloads and we look at the ability to kind of maximise truckloads and minimise customer impact. There are a lot of win win cases. We're reducing the number of shipments. Makes for a better customer experience. We can use some predictive analytics to say this is what we think that they're going to need, that they're going to order. We can preload the trucks, but we're not making three trips this week, we're making one. And then if, you know, they decide not to take that inventory, that's fine. No problem. We'll bring it back. But starting to do some of those predictive things to reduce miles, to reduce inventory. Really, truly can help kind of make both of those things happen and make sure you're capturing the benefits of not just, you know, the ROI from a financial standpoint of reducing inventory or mileage, but but give people the tools to capture the carbon reduction and celebrate that carbon reduction. It's not just a financial savings. It's a win win for the company for the customer and make sure you're acknowledging that it's a true sustainable improvement as well.
Tom Raftery:
It's got to be tricky because as you rightly say, everyone's got priorities and you know, why, why is your priority more important than their priorities. How easy is it, or is it possible at all, to tie in sustainability wins to let's say reduced costs, efficiency gains, anything like that, that can help you sell the story better?
Jenna Fink:
I think it's a question of translation. How are you translating your kind of core operational improvements into a sustainability improvement? And that's something that if you're not talking about emissions reductions or carbon capture or your overall scope three targets, you're not going to take the time and energy as a leader, as a manager or as a peer to translate some of these wins into a sustainable win or how or why. And so that's one where if you have clarity on data and have those dashboards set up and have that data democratised so that everybody in the company can see their impact, it should be really easy to be able to say, All right, we have reduced X number of miles. That should be a quick. All right. That means you've done X tons of CO2, and that means it brings us X percent closer to our targets. But if you don't have those kind of foundational data sets in place, and you don't have kind of clear quality scoreboards, it's really hard to make those connections quickly. So there's some tools online, like you can absolutely just Google, you know, how many metric tons of CO2 are reduced if you get rid of 5,000 miles of truck miles and and guesstimate a weight. Like there's ways to kind of back into it a little bit, but the more you have a strong data platform, the easier it is to celebrate those, identify and then celebrate those wins.
Tom Raftery:
Okay. Nice. And obviously given what's happening in the world these days, supply chain resilience is a really hot topic. How can a focus on sustainability contribute to resilience rather than being seen as a, another thing that we have to do to keep the company going?
Jenna Fink:
This is where I think having the visibility end to end of your product life cycle can really help tell the story. And so, for many folks in the supply chain, you're not seeing or feeling or touching the raw materials. You're getting some sort of product that's either in the process of being manufactured or packaged and moving on down the line. How do you help create that visibility to see, oh, the raw materials for this could actually be very seriously impacted if we cannot figure out climate change. And that's going to be whether you're in food and bev and looking at like your raw material sources from an agronomic standpoint, if you're in apparel and looking at your ability to source organic cotton and in the ability to have that kind of resilient ability to grow cotton. One of the things that I thought was really interesting in my time at Bayer, is that the company was looking at where to focus its cotton growth strategy based off of expected climate risk, and that was going to be a greater expense to move the cotton production. It was going to be a greater risk because the areas that are kind of ideal for cotton growing at least in North America are also tend to be at risk for hurricanes. And as we see hurricanes continue to grow, you have to take that step back and think. And so it all goes back into how do we give people the visibility of the impact that climate change is having on their product, on their good, on whatever's happening in their supply chain? How do you help leaders tell the story and connect the dots for their employees on the raw material sourcing or transportation, logistics and managing through, you know, typhoons in the Pacific. And what does that look like from supply chain, resiliency and risk standpoint? Tell those stories. Help people see the impact. And I think that also helps create clarity on the why and why it's important for not just you and not just the company, but for the business as a whole.
Tom Raftery:
Right. And I mean, talking about risks in the context of sustainability, especially you also mentioned scope three emissions. What are the major risks companies might overlook and, you know, how should they reposition their approach to tackle these hidden challenges?
Jenna Fink:
So, I see the greater risk in scope three in really working with smaller vendors. I see a concern when it comes to scope three with making sure that you're bringing all of your vendors and all of your suppliers along for the ride with you. Very easy for a large, company, a large logistics network to hire a sustainability team to put in place the right technology they can afford that capital to measure and report out. My concern is if we continue to move into focusing on connecting that data end to end and only working with a set of partners that we're going to lose some of those mom and pop vendors, that it's going to be really difficult to enter the market without the right data and the right tools and the right technology and we'll start to lose some of the companies that that, you know could have been partners with organisations for long periods of time. And so I think the risk is not bringing your entire supply chain with you. Not bringing all of your vendors and partners along with you and creating the education there. Again going back to that prioritisation if you're looking at, you know, mom and pop owned warehouse that might have two to four full time employees. When are they going to build a sustainability dashboard? They're probably not. So what can you do as a company in the space to take what you've learned and to take the technology that you have and make it easier for them to come along with you share the why. Make it as easy for them to share the data as they capture it. And then you use AI tools to transform that data into whatever kind of your standard workboard or dashboard could look like.
