Covid-19 still has a grip on us and has already transformed the future of business. Despite all the negative consequences that came with COVID-19, it also initiated some encouraging changes that would not have happened so quickly otherwise. A recent study from Deloitte says that “COVID-19 has turned digitization from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’ for many organizations, forcing them to adapt and modernize quickly in order to keep their operations running.” Companies that quickly identified digitalization opportunities and acted on them right away appear to have better adapted to the new Covid-19 reality.
Digitization is here to stay. But what facts are most relevant and valuable in this new context?
The BARC BI Trend Monitor shows that with the data explosion, cloud computing capabilities and mobile devices there has been an increased focus around data. “2020 will be the year of data quality management and data discovery.” Businesses want to go beyond the current use and processing of data, to use data actively to optimize processes and decisions.
How can this help with Sustainability Reporting and Management?
For many organizations, data collection for sustainability reporting and carbon management still involve crude manual processes. When approached by companies we often find siloed EHS software in place. While this means current processes are time-consuming and tedious, it also provides an opportunity to leverage efficiency gains through automation.
Our SpheraCloud platform enables efficient and streamlined sustainability data collection and management. When companies decide to go beyond management and reporting and increase the performance of their sustainability initiatives, we recommend the following three value-adding modules for immediate results:
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Improve Data Quality: Compliance and Control
To improve data quality, businesses need to understand tolerance breaches as they occur. This includes data validation routines at the source of data entry by automatically identifying data anomalies using configurable algorithms. For reliable GHG inventories or energy profile reports, data accuracy is key. Our EHS software provides advanced rule-based and workflow techniques to ensure an accurate single version of the truth. Our SpheraCloud software provides meta data validation, advanced and multi-staged plausibility checks and everything in between.
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Optimize and accelerate decision-making: Targets and Actions
The Targets and Actions module adds powerful functionality to achieve tangible business benefits, such as reduced energy costs, improved supplier performance and recognition as a leader in sustainability. It provides what-if scenarios and simulations of facility level efficiency measures. An overview report displays information, including energy and cost savings as well as a payback calculations. You can drop actions onto forecasts to assess how these actions can help meet targets. The deviation report enables businesses to set more granular targets at a monthly/quarterly/semi-annual level and track performance against that target.
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Mind the gap: Gap Filling
Data quality is a key basis for meaningful and correct data analysis. Data gaps in cyclic data collection can be caused by skipped, missed or interrupted data collection. Too many data gaps might lead to serious reporting deviations. With the Gap Filling feature, businesses can avoid these occasions by localizing and filling data gaps based on comprehensive calculation rules and enrich reports by extrapolating data without affecting the actual data collection. Gap Filling is achieved by applying a fixed set of calculation rules to the detected number of gaps.
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It’s all about data: data quality, data management, data discovery.
This will help you understand and plan future business and decision-making processes. Rather than following the classic pattern of reporting past events, companies now have the ability to guide their organizations to better business decisions based on data analysis.
Our award-winning SpheraCloud Corporate Sustainability software, with its value-adding modules, provides business with unparalleled insights into their performance data. By combining best-in-class sustainability data management at a large scale with powerful reporting and advanced performance analytics, it can help you to enhance the digitalization of processes along your sustainability journey toward achieving your sustainability targets.
Sustainability at ista – Corporate Sustainability Case Study
ista decided to invest in technology to improve the management of their sustainability initiatives. They chose Sphera’s Corporate Sustainability software for its intuitive design and comprehensive sustainability functionality, including the critical emission factor databases the solution offers.
Read how ista decided to expand their sustainability initiatives beyond data collection and reporting by using our value-adding modules Compliance and Control and Targets and Actions to improve their sustainability performance.
If you would like to learn more about digitally transforming your Corporate Sustainability Reporting and Management, we invite you to attend our Sustainability Summit, which takes place November 10 & 12.