In 2003 we asked our suppliers’ opinions on the evaluation programme. An independent study was carried out by an external party (NOP Healthcare) on behalf of Novo Nordisk. The results of the study are summarised below: A large majority of suppliers agreed that they had a good dialogue with the contact person at Novo Nordisk. We believe that proactive dialogue is essential to improve standards and therefore consider this result key to the success of the programme. More than half (56%) of our suppliers believed that Novo Nordisk’s programme had a positive impact on their internal operations. The remaining suppliers felt that it had minimal impact because their standards were already sufficient and therefore required no improvements. Only a small percentage of the suppliers indicated that the evaluation had no positive impact whatsoever. There were mixed opinions with regard to the ease of providing information for Novo Nordisk’s evaluation programme. Only 17% completely agreed that it was easy to provide the information requested in the questionnaire. The main change made by suppliers, was that our suppliers were beginning to asses their own suppliers on social and environmental issues as a result of our evaluation programme. 39% replied that Novo Nordisk’s programme had a positive impact on the way they operate with their own suppliers. A vast majority of suppliers believed that it is important to evaluate suppliers on social and environmental issues. 35% responded that they did not have any such evaluation programmes, 22% of suppliers had a evaluation programme on either environmental or social issues. By making our approach available, we hope we can encourage and motivate our suppliers to introduce similar programmes across their own supply chain. | 
