SUSTAINABILITY AND DATA: THE MISSING PIECE OF THE PUZZLE

Sustainability considerations have started to permeate every corner of our world. No one is left untouched by its influence - from individuals to governments, and businesses alike. However, its complexities require innovative solutions from organisations as they look to navigate uncharted waters and forge a path towards a more sustainable future.

The pace of regulatory flux relating to sustainability is dizzying and will inevitably continue to be. In the last 5 years alone there have been material changes to legislation and guidelines across the globe - particularly those pertaining to practices within the EU, US and UK. Some with direct and immediate impact on the way organisations operate. As an example, it is expected that Sustainability Disclosure Requirements will become mandatory for UK listed companies in the not-too-distant future.

Therefore, it is easy to see why 90% of business leaders believe sustainability is important. However, there is a clear disconnect between intent and execution, with only 60% of companies possessing an actual strategy to meet their sustainability goals. With challenges ranging from the complexities of reducing carbon footprint and understanding the most effective actions to mitigate the impact on climate change, to financial constraints and supply chain sustainability transparency, there’s a lot to consider when looking to “go-green.”

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The proof is in the pudding

Helpfully, the benefits of delivering against sustainability objectives are clear:

1. Companies with a net-zero emissions goal have reduced emissions by 10% over the last decade
2. 77% of people are influenced by a company’s environmental achievements when deciding where to buy from
3. 76% of consumers have stated they will stop buying from companies that treat the environment and their employees poorly
4. 51% of employees indicated they would not work for a company that doesn’t have strong policies addressing social or environmental sustainability issues.

[1] [2] [3] [4]

And while these statistics speak for themselves, the roadblocks to achieving such goals continue to cause headaches for many who aspire to herald in real change for their business, employees, and communities.

So, let’s take a look at how data provides the foundations needed for turning challenge into success.

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The 4 core challenges

When viewing sustainability from a business-lens, companies are facing 4 core challenges:

Data: the missing link

When taking each challenge in turn, it becomes clear that the introduction of good quality, timely, accessible and trustworthy data has a key role to play in accelerating the journey from challenge to success.

Stakeholder expectations

When it comes to measuring progress on achieving your sustainability objectives, well-designed data products allow you to measure the associated initiatives and outcomes. Through visualisation dashboards, you can link data assets and sources to sustainability goals such as net zero or adherence to Science Based Targets initiatives. This provides critical visibility on the progress of key initiatives and can inform the next best possible action for the business to take to achieve their sustainability goals - on time and as expected.

Through visualisation dashboards, you can link data assets and sources to sustainability goals such as net zero or adherence to Science Based Targets initiatives.

Regulatory reporting standards

Environmental Social Governance (ESG) standards are rapidly evolving. Data can be leveraged to ensure that reporting efforts remain correct and transparent. Data governance and quality have a critical role to play in enabling this. If the data we are ingesting and using against standards is trusted, accurate and well-understood, this will create confidence in key reporting measures which can be adapted to reflect the required information for any additional or changed ESG standards. It can also help avoid issues such as “green-washing”, where companies can unintentionally make exaggerated or false claims about their environmental credentials by reporting the wrong data against the wrong metrics, which can result in reputational damage.

Data can be leveraged to ensure that reporting efforts remain correct and transparent. Data governance and quality have a critical role to play in enabling this.

Supply chain complexity

Another challenge for effective data management in this space is supplier data. Often, suppliers will have different reporting measures, and different relationships with data entirely. This can mean that data isn’t always sourced, stored or used correctly. And even if it is, all it takes is for one supplier to be using a different data product to impact on your own reporting.

By developing a data strategy across your enterprise, you can identify the required data assets and sources needed to link back to sustainability use cases and requirements. Data standards and measurement tools can also be developed and used in unison with partners. Through this, combined data and reports have a better chance of being holistic, clear, and accurate.

Another challenge for effective data management is supplier data. Often, suppliers will have different reporting measures, and different relationships with data entirely.

Availability of accurate data

Leading to the final business challenge - ensuring the availability of accurate sustainability data. Currently, sustainability data is often not well understood or measured and can require a change in thinking. The key to meeting this challenge is defining and implementing a flexible and robust data governance framework, allowing data to be sourced and enhanced to fit sustainability needs and then processed through the modern data technology stack, driving business facing insights.

Getting ahead of the curve and driving implementation and adoption of a data catalogue – where the data is curated by internal SMEs – ensures that there is a shared and consistent understanding of the sustainability data. This alongside data lineage, which provides details of the provenance of data, gives the required understanding to use data in the best way possible. A data catalogue can also help organisations identify data that is no longer of value, data that can be disposed of, therefore reducing their energy consumption.

Getting ahead of the curve and driving implementation and adoption of a data catalogue – where the data is curated by internal SMEs – ensures that there is a shared and consistent understanding of the sustainability data.

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What does this look like in the real world?

As part of a project to reduce its carbon footprint, a multi-national bottling company set about ensuring they were accurately reporting on their greenhouse gas emissions to not only meet compliance requirements, but to become a more sustainable business as a whole.

Through the identification of crucial emissions, energy usage and supply chain datasets, they were able to implement the right technology to build a high-quality data foundation spanning 26 data assets. They were also able to create real-time data pipelines and integrate with specialist tools to generate carbon calculations.

Operationally, they set about to transform the culture, empowering their people to make more sustainability-driven business decisions. This gave their teams the chance to spot required business changes that needed to be reported. It also helped them prioritise operational changes, as well as define and implement future-proof data governance standards.

Ultimately, the company was able to provide their sustainability, supply chain and finance leaders with a crucial element for success: a robust, well-governed and trustworthy data architecture to support their GHG emission goals and accurately share results with external stakeholders.

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In a nutshell

Keeping up with the ever changing landscape of sustainability isn’t an impossible job. In fact, once you bring in data as an ally to help you weed through the complexities and start to hit targets, you will begin to see real change.

“Quality data unlocks sustainability in the eyes of all stakeholders be it customers, consumers, investors, regulators, or employees. In the old phrase ‘what gets measured gets managed’. Applying data to sustainability and decision making is a relatively new challenge to most organisations, but one where there is an increasing expectation internally and especially externally. Once embraced and understood, however, it can become the foundation of sustainability in an organisation and make a lasting difference.”
Chris Tyas OBE, Chair at GS1 UK

“Quality data unlocks sustainability in the eyes of all stakeholders be it customers, consumers, investors, regulators, or employees."

Data is the missing piece of the sustainability puzzle. Through it, you can reach your current sustainability goals while also identifying how sustainability fits into further growth opportunities, enabling positive changes, and future-proofing your business against a fast-changing environmental and social landscape.

Whether you want to foster diversity and inclusion, reduce energy usage, minimize waste, or even just measure your sustainability performance, leveraging data to overcome your business challenges will help you put your company on the right track to becoming more sustainability-driven, and make a positive, lasting impact on the world.

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Contributors

By Andrew, Senior Business Analyst

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