Pillar Three
Digitisation & collaborative ecosystems
Making the chain visible and enabling convergence, innovation and the creation of collaborative ecosystems — value drawn from data that is shared by design: with the right people, on the right terms.
What this pillar covers
Focus areas
- A data spine: provenance, carbon, engagement
- Digital product passports & traceability
- Convergence across standards & frameworks
- Ecosystems that create shared value
- Disclosure by design: who sees what, under what protection
What we believe
Data architecture is destiny. Digital product passports, EUDR geolocation, CBAM emissions, ESRS datapoints and due-diligence records are converging on one underlying capability: knowing your chain and being able to show it. Products will carry their own provenance data. Evidence of how they were made still needs a system behind it. The winners will treat that evidence as an asset and decide, with counsel, what is disclosed, to whom and on what terms: open enough to earn trust, protected enough not to create avoidable liability.
What we do
We help companies and coalitions design the data spine of the transparent chain — what to trace, what to verify, what to share, with whom and under what legal protection — and build the collaborative ecosystems that turn shared visibility into shared value.
How we engage
Where we can help
01
Traceability & the data spine
- Define and build the supply chain mapping and sub-tier visibility strategies matched to regulatory scope (DPP, EUDR, CBAM, forced-labour evidence)
- Data architecture design: identifiers, carriers and interoperability decisions that determine whether compliance is a bolt-on or a rebuild
- Work towards provenance, carbon and engagement signal in one spine — carbon carried as product-level primary data, so it can trigger a sourcing decision or an investment case, not just populate a disclosure
02
Continuous signal
- From audit day to living system: continuous monitoring design, early-warning indicators and effectiveness measurement, with a defined response every time a signal fires
- Worker and community voice as an early-warning signal: aggregated for detection, with a separate, consented route when a case must become evidence — grievances, surveys and early warning living beside provenance and carbon, built with our partner &Wider
- Claims substantiation: verified data behind every on-pack and public claim
- CBAM and product passports are making primary supplier data commercially consequential — the point at which reducing emissions, rather than estimating them, becomes worth paying for
03
Collaborative ecosystems
- Sector collaborations and shared-assessment models: one robust, independently verified assessment, governed collectively with seats for worker organisations, used by many
- Data-sharing governance: who sees what, consent, competition and confidentiality by design, including antitrust guardrails and clean-team arrangements for shared assessments
- Convergence work across standards and frameworks — interoperability instead of questionnaire proliferation
- Find efficiency in the ecosystem: from circularity to power generation, from resilience needs to disaster risk reduction, from innovation to collaboration — visibility, controls, engagement and verified data are the capabilities that create efficiency, resilience and growth
Companies building traceability and evidence systems; platforms, standards bodies and coalitions designing shared infrastructure.
For general counsel, disclosure decided before collection. For procurement and operations, one data spine instead of questionnaire proliferation. For sustainability, claims that can be substantiated.
Five principles
Five principles run through every pillar
- Run by suppliers, verified independently. Suppliers run their own systems. Independent parties verify them, and many buyers rely on one result. Ownership of the system, not of the verdict. Evidence →
- Informed by workers, organised where possible. Anonymous channels to detect what audits miss; trade unions and worker organisations in governance, verification and remedy wherever they exist. Evidence →
- Partnership with consequence, both ways. Capability building backed by consequence: for suppliers that do not remediate, and for buyers whose price, lead times and payment terms cause harm. Evidence →
- Disclosure by design. What is recorded and disclosed, to whom and under what legal protection, decided with counsel before the first data point is collected.
- Exposure first. What the business stands to lose and what workers would be owed, quantified with the time evidence takes to build, set the case. Revenue reward is upside. Evidence →
Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas
Use what is yours so as to harm no other.
Talk to us about making your chain visible