Why the 100-page report fails

A good materiality assessment costs somewhere in the mid five figures and takes ten weeks. It arrives as a well-argued document with a prioritized list of issues, a peer comparison and a set of recommendations. It is, in our experience, usually correct.

Eighteen months later, roughly one recommendation in six has been implemented. Not because the analysis was wrong, but because every recommendation implicitly assumed a person who does not exist. "Establish a supplier engagement program" is a job, not a task. There was no one to hand it to.

The structural gap

Companies between roughly $50M and $500M in revenue sit in a genuine gap. The customer requirements are the same ones large enterprises face — the questionnaires do not scale down. But the volume of work does not justify a full-time director of sustainability, and a single generalist hire cannot simultaneously run LCA projects, write ESG policy, answer questionnaires and produce sales collateral.

Advisory firms respond with analysis. Staffing firms respond with a body. Neither matches the actual shape of the need, which is a small amount of several different specialisms, applied continuously, with someone accountable for the tracker between meetings.

What continuity buys

The value of staying involved is not effort — it is memory. Knowing that the Category 1 estimate used 2024 spend data, that the verifier flagged an allocation question on the coatings line, that the retailer scorecard is due in six weeks and that last year it lost two points on water. That context is what makes the next decision fast, and it is exactly what a report cannot carry.

Sustainability work compounds or it decays. There is no stable middle where a document holds the position for you.