Tom Raftery:
If you had a crystal ball looking five or 10 years down the road, what would, do you think the supply chain landscape looked like in terms of sustainability in say 2035, 2030, 2035? And what's the story that you'd love for us to be able to tell when we start building today? Mm
Jenna Fink:
I actually had a call with a client this morning that was discussing a little bit of their vision about what they want to be able to do with with sustainable reporting and the sustainable approaches and I loved this approach. I'm actually going to steal it from them because I think it's an awesome vision to have. And the idea is that they'll be able to take their kind of whole suite of data, end to end, products, inventory, all their different regional datasets, databases, and be able to ask a tool, a ChatGPT, or whatever it may be, How much carbon does it take to produce 1x of one product? Or for if I'm selling to X grocery chain, what is my footprint of a product going to X grocery chain and being able to really dive in and organise your data in a way to identify these opportunity areas. And to be able to say this product is the greenest on the market and not just have that be a greenwashing claim, but to say it costs half a ton of CO2 to put you know 200 of these on the market and to be able to say that, and be able to to back that up with data and use that as a marketing play use it as a contract negotiation opportunity with your suppliers with your vendors to say our expectation is that we're going to get down to this level. And we're going to have the data to back it up and you're going to be partners with us in that activity. And that really will help us take sustainability and scope very specifically from this like big overwhelming topic that feels like it's just got all these different opportunities into slice and dice it. Let's search for the highest opportunity areas. Let's make it crystal clear what we're trying to do with each of these. And then we can continue to refine and get real time feedback on if it's working or not. That to me is kind of my ideal state of where we get to from scope three data and reporting standpoint.
Tom Raftery:
No, I remember having conversations with, with Ariba back in 2013, 2014, I was at their Ariba live event. I can't remember if it was the one in Berlin or the one in Rome, but they were talking about how they had this new thing where you could look down through all your suppliers and look for forced labor in your supply chain. And I asked the question then that's all very nice and very laudable. Fantastic. Well done. But why can't you also look down through your suppliers and see which of your suppliers, which are, I don't know. You say you want 10,000 desks or pens or whatever it is, you can right now look down through all your suppliers and say, okay, this one gives me the best price or this one gives me the on time delivery or whatever it is, but there was nothing similar for carbon. So, you know, 10 years later, that's still not possible. When will we be able to get something like that in something like an Ariba or similar where you can just look down through and go, okay, these particular suppliers are great for price, but on the carbon front, not so good. So if I want to optimize for my carbon budget for next year, I should really be looking at these suppliers over here.
Jenna Fink:
Yeah, I think there's two major changes that we're seeing in the industry that's going to accelerate that. The 1st is really the additional teeth that the EU CSRD has. It's. You know, going to be much more applicable to a broader number of companies. And so you're gonna start to see some standardisation of data capture and reporting that maybe the industry has been missing up until this point. So I think that's kind of step one is just some, some a little bit more aggression in the regulatory compliance space, but step two, and I think this is going to be the step change piece is the availability of AI and AI tools. A lot of the information, a lot of the data that feeds into the question of who's going to have the lowest carbon footprint in this space, that data exists. It's out there. It's very difficult to aggregate. It's very difficult to wrangle and get organised in a way that can give you a really clear insight really quickly. That's where having tools like AI that can come in, add that layer on top of the data and generate some insights quickly. Learn from previous questions, continue to evolve. That'll give you that level of clarity because the data exists, the data is there, but my goodness, nobody wants to go down and capture it and organise it. And it is time consuming and tedious and exhausting. And most people don't have the time or the resources to make it happen. AI can start to bring about the ability to capture and organise and generate those insights much faster.
Tom Raftery:
What metrics or KPIs should companies focus on to measure the success of their sustainability initiatives? And you know, how can they ensure continuous improvement?
