You can absolutely prepare an EcoVadis submission yourself: the platform is designed for self-service, and companies do it every day. The honest question is not whether you can, but what it will cost you in time, and what score you will accept on your first attempt. If you have months of margin, someone internally who can own it, and customers who will tolerate a mediocre first score, do it yourself. If you have a deadline, no spare capacity, or customers who expect a medal, a specialist usually pays for itself.
What Doing It Yourself Really Involves
- Learning what EcoVadis actually scores: documented evidence across environment, labour and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement, weighted for your sector and size
- An honest gap review: which policies exist, which are signed and dated, and which exist only in someone's head
- Writing or upgrading the missing policies, then producing the proof behind them: training records, measurements, certificates, supplier checks
- Matching every document to the right questionnaire answer, because evidence attached to the wrong question scores nothing
- Doing all of this alongside your actual job, typically over several weeks
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When Doing It Yourself Is the Right Call
- No customer deadline is forcing your timing, so a learning year costs you nothing commercially
- Someone on your team genuinely has the hours and the appetite to own it end to end
- You already hold strong documentation, for example from ISO certifications, and mostly need to organise it
- Budget is truly zero, because a weak first score you can improve later beats no rating when a customer insists on one
What a Consultant Changes
A specialist has seen the questionnaire for your size and sector before you open it. That changes the work in three ways. First, sequence: you build only the evidence that scores, instead of everything that might. Second, translation: your existing practices often deserve points they would never earn as written, because EcoVadis rewards specific documentation formats. Third, risk: the score from your first submission stays visible to your customers for a year. A prepared submission collects the score your company actually deserves, immediately.
That is what happened with HELLAGRO S.A.: their first ever submission, prepared with Enable Good over 2025 and 2026, earned the EcoVadis Silver Medal, placing them among the top 15% of companies assessed worldwide. No practice round, no lost year.
The Cost Logic, Honestly
Consultant fees are real money, so weigh them against the two costs of the DIY path: the internal hours (often several working weeks of someone senior enough to write policy) and the commercial cost of a low first score if a customer is waiting on it. For a company whose contracts depend on the rating, the fee is usually the smallest number in the equation. For a company under no pressure, the internal hours may genuinely be the cheaper path.
A 60-Second Way to Decide
Take Enable Good's free EcoVadis Readiness Scorecard at enablegood.co/free-ecovadis-scorecard. Twelve questions, instant result. If it shows you close to ready, the DIY path is realistic. If it shows wide evidence gaps and you have a deadline, you have your answer. And if you want a specialist to look at your specific situation, a free 30 minute call costs exactly nothing.
