Case Study: Carbon Assessment and Global Supplier Engagement
Pete Nisbet
edenseven Supports Direct Wines’ Progress to Net Zero
By providing a carbon assessment and supporting global supplier engagement.
Direct Wines Ltd (Direct Wines) is an international and independent wine merchant which launched its first non-UK business in 2007 and currently has operations across the globe, with over 450 suppliers in their network and employing approximately 1,000 people.
Direct Wines owns Laithwaite’s Wine and Averys in the UK, as well as owning and operating a number of their own vineyards and wine-making facilities in the UK, France, USA, and Australia.
Direct Wines engaged edenseven, one of the Cambridge Management Consulting group of companies, to support the acceleration of their sustainability programme, with a clear focus on engaging their supply base.
Project Overview
- To research the different techniques being adopted across the globe to sequester (store) carbon within the wine-growing community. The final report would need to show technical in-depth research and be summarised in a format to enable general circulation.
- Create a muti-language online questionnaire focussed on benchmarking Direct Wines’ supply chain engagement levels relating to decarbonisation. This analysis would be summarised and presented to the board.
- To create an engagement plan with key suppliers across multiple regions to provide a variety of consultative services to enable the acceleration of decarbonisation.
Skills & Knowledge
- An environmental expert with an in-depth knowledge of carbon sequestration and best practice techniques.
- Digital capability to produce a multi-language questionnaire and host it on a separate domain to Direct Wines.
- A clear understanding of an appropriate questionnaire structure, which will product meaningful quantifiable data, while assuring a high response rate.
- Experience in delivering bespoke carbon reduction and benchmarking projects across different geographies.
Outcome & Results
- Market Analysis: A structured research paper giving clear guidance on the methods used to sequester carbon across multiple regions. This gave Direct Wines a document which would be distributed to senior stakeholders and suppliers to help positively impact their overall Scope 3 emissions.
- Supply Chain Assessment: A clear benchmark of Direct Wines supply chains current understanding an progress to achieve net zero. This gave Direct Wines the ability to identify individual suppliers who needed support to move forward.
- Programme Development: The delivery of a programme of work across selected suppliers which consisted of carbon foot-printing assessment, renewable energy feasibility studies, best practice gap analysis, and data reviews.
About Cambridge Management Consulting
Cambridge Management Consulting (Cambridge MC) is an international consulting firm that helps companies of all sizes have a better impact on the world. Founded in Cambridge, UK, initially to help the start-up community, Cambridge MC has grown to over 150 consultants working on projects in 20 countries.
Our capabilities focus on supporting the private and public sector with their people, process and digital technology challenges.
For more information visit
www.cambridgemc.com or get in touch below.
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We were approached by a global networking systems, services, and software company that specialises in optical and routing solutions. Their technology helps carriers, enterprises, and governments build more efficient and scalable networks, particularly for high-bandwidth applications like 5G, cloud computing, and AI-driven networking. Africa is a key strategic market for this client. They are also playing an active role in advancing outlined 5G technology on the continent, emphasising a focus on routing and switching aggregation components, network slicing, and monetisation. The Opportunity The client engaged Cambridge MC to provide external insight and support to augment and accelerate the progress of their Go-to-Market plans for Africa. We proposed our in-house rapid Strategy Stress Test that delivers key insights across areas of your strategy using a 1–5 health-scoring matrix. The client's aim is to grow market share in the region with a precisely focussed strategy that targets their market with key propositions and solutions. We were engaged to review this strategy and their plans for the region, identifying critical opportunities and gaps with a quick turnaround. Approach We used our Rapid Strategy Stress Test methodology which provides: Target geographies, opportunities, and partners for resource effectiveness and success maximisation Assessment of client's Go-to-Market Strategy including identification and testing of key assumptions Identification of new opportunities and any gaps in the strategy Recommendations on how best to capitalise on the market and accelerate their route to success This included carrying out target addressable and client-addressable market sizing by country for the Optical, Data Centre Interconnect, Routing and Switching portfolios; competitor market share analysis; analysis of current and planned data centre build in the target countries; future trend analysis, including Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental trends by country. We put their GtM strategy and plans through our Stress Test framework, scoring capabilities against best-in-class – across 11 parameters such as Market Potential, Adaptability to Local Needs, Pricing and Marketing & Demand Generation. Recommendations were made against each of the 11 areas relating to opportunities to accelerate their GtM strategy. In order to support effective targeting of resources into key countries, we developed a country prioritisation framework across 15 parameters, such as GDP growth, energy supply, stability of regulatory environment, and ease of doing business. This quantitative assessment was supplemented with the real world experience of our Africa experts.
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