Over the period of nine months, Nordic Sustainability supported the Viessmann Group (+14,5k employees, 4 bn EUR revenue) with a Future-Fit baseline assessment and a co-creative sustainability strategy process.
The family-owned provider of heating and cooling solutions has now embarked on an ambitious path towards becoming a fully circular business, while working to eliminate any negative harm on their global supply chain – besides its existing focus on becoming a net zero business and value chain.
The brief
Viessmann has shifted its product portfolio towards low-carbon solutions due to Europe’s transition away from fossil fuels and launched a decarbonisation strategy called LEAP. However, they realised they also needed a comprehensive sustainability strategy across ESG dimensions to secure the future of the company, increase resilience, and comply with tightening regulations. The task was to guide the organisation in creating a holistic sustainability strategy with long-term goals and short-term actionable project roadmaps.
Our approach
Baseline
42+
Subject matter experts
Our approach to the baseline assessment roots in our deep expertise with the Future-Fit Business Benchmark. Nordic Sustainability analysed Viessmann’s negative and positive impact on the 23 Break-Even Goals and 24 Positive Pursuits defined by Future-Fit. This involved a comprehensive data gathering phase, stakeholder engagement and onboarding, qualitative analysis and quantitative scoring of key insights. Additionally, we assessed Viessmann’s data management and sustainability governance throughout the baseline assessment.
26+
Functions across business areas
Wrapping up the baseline assessment, Future-Fit’s Break-Even Goals were screened for materiality. While recommending a dedicated strategic focus on few high-priority Break-Even Goals, the remaining topics were clustered to facilitate and inform rapid improvements within functional responsibilities. Ultimately, several different dashboards were translated into a high-level change narrative supporting executive management conversations leading towards the strategy co-creation phase.
Strategy
9+
Regions
Nordic Sustainability began the strategy phase by developing initial recommendations for material impacts areas based on absolute reductions of negative and scaling of positive impacts. 42+ stakeholders were onboarded and their feedback was incorporated into the strategy. A core group of key stakeholders then further matured the strategy, including creating short-term project roadmaps for the next 2-3 years, which involved estimating the FTE, CAPEX, and OPEX needs. This exercise resulted in high stakeholder engagement and prepared the company for a smooth transition to strategy execution.
Viessmann recognizes our two-pronged approach to stakeholder engagement as a key success factor across both phases. Simultaneously keeping senior management informed and involved while building skills and capacity with functional subject matter experts de-risked the project and fostered collaboration, ownership and operational readiness.
Result
As a result of our work with Viessmann, the company embarked on an ambitious transformation towards becoming a fully circular business with a zero-harm supply chain – besides its existing focus on becoming a net zero business and value chain. In addition, all other areas of negative and positive impact have been assessed in-depth, laying the foundation for progress within functions and regions.
I could not have wished for a better partner for this project. We worked seamlessly as one Viessmann-Nordic-Team and co-created a highly ambitious sustainability strategy.