Jenna Fink:
We standardize our metrics reporting our greenhouse gas reporting back to kind of carbon emissions and and carbon emissions is a catch all obviously, there's a lot of different gases that then you can adjust and transform and, you know, methane X amount X of carbon. All that good stuff. The clearer and easier that you can make your KPI to change organisational behavior, the better. And so you can, you can normalise everything to metric tons of carbon. That's kind of an industry standard. It's a really easy way to start to measure and report out progress in a way that you can compare apples to apples with other companies and competitors in this space. What that doesn't measure is that doesn't measure progress to understanding organisational change your organisation caring, understanding the why it doesn't measure progress towards having an accurate baseline. And so, if you're looking at measuring those things I know there's a lot of companies that do things like pulse checks and pulse reports and so a standard question on there of you know, have you done anything with a sustainable impact in the past six months or since the last survey, something that helps people tie the work they're doing to a sustainable impact or carbon reduction because people are, people are all the time doing sustainable things. Do they know that? Are they aware of that? I think that can help measure just that organisational changes. I am doing it and it feels good. And that's a really nice touch point to have. The second piece is, are we transparent with our data? Are we sharing that? Do people in our organisation know what our target is? Do we have a target? If I were to ask an employee on the shop floor on one of my production sites, do they know what the overall company target is for production? Even better, do they know what their facility's role is in that? Is there a facility level kind of drop down of what their percent of the overall target looks like? So, I think asking for awareness and understanding, help understand, help measure the organisational progress. And then from an actual emissions reduction, it's really nice to simplify it as much as possible. That could be in something like a CO2 emissions. The other one that's kind of nice to make it more tangible can be, especially if you have a logistics heavy organisation, can be miles driven or something similar that that feels a little bit more real and not just kind of ethereal like CO2 emissions can.
Tom Raftery:
Okay. Nice. Nice. Left field question.
Jenna Fink:
Sure.
Tom Raftery:
If, if you could have any person or character alive or dead, real or fictional as a spokesperson for supply chain sustainability, who would it be and why?
Jenna Fink:
That's an excellent question. And I'm going to give you an even more out of left field answer. And I'll qualify this with I think it is most important to have people support support sustainability that you wouldn't expect. So I'm going to tell you Elon Musk. And that is not because I'm particularly supportive of his policies and of his leadership style. However, I think it's become very clear that he has the ear of an entire generation, especially in tech and business world. And I think it's most critical to excite those that aren't in the space now to see that it's critical. It's going to be important for resiliency and that it is kind of an essential skill set, too, to be bringing into the workplace. So if if I could have someone out of left field, put their voice behind the importance of this, he's the one I would choose right now, I think.
Tom Raftery:
Well, if you're going that direction, why not go the whole hog and say Donald Trump?
Jenna Fink:
Oh, I'm not going to get into that on this call. I, as I mentioned, I think we're probably going to see some scaling back in the next in the next US presidency. And so it is more important for businesses to take the lead today. More important for businesses to put a stake in the ground and the why and the criticality because likely broader US federal regulations will start to be pulled back, or at least it will not be moving forward in the way that maybe they had been on track to before.
Tom Raftery:
Jenna, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I didn't ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?
Jenna Fink:
No question that you asked me, but I'd like to ask you, what is it about sustainability that that gets you out of bed that that makes you want to spend your time doing a podcast like this and getting people engaged
Tom Raftery:
Good question. Yeah, it's it's something I've been passionate about for a very long time. So, I am a graduate biologist and even before that, my father was a professor of agriculture in University College Cork in Ireland and he used to take me at weekends out to the countryside and, you know, we'd go and see nature, go and see animals, farms, whatever it was. My uncles had farms as well. So I've always had that kind of love of nature inculcated in me. And Yeah, like I say, I went on to do a degree in biology, did post grad, I did a post grad in biological control, so it's, and then I got distracted into tech and started a tech firm and went from there, but I've always had that, still that love of nature and the, the ability then to combine the two and work at the intersection of technology and sustainability has been kind of a dream come true for me.
Jenna Fink:
Very cool. Well, I'm really excited to be a part of this and to hear your story. And then from my side, you know, I guess my kind of final pitch or plea is that, you know, if you're someone that's interested in the space that you've got a passion around it, it's going to be more important than ever to continue to tell the story and to tell your why. That's gonna be the same again is from a CEO of a fortune 500 company to, you know, an individual on the shop floor. That's actually, frankly, executing some of these programs and changes that make a difference. And so, I would just ask anybody who's listening and anybody who's got passion in the space, find your find your place to share your story to share your why at work in person in your personal lives. It's as we see a swing in policies, it's gonna be so important that we continue to kind of make progress in this space.
Tom Raftery:
100%, great. Jenna, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?
Jenna Fink:
I will have you direct 'em to either my LinkedIn page, which is just Jenna Fink and also to Zero100. So we've got a member website, has a ton of really interesting content. All of our research is posted in there. They also have a LinkedIn page that posts quite a bit of that research as well. So Zero100 on LinkedIn, Jenna Fink on LinkedIn. Or if you wanna learn more about becoming part of the community, you can reach out to me directly.
Tom Raftery:
Super. Jenna, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.
Jenna Fink:
Thank you so much for having me.
Tom Raftery:
Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.
