Supply Chain Data

Category one is usually half of Scope 3 and almost always the half that is guessed. We go after primary data from tier one and, where the spend justifies it, tier two: a survey written so a supplier can answer it without a consultant, chased by somebody whose job that week is chasing it.

What comes back is reconciled against your purchase ledger before it is used. What does not come back is recorded as a gap and estimated from spend, clearly marked as such, because an average dressed up as a measurement is worse than an honest estimate.

• A supplier survey your tier one can actually complete
• A primary data set reconciled against the purchase ledger
• An estimate register naming every line still modelled from spend
• A response rate, stated plainly, supplier by supplier

How far down the tiers the data can be made to reach before the cost of chasing it stops being worth the precision it buys. That line is drawn in writing at the start, with the spend threshold that sets it, so nobody discovers halfway through that the boundary moved.

Returns come straight from tier one. Where a supplier never answered, the line says estimated from spend and names the supplier, rather than quietly averaging the gap away.

Ten to fourteen weeks, most of which is waiting on suppliers rather than working on spreadsheets. That is the honest shape of the job: the counting itself takes days, and the chasing takes everything else, which is also why the second year costs a fraction of the first.

You receive the primary data set, the estimate register and the survey itself, so next year the chase starts from a list of people who have already answered once.