The Situation 

Leading with Purpose: OQEMAs Commitment To Sustainability

OQEMA is deeply committed to embedding sustainability at the heart of its operations. As a leading European chemicals' distributor, their mission is to achieve a "net zero" environmental impact while creating value through sustainable products and circular solutions.

To achieve this, OQEMA continuously works to reduce climate-damaging emissions across its value chain, improving its environmental performance at every step. They uphold strict standards, ensuring that their sustainability efforts are credible and transparent through assessments like EcoVadis, CDP, and Responsible Care. These evaluations help benchmark their progress and demonstrate their commitment to key stakeholders.

OQEMAs Sustainability Team plays a pivotal role in guiding the company's sustainability efforts. The team is led by Emad Kakakhel who manages all responsibilities around sustainability at a holding level. The team collaborates closely with experts and senior managers across the organization, ensuring that sustainability is embedded into all aspects of the business. This cross-functional approach not only accelerates action but also fosters active dialogue with external stakeholders, including customers and suppliers, reinforcing OQEMA’s role as a leader in sustainable chemical distribution.

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The Challenge

Navigating the Complexity of Subsidiary-Level Reporting 

With 47 subsidiaries in 25 countries, one of the major challenges OQEMA faced was to establish efficient collaboration and data reporting processes across subsidiaries to respond to sustainability assessments like EcoVadis. 

Especially when reporting on different levels, such as the subsidiary, country or holding level, the EcoVadis questionnaire demands comprehensive data, adding layers of complexity and requiring close coordination across multiple departments and actors. 

Hence, they realized they needed a collaboration tool because of the large company size and the need to collect sustainability data for reporting — how can they collect all info from all subsidiaries — without Excel lists being sent?

The Solution

The Sunhat Moment

The Sunhat software equips OQEMA with the necessary tool to align their internal data structures with a wide array of sustainability reporting initiatives. This enables OQEMA to effectively manage their sustainability data alongside corresponding evidential documents, ensuring that every submission is tailored to meet distinct rating and reporting criteria.

Through the utilization of Sunhat’s AI technology and adaptable data collection features, OQEMA can consolidate their data and document sources into a single, easily accessible platform, directly addressing challenges in reporting.

With their involvement in CSRD reporting and participation in renowned rating systems such as EcoVadis and CDP, OQEMA’s sustainability team was keen to initiate systematic processes and establish an effective project management framework. This framework efficiently manages both the assessment frameworks and their individual data point catalog, complying with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).

OQEMA also benefits from Sunhat's excellent collaboration features, which facilitate seamless synergy between various country-specific questionnaires through its intelligent, AI-powered library. This functionality allows OQEMA to aggregate data within individual country subsidiaries independently and subsequently consolidate this data at the holding level, enhancing efficiency and coherence across the organization.

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How OQEMA uses Sunhat

OQEMA utilizes Sunhat’s framework modules, which seamlessly connect received questionnaires and data requests with their sustainability data uploaded to the system. As they respond to the necessary questions, the database is automatically populated, and evidence is generated at every step within the software.

By setting up flexible data collections based on their internal structure, OQEMA is able to successfully collaborate both internally and externally with their partners. The ability to assign tasks and responsibilities ensures transparency and visibility for OQEMA’s team members, enabling them to track progress and prioritize tasks effectively.

Sunhat’s advanced inbox and project management features empower OQEMA’s team to effectively tackle the EcoVadis assessment or the CDP questionnaire, taking the necessary steps and actions to drive continuous progress and achieve long-term results in their sustainability endeavors.

Additionally, OQEMA collects Sustainability KPIs for EcoVadis through campaigns within Sunhat, with planned quarterly campaign collections. As they prepare for the upcoming CSRD requirements, OQEMA ensures a seamless knowledge transfer within their team, reinforcing their commitment to sustainability excellence.

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The Results

A Comprehensive Knowledge Library of Quantitative and Qualitative Sustainability Information

By integrating Sunhat, OQEMA can continuously build a comprehensive database of quantitative and qualitative ESG data. With each new reporting and data request that OQEMA addresses using Sunhat, their central data pool expands, leading to:

• ‍Comprehensive Database: With Sunhat, OQEMA now has one central location to collect, review and approve data points to be used across other projects. 
• ‍Better Collaboration: using the software, the company can work more efficiently. Within the sustainability team and with other departments — collaboration is fundamental to efficient sustainability reporting.
• ‍Efficient Workflows: OQEMA did connect qualitative and quantitative data where it is needed and therefore improved their workflows.

By using Sunhat as their ESG Software, OQEMA will stay ahead of current sustainability related challenges and has more time again to focus on sustainability measures that start the transformation towards the future.