Start by looking at the data
At the moment, the best way to improve sustainability is to stop talking about it. For most executives, that word often just sounds like an extra cost, because they focus on just the compliancy aspect. Instead, they need to consider the impact of sustainability on data, compliance, and real business value.
When organisations stop treating ESG reporting as a ‘green crusade’ and start treating it as a data exercise, they are bound to find operational blind spots. That’s because properly gathering (and interpreting!) all that data will actually reveal some concrete opportunities to save costs and reduce risks.
As Tim points out, companies have to go beyond the spreadsheet.
Don’t just report to report. We have to wonder: what is in that data? And how are we going to analyse it?
Let's look at two concrete examples.
- A transport company was mapping their CO2 footprint purely for compliance reasons. During this data exercise, they gained entirely new insights into their travel expenses and logistics. This allowed them to optimise their routes and easily spot performance differences across various divisions. It even helped them improve how they loaded their trucks and rethink their packaging.
- In another case, a CFO who had little initial interest in sustainability conducted a CSRD data exercise. The gathered data uncovered a significant gender wage gap within the company. Addressing this issue mitigated a major corporate risk and (obviously) boosted employee satisfaction.
First, fix the foundation
To find these kinds of opportunities, companies need to get their data in order first. After all, it is impossible to optimise what hasn't been mapped out properly. In reality, that means moving away from Excel files hidden on a network drive somewhere and building a centralised, reliable data layer.
If you structure your ESG data properly from the start, answering all those slightly different questionnaires becomes a lot easier, says Ann De Bisschop, our community manager. Besides a few unique requirements, you can pull nearly all the answers from the same single source of truth. You won’t have to start from scratch every time a new request comes in.
Get the right person for the job
Of course, looking at sustainability as a data exercise also has consequences for organisations. Besides a sustainability manager, they will also need data experts. But data experts don’t always have the necessary know-how to figure out what data is important, and sustainability managers don’t always know how to gather and interpret it.
That’s why, ideally, organisations have both roles working together. This collaboration creates a dataset that is both representative and complete. However, hiring both experts is expensive, and not always possible. The good news is that, based on our experience, full-time in-house experts are only necessary for the largest enterprises out there.
Many companies think they need a team of legal, IT and ESG experts to handle these reporting requests. In reality, they mostly need solid data governance, and probably not as many FTEs as they think. We combine our technical expertise with specific sustainability knowledge to fill the knowledge gap, so businesses can get their data foundation right.
Get in touch with us to see how we can build a strong ESG architecture together.
