Working With Sustainability Assessment (Customer Role)

Customers register on SAP Product Stewardship Network to connect to their suppliers. After registering on the system, a customer can connect to his suppliers that are already on the system and invite those who are not. A connection is necessary in order to send survey invitations to a supplier. To be able to create and send surveys, you need to purchase a TSC Product Sustainability Toolkit license in the SAP Online Store. Each TSC Product Sustainability Toolkit is specific to one category such as “Beer” or “Baby Wipes”. It contains a questionnaire and supporting documents.

To learn about the details, please read the instructions below.

Buy TSC Product Sustainability Toolkits

TSC Product Sustainability Toolkits can be purchased in the SAP Online Store. Please be informed that this is an annual subscription fee, which means that the Toolkits can be used for 12 months after buying them.

The price for a 12 month subscription is 699 USD/year. Buying the license grants you access to all TSC Product Sustainability Toolkits available on SAP Product Stewardship Network.

After you have purchased the toolkit license, your authorizations on SAP Product Stewardship Network will be updated. You will be notified of the update by e-mail once your account has been updated.

All details about licenses are outlined in the document TSC Product Sustainability Toolkit licenses.

Create Surveys

After you have bought and activated the necessary toolkits and are connected to your suppliers, you can start creating surveys. To do so, go to the Work With Suppliers work center and click on Create Survey.

In the pop-up window you can give your survey a name and choose the questionnaire/toolkit you would like to use for this survey. You can also set a due date for which you would like your suppliers to submit the survey and a close date after which the suppliers are not allowed to change any data in their surveys. After you have entered all necessary information, clicking on Save and Open will open the survey and will allow you to change all the relevant information and add suppliers, whom you want to answer the survey. After you have done this, you can send the survey to your suppliers by clicking on Send. They will then have time to answer it until the due date. You can add suppliers at any time by opening the survey again and you can also check the current state of each supplier’s survey in the same window. You can also withdraw the survey from suppliers which you do not want to answer the survey you send to them.

Enabling Supplier Self-Service

You can enable your suppliers to find and take your surveys even if you have not sent them these surveys. This enables you to receive more responses to your surveys, providing valuable sustainability information about your suppliers.

To do so, open a survey and click Edit in the General Information section. Mark the checkbox Suppliers can add themselves to this survey.

Adding Tags and Product Guidelines

When creating a survey, it is possible to include a product guideline as well as a list of included and excluded products for each survey. This helps your suppliers to better understand the scope of the survey and to find your survey in searches.

It is also possible to add tags. These tags help you identify and filter surveys. These tags are also available in the reports that you can download (Enterprise users only).

The following features are available for companies using the professional or enterprise edition only

View Survey Result Reports

A survey result report contains statistical information regarding the number of submissions, the average score of your survey participants, and the ranking of your suppliers. It can viewed by going to the Work With Suppliers work center and clicking on Open Report next to the survey you would like to view. The report displays the following data:

Information: Displays the survey name, questionnaire name, supplier due date, survey close date, and message from the customer, if available
Participants: Displays the total number of participants, the number and percentage of participants who have submitted the survey, and the number and percentage of participants who have not yet submitted the survey
Overall Score: Displays the average (arithmetic mean) score of all participants who have submitted the survey
Supplier Breakdown by Overall Score: Sorts suppliers who have submitted the survey into three categories depending on their overall survey score
Top 5 KPIs with Highest Improvement Potential: Displays the KPIs for which suppliers who have submitted the survey have the lowest score on average, and therefore the highest improvement potential. Improvement potential is calculated by subtracting a supplier’s score from 100%.
Supplier Ranking: Displays a ranking of your suppliers by survey score. The ranking includes all participants who have submitted the survey.
KPI Details: Displays the average score and average improvement potential of each key performance indicator (KPI) included in the survey

View Your Supplier’s Scorecard

A supplier scorecard indicates a supplier’s score and improvement potential for each key performance indicator (KPI) as well as how the supplier ranks against other survey participants. As a customer, you can view the supplier scorecards of suppliers participating in your surveys. You can view supplier scorecards by opening one of your surveys in the Surveys tab of the Work with Suppliers work center. You can open the scorecard of a desired supplier by clicking Open Scorecard next to the supplier’s name in the list of recipients.

The scorecard contains the following information:

Information: The customer name, survey name, questionnaire name, supplier due date, and a message from the customer, if available
Score: The supplier’s survey score based on the supplier’s answers to the survey. You can also view the supplier’s rank against other participants who have submitted the survey as well as the average score of all participants who have submitted the survey.
Supplier Ranking: A ranking of survey participants, including the four suppliers ranked higher and the four suppliers ranked lower than the chosen supplier. The names of the other suppliers are kept anonymous. The supplier ranking is available only if 5 or more suppliers have submitted the survey.
KPIs with Highest Improvement Potential: A chart displaying which KPIs have the highest improvement potential among all participants who have submitted the survey. In this case, improvement potential is calculated as the average score for each question subtracted from 100%.
KPI Details: The chosen supplier’s answer to each KPI question as well as the following information for each question:

Score (your company): The chosen supplier’s score for this question
Improvement Potential: The chosen supplier’s score for this question subtracted from 100%
Score (average): The average (arithmetic mean) score of all participating suppliers who have submitted the survey

Important Links

Sustainability Assessment - Get Started

Working With Sustainability Assessment (Supplier Role)

FAQs - Sustainability Assessment

FAQs - TSC® Product Sustainability Toolkits

Pricing and Features

Working with Sustainability Assessment (Customer Role)