Standard Owner Benchmark® Methodology

One of the biggest challenges in the sustainability industry is the need for more normalized data on sustainable procurement. Today, there are more standards that define sustainability than consumers can understand with over 1,000 existing standards and 50-100 new standards being added each year. CommonShare’s Standard Owner Benchmark® offers a comprehensive system for the comparative evaluation of Standard Owners to make it easier for brands and consumers to understand which standards are relevant and worth incorporating into their sustainable procurement plan. Our goal is to create incentives that establish a “race to the top” in digitization and best practices in sustainability, quality, labor, and origin standards.

Further, CommonShare’s Standard Owner Benchmark® allows Standard Owners to benchmark their performance against peers in the sustainable procurement market. The data powering the benchmark is continually updated through a combination of human research, machine learning algorithms, LLM driven AI, survey response, and real time management of company data within CommonShare’s platform.

The first version of the Standard Owner Benchmark® launched in April 2023. Data from members of CommonShare is used to rebalance the benchmark quarterly with data submissions required by May 31st, August 31st, November 30th, and February 28th of each year. Non-members have the opportunity to include their data on November 30th of each year.

CommonShare’s Standard Owner Benchmark® considers five dimensions as part of the benchmark: Governance, Supply Side Digitization, Buy Side Availability, Relevance and Digital Accessibility. Each Standard Owner obtains a grade between 1 and 5 for every dimension, 5 being the highest (best) grade, and 1 being the lowest. We then calculate the average from the total of all dimensions to obtain the final grade.

Obtaining a grade for each Standard Owner

We specifically look at 5 dimensions: Governance, Supply Side Digitization, Buy Side Availability, Relevance, and Digital Accessibility. Each Standard Owner obtains a grade between 1 to 5 for every dimension, 5 being the highest (best) grade, and 1 being the lowest. We then calculate the average from the total of all the dimensions to obtain the final grade.:

Supply Side Digitization

Our Supply Side Digitization metric considers how easy it is to include details on certified entities into third-party digital applications. Certifications provide tremendous value to sustainable procurement by reducing search and information costs. However, that is only true to the extent it is easy to source, manipulate, and verify certificate data. CommonShare’s Data Standards provide best practices for normalization of standards at the facility, product, material/ingredient, batch/lot, company, and transaction level.

Grades:

The Standard Owner offers Company Search, Product Search, Merchandised Product Search (if the Standard Owner certifies products), Facility Search, Geolocated Facility Search, All Associated Documents, and API.

The Standard Owner’s website offers Company Search, Product Search, Merchandised Product Search (if the Standard Owner certifies products), and Facility Search (with or without Geolocated Facility Search). Furthermore, the website shows all associated documents or the Standard Owner has an API. If the Standard Owner does not have Facility Search but has all other features, it will also fall under this grade.

The Standard Owner’s website offers Company Search, Product Search (if the Standard Owner certifies products), and one of Geolocated Facility Search, merchandised products, associated documents, or API. It also includes companies that have either Company Search or Product Search (if the Standard Owner certifies products), Facility Search, and all documents and API and those that would have all features except associated documents and API available.

he Standard Owner has Company Search, Product Search (if the Standard Owner certifies products), and Facility Search, or a combination with one of these and another feature (e.g., Company Search and geolocated facility; Product Search and merchandised products; Product Search and API, etc).

The Standard Owners offer minimal search functionality.