The Advantage Global Client Development team attended the 2022 Consumer Goods Forum Global Summit in Dublin, Ireland. The summit hosted 244 companies, over 700 business leaders, and C-level executives from over 70 countries, including senior leaders from Advantage Group International. These leaders gathered in person for the first time after two years to take stock of the lessons learned from recent global crises.
The theme of the 2022 summit was “From Resilience to Reinvention: Responsible Growth in the New Era”. This reflected a collective readiness to progress past temporary COVID-19 strategies and move towards long-term and sustainable solutions. Despite having an overall theme, a few key messages naturally emerged from the presentations and discussions.
ESG and Collaboration Among Suppliers and Retailers Are Essential for Change
According to Dwight Konings, Senior Vice President, Global Retail, Advantage Group International, a key learning for suppliers and retailers coming out of the summit is the importance of collaboration in achieving Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) goals in the future.
This year, there was a more intense focus on ESG than in previous summits, with a key difference in the discussions around the topic being collaboration. The importance of ESG was never debated. However, this year, there was a common understanding around the need for collaboration as a key tool for making meaningful strides toward achieving ESG objectives.
ESG issues are too significant for a company to solve independently. The supply chain is interconnected, and collaboration must occur among companies, across sectors and between the company and the consumer. The realization of the interconnectedness of organizations and the obstacle that it forms to solving ESG issues is the first step towards understanding that collaboration and partnership are the right paths forward.
How Advantage Can Support the Achievement of ESG Goals
As ESG climbs high on organizations’ lists of priorities and collaboration becomes necessary to solve ESG issues, retailers and suppliers will require support with their business partner engagement. Understanding how each other’s ESG goals can be better supported is essential in working towards meaningful change.
At Advantage, we see engagement solutions as an opportunity to help people and organizations work better together. In this context, it means helping retailers and suppliers invest in their partnership and create an environment for mutual growth and success with mutual ESG goals.
To learn how Advantage Group is illuminating the needs of the retailer community to foster stronger relationships with suppliers and, ultimately, consumers, contact us.
