Bechtle has become the latest VAR to trumpet its headway on a sustainability assessment platform hailed for its ability to help firms add ESG credibility on tenders.
The Germany-headquartered outfit yesterday announced it has snared Ecovadis Platinum status after scoring 97 out of 100 across its 21 assessment criteria.
Its mark represents an 18-point increase on its 2025 tally of 79.
This reflects improvements it has made across Ecovadis’ four themes of Environment, Labour & Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement, the €8.6bn sales juggernaut said.
“ESG criteria playing increasingly decisive role in selection”
But Bechtle is not the only VAR investing heavily in Ecovadis, which analyst Omdia recently flagged as one of three big sustainability badges channel partners are gravitating towards as they seek to prove their ESG credentials.
In an increasingly ESG-conscious world, large customers now actively expect their suppliers to align with either Ecovadis, CDP or SBTi, according to the analyst.
General Motors now requires tier-one suppliers to maintain a minimum EcoVadis score of 50, for instance, Omdia noted.
This trend is not lost on Econocom, another large VAR to bag Ecovadis Platinum status in 2026.
The Franco-Belgian outfit scored 88 in its latest assessment, a 12-point year-on-year improvement that puts it in Ecovadis’ top tier two years ahead of schedule.
“At a time when ESG criteria are playing an increasingly decisive role in selection processes and tenders, this distinction sends a strong signal of trust, transparency and reliability to Econocom’s clients and partners,” it stated at the time of its announcement (in April).
Ecovadis elite
Characterising itself as the world’s largest and most widely used corporate sustainability assessment platform, Ecovadis assesses 21 criteria across its four themes.
According to Omdia’s research, some 27% of the world’s 30 largest channel partners now hold Platinum status (a number that drops to 20% and 4% among the wider top 100 and top 1,000, respectively).
Nordic outfits Atea and Advania are among the other VARs to hold Ecovadis Platinum status.
CDW flagged its promotion from Silver to Gold Ecovadis status in April.
The world’s largest VAR netted an overall score of 79, a 33-point improvement over the previous three years.
