Most articles about EcoVadis explain the questionnaire. This one is about what happens around it, based on 63 EcoVadis engagements our consultants ran for 23 companies since January 2024.
We went back through all of them looking for patterns. These 5 stood out, and a few of them contradict how companies plan for this work.
1. Almost nobody does this once
Of the 23 companies, 15 came back for another EcoVadis engagement. Several returned 3, 4 or 5 times. One logistics client has run 7 separate engagements with us across 3 years.
That is not a sales observation, it is a planning one. Scorecards are valid for 12 months, so EcoVadis is an annual cycle rather than a project with an end date. Teams that treat their first assessment as a one-off tend to rebuild the same evidence pack a year later, from memory, usually with different people involved.
The companies that handle it well do 2 things differently. They keep the evidence library after submission instead of archiving the project, and they decide who owns the next cycle before the current one closes.
2. The work splits into 3 phases, and skipping the first one costs you
Across almost every returning client, the same sequence appears in our records: assessment review, then implementation, then an insights report. It shows up for Dazzle clients Ansell, Spring GDS, VMI Group and Kolmar Group, among others, and it repeats year over year with the same structure.
Assessment review is diagnosis. Someone who knows the scoring model reads your current scorecard or your draft answers and identifies where the gaps are.
Implementation is the actual work: writing or updating policies, gathering evidence, fixing what the review found. For some clients this splits further. One pharmaceutical client ran it as 3 separate engagements covering policies, measures and reporting.
The insights report is the part companies most often skip and most often regret. It documents what was submitted, why, and what to do next cycle. It is also what makes the first point manageable.
The pattern worth noticing: clients who start with a gap analysis before touching the questionnaire consistently move into implementation within the same period. Those who start by filling in answers tend to discover mid-questionnaire that the evidence does not exist yet.
3. Appeals are real, short, and worth knowing about
Of the 63 engagements, 3 were appeals, where a client contested how their submission was scored. They were small pieces of work, in the range of 3 to 10 hours.
That has 2 implications. An appeal is not a big undertaking, so if you believe your scorecard misreads your evidence it is worth having someone assess it. And in both cases where we have the history, the appeal came after earlier assessment work, which suggests you spot a mis-score more easily when someone already knows what was submitted.
4. Everyone arrives in the same 6 months
Our EcoVadis engagements cluster heavily between August and February. March through July is quiet.
That matters because EcoVadis analysis takes 6 to 8 weeks after submission, and every specialist in this market faces the same seasonal wave. If you plan to submit in the busy window, the constraint on your timeline is rarely your own team. It is whether the expertise you need is still available.
The quiet months are the cheapest time to do the preparation work. Nothing about a gap analysis, a policy review or an evidence library requires you to be near your submission date.
5. Continuity turns out to matter more than we expected
In all 63 engagements, every client kept the same consultant across every EcoVadis project they ran with us. Not once did a returning client work with someone new.
We did not design that. It happened because clients asked for it. The second cycle goes faster when the person doing it already knows where your evidence lives and which answers were judgement calls last time.
If you are choosing how to resource this, that is an argument for knowing which individual will do your work, whichever route you pick.
What we cannot tell you from this data
We considered publishing average score improvements and a breakdown of which of the 4 EcoVadis themes companies lose most points on. We are not going to, because our project records do not contain that data consistently and we are not going to estimate it.
We are asking our consultants for it properly. When we have figures we can stand behind, they will appear here with the sample size attached. Anyone publishing precise average score gains without saying where the number came from is worth a second look.
Where Dazzle fits
We match companies with independent EcoVadis consultants, usually within 48 hours, for project or interim work. Our consultants include former EcoVadis employees and specialists who ran assessments at EcoVadis accredited consulting partners, so they know how each answer is scored.
Our EcoVadis work is led by specialist consultants including Elisa Gomez and Viktoria Vero. If you want to talk through where you are in the cycle, our team is happy to think it through with you.
Not sure whether an independent consultant, a boutique consultancy or an accredited partner fits your situation? We compared the 3 routes, including where our own model is the wrong choice, in EcoVadis support: accredited partner, boutique consultancy, or an independent specialist consultant?
