Do you have a grip on your supply chain? Really? Do you have a realtime view of your suppliers’ inventory, and reliable information about their sustainability initiatives and how they affect your environmental and social business goals down to the individual product level? Probably not. But you can, and maybe you should.

There’s a new report out this past June from the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum, in partnership with E2open and the Global Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN), offering insights into the forces and factors driving value chain executives towards greater levels of collaboration and accountability. Derived from scores of interviews with top management at a variety of companies, it’s titled Acceleration of Eco-Operation: Achieving Success & Sustainability in the Supply Chain, and a bit of an eye opener for businesses managing complex, multi-partner supply chains.

It turns out that consumers and your own supply chain partners are all pushing for a more transparent, accountable lifecycle supply chain view. If your customers aren’t clamoring for a full accounting of your carbon footprint just yet, most everyone believes they will soon.

The good news is the report provides some answers, and good recommendations on centralized software services that track inventories, raw material sources and individual items in your and your partners production cycles. This can give you the information you need to make valid claims as to the environmental impact of your finished product, and another significant benefit: Cost savings. These same information hubs give managers the tools they need to make the supply chain as lean and efficient as possible, improving your bottom line.

If you’re all about efficiency (and let’s face it, who’s not), give this 92 page report a good read and implement some of the recommendations. Two-thirds of the report is a selection of interviews and insights from key management from BP, ConAgra Foods, Lenovo, IBM and more, all of whom have taken major steps down this road, and seen solid results. When your customers and partners start clamoring for environmental accountability, you’ll be ready with the answers, and a more robust bottom line too.

Read the Eco-Accountability Report Here >

Tags: business efficiency, green business, sustainable business