Future Viability and Capital Market

Sustainable Relationships With Business Partners

Vonovia is committed to long-term, constructive and trusting relationships with all of its business partners. This allows us to provide products and services with a consistently high level of quality.

In Germany, these working relationships are governed by the Business Partner Code and the Code of Conduct, which oblige our partners to observe economic and legal rules of conduct and to comply with anti-corruption policies in all of their dealings with sub-contractors. The Vonovia Business Partner Code was adapted in Austria in 2019 as part of the integration process. In Sweden, the Code of Conduct fulfills this function (see section Respect and Promotion of Human Rights).

The Vonovia Partner Portal was launched last year and is an important element of our long-term partnership with our service providers and suppliers. We also use it for risk and supplier management. Vonovia uses the portal as a central repository for all of the documents and data used to assess suppliers and award contracts. This reduces our administrative workload, while also allowing us to track the suitability of business partners from a formal, technical and social perspective. The system will be expanded to include sub-contractors over time. When selecting service providers and suppliers, the Procurement department uses the Vonovia partner portal to check that the provider in question has acknowledged its duty to respect human rights as set out in the Business Partner Code. In the event of any irregularities or scenarios in which these obligations are ignored, the cases are documented accordingly and sanctions are normally imposed. These processes use tools such as the blacklist and contract award and payment blocks in SAP. The Vonovia Partner Portal is also linked directly to our whistleblower system.

We digitalized our tendering processes on a separate platform in 2020. Our aim is to make our supplier base more transparent and prepare the way for paperless partnerships and order processes. We will be upgrading the technology behind our craftsmen tool in 2021 to standardize and streamline the ordering process with our craftsmen. We also want to talk to our strategic business partners about the additional functions they think could add value and want to see added. Sustainability factors will be integrated into our procurement processes and our supplier management system. We will also be placing a greater emphasis on digitalization in our Procurement department. We also be focusing on preparing the company for the German Supply Chain Act (Lieferkettengesetz).