Business Case
Please note that this content is under development and is not ready for implementation. This status message will be updated as content development progresses.
The Business Case for Change
Without sufficient commercial incentive, businesses will not act. In some cases the commercial incentive is regulatory compliance. But few economies (The European Union is a notable exception) have current or emerging regulation that demands digital product passports for products sole or manufactured in their economy. However, there is much wider regulatory enforcement of annual corporate sustainability disclosures. But without sustainability data from supply chains at product level, there is no easy way for corporates to accurately meet their annual disclosure obligations. Worse, without product level data from suppliers, there is no way at all for corporates to select supply in such a way that they can demonstrate year-on-year improvements to sustainability performance. On top of the disclosure obligation, most corporates are very concerned about reputational risk associates with un-sustainable behaviour from their upstream suppliers. Furthermore, the financial sector is increasingly able and willing to provide improved financial terms for trade finance or investment capital to businesses with string sustainability credentials. All these incentives drive behaviour and value but there is still some effort needed for each implementer to make a positive business case for change. UNTP offers some tools to determine the value that can inform a positive case for change.
Business Case Template (BCT).
A simple template for each role (buyer, supplier, certifier, software vendor, regulator, etc) to make a business case for the investment needed to implement UNTP. Continuously updated and improved with lessons from early implementations, the BCT provides a quick way for sustainability staff to support for their budget requests.
Community Activation Program (CAP).
Supply chain actors are often reluctant to proceed with a specific initiate like UNTP unless they have some confidence that others in their industry are doing the same. There are not only obvious interoperability benefits from industry wide adoption but also cost benefits. For example, it is often the case that a small number of commercial software platforms are commonly used by larger numbers of businesses in a given industry and jurisdiction. So a software vendor that implements UNTP once will benefit all it's customers. Additionally there are often a few standards and a few certifiers that are common to an industry and country. Also, there is very often one or more existing member associations that represent most of the actors in a given industry and country. Finally, when a large community is willing to act together, there will often be financial incentives from governments and/or development banks that can assist with initial funding. In short, there are many reasons to approach uNTP implementation at a community level. The CAP is a business template for a community level adoption of UNTP including a tool for financial cost/benefit modelling at community level.
Value Assessment Framework (VAF).
Once a community or individual implements UNTP and transparency data starts to flow at scale, it will become important to continuously assess the actual value that is realised. Dashboards and scorecards that measure key performance indicators will energise ongoing action and provide valuable feedback at both community and UN level. Therefore the UNTP defines a minimal set of KPIs that each implementer can easily measure and report to their community - and which communities can report to the UN.