How Ingredion Centralizes ESG Data with Sunhats Collaborative Proof Platform

The Situation 

Ingredion’s Continued Growth in Sustainability 

As a provider of ingredient solutions from agricultural inputs, Ingredion is deeply committed to sustainability across its entire operation. They have made significant progress in sustainably sourcing crops and reducing carbon emissions, with a strong focus on aligning with the needs of their customers and the broader industry. Sustainability plays a key role in driving growth for their business and advancing progress, both for their own goals and those of their customers.

The pace of change in sustainability is rapidly accelerating, fueled by regulatory shifts, emerging standards, and evolving demands from both customers and consumers. This rapid evolution brings added complexity, requiring them to adapt continuously to meet new expectations. 

To ensure transparency and verifiable proof of its sustainability maturity, Ingredion leverages widely recognized external ratings from organizations like EcoVadis and the CDP.

‍

The Challenge

Collaboration on Sustainability Questionnaires

Ingredion faced evolving challenges in its data collection process for customer requests, sustainability reporting, relying considerably on manual methods. While the company had established systems for gathering specific quantitative indicators, the collection of qualitative data and document management remained a significant gap. Additionally, assessments such as EcoVadis are conducted at both the holding and facility levels, which, coupled with evolving standards and processes, presented further resource constraints and complexities for Ingredion’s sustainability team.

With the increasing demand for sustainability data, a key challenge emerged: the lack of a centralized place for Ingredions’s growing number of data and respective proof documents. Hence, they were looking for an AI-based solution that could build up this central library, while streamlining their project collaboration and ensuring compliance with the ever-evolving reporting standards and guidelines.

Through Sunhat, they can now easily exchange knowledge and best practices across the group, sharing documents and insights to accelerate collective progress.

{{testimonial-big}}

The Solution

The Sunhat Moment

The sustainability team at Ingredion was convinced by Sunhat’s solution, as the software not only addresses their immediate reporting management needs but also provides flexibility and scalability to adapt to future reporting requests from their customers and their regulators.

Sunhat’s software provides the tools and capabilities necessary to map Ingredion’s internal data structure to the diverse range of sustainability reporting projects. This enables them to efficiently manage their sustainability data and corresponding documents, ensuring that each response is tailored to meet the specific rating and reporting needs.

By harnessing the power of Sunhat’s advanced AI technology and flexible data collection features, Ingredion is able to consolidate their data and document sources into a single, accessible Collaborative Proof Platform and tackle reporting challenges head-on.

Participating in rating systems like CDP and EcoVadis, the sustainability team was eager to establish systematic processes and an efficient project management framework for managing rating frameworks. 

How Ingredion Uses Sunhat

Ingredion uses Sunhat’s modules which link the questionnaires and data requests with their sustainability data. While answering the required questions, the database is automatically filled and evidence is generated at every point within the software.

By setting up flexible data collections, Ingredion is able to successfully collaborate internally as well as externally with their stakeholders. Being able to assign tasks and responsibilities provides Ingredion’s team members with transparency and visibility into the workflow, enabling them to track progress and prioritize tasks effectively.

Sunhat’s inbox and project management features enable Ingredion’s team to effectively respond to the EcoVadis assessment, or the CDP questionnaire, along with the necessary steps and actions to achieve continuous progress and long-term results in their sustainability initiatives.

As of today, Ingredion leverages Sunhat across a wide range of sustainability and compliance projects, including:

• Customer questionnaires
• Competitor benchmarking (in collaboration with PhD students)
• Code of Conduct mapping
• SEDEX SAQ for all sites
• SMETA audit preparation module
• Agricultural data collection
• EcoVadis 
• CDP

In the future, Ingredion plans to further expand its use of Sunhat to include:

• Global Sustainability Report
• HREDD
• Ethisphere
• Scope 3 PCF data documentation for customer requests

Above all, Ingredion benefits from Sunhat as an AI-based Collaborative Proof Platform for assigning data, finding answers and generating proof across their global operations.

{{testimonial-small-1}}

‍

The Results

A Ready-to-use Proof Library

Through the integration of Sunhat, Ingredion is able to establish a comprehensive database of quantitative and qualitative ESG data on an ongoing basis. With every new reporting and data request that Ingredion answers by using Sunhat, their central data pool grows.

By staying ahead of standard changes and continuously refining their approach, Ingredion is positioned to lead in sustainability, helping both their business and their customers thrive in a changing marketplace.