Bell Food Group streamlines sustainability indicator monitoring with Jedox

The company recognizes that only a sustainable use of limited resources such as soil, water and energy can secure the foundations of agriculture and food production. Thus, sustainability plays a key role at different levels of the Bell Food Group’s corporate strategy. Monitoring the sustainability indicators across all business units of the Bell Food Group is an important measure for regulating and controlling the sustainability strategy.

These indicators are used to measure the performance and progress in sustainability management and are included in the detailed annual sustainability report of the cooperative society Coop Group, the main shareholder of the Bell Food Group, in accordance with the standards of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

The Sustainability Competence Centre, which monitors and evaluates the sustainability strategy, was looking for a software solution that would simplify the collection and monitoring of the company’s sustainability and other metrics.

“Our goal was to make the process of collecting metrics more efficient. Since 2014, we’ve been expanding significantly and the number of our subsidiaries has grown – and using Excel to record non-financial information was simply no longer viable,” explains Samuel Widmer, Project Manager Environment and Sustainability Management at Bell Food Group AG.

Why Bell Food Group chose Jedox

Different solutions were evaluated. Jedox expertise in group controlling and human resources, as well as its flexibility and ease of use, were the reasons Jedox was selected. The Bell Food Group decided to work with Consilix as a project implementation partner. “Consilix has expertise with the Jedox platfom and more generally, the topic of data management,” reports Samuel Widmer. “We also liked Consilix’s willingness to work in partnership with us on a solution to ensure proper training and knowledge transfer. We see benefits well into the future because it is our goal is to make Jedox the standard solution, a single source of truth, for management reporting, planning, and performance management.”

Input masks for 25 different data areas were created in Jedox. Around 160 employees in 15 countries, working in areas such as controlling, engineering and facility management, currently use these to enter metrics at almost all locations. Metrics such as SAP procurement key figures and invoice data from service providers such as waste and transport companies are what form the basis. Responsible parties receive regular emails asking them to enter their data within 15 days. These customized emails contain links to the specific input report, to a training video explaining how to use the input masks, and to the Bell Food support. Employees who are responsible for several data areas receive aggregated emails, limiting the number of emails sent as part of the workflow. Around 180 different metrics are collected, including energy consumption according to type and source, GHG emissions (carbon dioxide equivalents according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard) per distributed units of goods, amount of waste, water consumption according to type and source, etc.

More efficiency and transparency

Jedox has helped improve the efficiency and quality of data entries, says Samuel Widmer: “I can see who has entered what live and at a glance – without having to search through all files and emails. It also lets me check for plausibility. For example, if someone enters a value that is too far off the expected value, that figure will be highlighted in red and the person who collected the figure will have to provide an explanation for the deviation or correct it.” The greatest value for the Bell Food Group is the improved transparency.

“We can only identify appropriate measures to become even more sustainable if everyone in the company knows exactly where we stand, at any time and without any effort. Jedox makes this possible. Transparent metrics also help to stay in line with legal requirements – especially when it comes to more stringent compliance and reporting obligations: Starting with the 2023 reporting year, TCFD climate-related disclosures will be mandatory for large organizations in Switzerland.”

– Samuel Widmer, Project Manager Environment and Sustainability Management, Bell Food Group

The solution will be further expanded over the next few months. Data from the group-wide energy management system that is currently being set up will flow automatically and aggregated into Jedox, so that the employees responsible for data collection only have to approve the measurement data. In a further step, Power BI will be introduced for the visualization of the key figures from Jedox.