EBG | Network welcomes EcoVadis to CPO Outlook 2026, 14–15 October in Stockholm — an Expert organisation EBG has worked alongside since 2016. EcoVadis hosts a Roundtable, on the difference between knowing your supplier risk and actually reducing it.
The table EcoVadis hosts at CPO Outlook 2026
Roundtable runs twice on Day 1. Same topic, new group each round, limited seats:
The Execution Gap: Why Knowing Your Risk Isn’t Reducing It
Resilience requires more than ambition. While many organisations understand their supply chain risks, traditional approaches often treat sustainability data as a defensive compliance exercise reserved for a few Tier 1 suppliers.
This session unpacks a different approach: moving from point-in-time assessments to continuous, year-round visibility. We explore how organisations are shifting their operating models, treating deep supplier visibility as a core infrastructure rather than a one-off checklist. We will explore the mechanics of segmenting and triaging an entire supply base. The discussion will focus on establishing a clear starting point, prioritizing risk, and the mechanisms that turn risk signals into measurable action across the tiers that matter.Hosted by EcoVadis
The most useful part sits in the second sentence. It admits that supplier sustainability data has mostly been gathered defensively, for a handful of Tier 1 suppliers, to prove something to someone. Most people around that table will recognise their own programme in that description.
Why the execution gap earned a table this year
CPO Outlook 2026 is built around a double load. Procurement has to run the function as it works today while rebuilding it for an AI-shaped future — same team, same week. Supplier risk and sustainability sit squarely inside that squeeze, because both compete for time against everything else on Monday’s list.
And the honest problem is no longer the framework. Most organisations have one. The scorecards arrive, the assessments come back, the dashboard fills up. Yet something between the signal and the decision still fails to connect.
EBG’s data has traced that gap for several years. Across the EBG | Xperience 2025 surveys, 52% of respondents named sustainability and ESG compliance a critical competency. Meanwhile 32% said they struggle to embed ESG into their risk frameworks at all, and another 32% named the cost-versus-compliance trade-off as a live tension. In the CPO Outlook 2025 survey, 39% pointed specifically at the difficulty of integrating sustainability into daily procurement processes. During the Xperience mapping exercise, participants placed what we say consistently above what we do — not catastrophically, but visibly.
So knowing your risk is not the same as reducing it. The scorecard is not the outcome. That is the whole table.
This is what CPO Outlook 2026 is built around: how procurement looks today, with its many competing jobs at once, and how it may look as more of them are automated — and how a leader inside a team holds both realities together without dropping either.
Where EcoVadis stands in 2026
Three developments from recent months give context on who hosts the discussion.
- In March, at Sustain 2026 in Paris, EcoVadis presented its tenth annual Sustainability Achievement Awards. Co-founder and co-CEO Pierre-François Thaler framed the year in a single line: sustainable procurement, he said, is no longer about policy but about performance.
- In June the company announced Catalyst 2026, built on a “Resilience by Design” argument. The value, it holds, lies not in holding more supplier data but in verified data moving between buyer and supplier often enough to change decisions. Static annual assessment out, live network in.
- In July it opened its Community platform to procurement organisations that are not EcoVadis customers at all. A ratings company choosing peer exchange over a walled garden is a choice EBG recognises.
Read together, a pattern emerges. A company that spent a decade building the scorecard now spends its energy on what happens after the score arrives — which is precisely the topic it chose to host.
Ten years of the same conversation
EcoVadis first joined an EBG conference in 2016, the year sustainability became a fixed part of the agenda. Back then the state of the art was getting a supplier Code of Conduct signed into the contract. Whether anyone ever checked it was honoured was, too often, another matter.
In June this year, ten years after their first interview, Anna Bjärkerud sat down with Pierre-François Thaler again:
→ EBG | Insight: The most powerful force for sustainability? Your supply chain.
His central claim there is the one worth arguing with in October. Corporate value chains — not regulation, and perhaps not even sustainable finance — are becoming the number one force driving sustainability. He also pointed at something Nordic readers should take personally: Nordic companies hold some of the highest EcoVadis scores in the world. If sustainability now works as a competitive instrument rather than a compliance cost, this region holds an advantage it has not fully cashed in.
Ten years is also the answer to why EcoVadis keeps showing up in this market rather than passing through it. The Nordic procurement community is small, sceptical of one-off appearances, and long-memoried. EcoVadis has spent a decade in the conversation here — through interviews, roundtables and summits — which is why the room listens when they choose a topic.
About EcoVadis in brief
EcoVadis is a purpose-driven company dedicated to embedding sustainability intelligence into every business decision worldwide. With global, trusted and actionable ratings, businesses of all sizes rely on EcoVadis’ detailed insights to comply with ESG regulations, reduce GHG emissions, and improve the sustainability performance of their business and value chain across 220 industries in 180 countries. Learn more at ecovadis.com.
Meet EcoVadis at CPO Outlook 2026
EcoVadis joins as an Expert organisation on 14–15 October at Hotel Birger Jarl in Stockholm, hosting Roundtable 4 across both runs of Day 1’s Theme Discussions. Seats at each table are limited. Come ready to agree or disagree — productively. That is how these two days work.
→ See the full programme · Register at cpooutlook.com
Survey sources
CPO Outlook 2025 Survey, September–November 2025 (results available to attendees taking the survey)
EBG | Xperience 2025 Post Survey Report, Spring 2025