____________________________________________________________________________________ Main Interview- Sweep
it can put alternative routes or options in place to keep supply at the level needed to protect its own revenue. We are already seeing some of our larger retail clients put incentives in place for their supply chains, because the starting point is always having an accurate, real-time picture of what is happening. If there is a risk identified with a particular supplier, but that supplier is committed to improving and reducing its own exposure to disruption, large retail clients can actually help scale climate solutions for that supplier directly. It is always a matter of connecting information and connecting the dots. When you bring the sustainability team, the CFO’ s office and risk management together within a business, it becomes incredibly powerful in terms of improving supplier health over the next five years. Supply chain risk has always been discussed during periods of disruption, but it has accelerated considerably because regulatory frameworks now require that data to be collected formally. The fact that the data is auditable makes it carry real weight in the boardroom. Regulatory frameworks have made auditable data the legitimate foundation for those conversations,” Rachel elaborates.
The role of technology
Underpinning all of this is the critical role technology plays in mapping environmental and supply chain exposure across a vast and varied supplier base. Before founding Sweep, Rachel read her first IPCC report and recognized the scale of the threat clearly: the risks were real and accelerating, and while solutions existed, there was no clear way to connect them to the problem at hand. With 15 years of experience in digital, cloud and SaaS software behind her, solving that challenge through new technology was something that Rachel could confidently take on.
“ Alongside my co-founders, we set out to connect those dots, at the very least to help companies understand the full perimeter of their challenge, so they could make better decisions about which solutions to choose. Technology is fundamentally about giving visibility to data points, bringing in historical data so a company can see whether it is progressing and in which direction it is heading. For instance, when acquiring a new company, businesses now look closely at ESG exposure, and technology should already have that ESG data organized and ready. Increasingly, it is also about protecting the value of an investment, because a significant part of that value resides within the ESG data itself. A company with strong revenue today but real exposure elsewhere in its ESG profile may simply not be worth the same in five years’ time.
“ Technology gives businesses a sense of what still needs correcting and what that correction might cost. In the same way the financial world built out a financial technology stack over time, retailers are now building an ESG and carbon technology stack that allows them to audit their own performance honestly, whether they like the results they find or not. The most important thing is understanding your baseline through technology, and understanding the trajectory you are defining from that point forward. Technology helps companies build those assumptions and test them against reality, in exactly the same way they would when budgeting revenue or planning procurement,” Rachel concludes. ■
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