Managing your triple bottom line with sustainability software
What keeps companies on the right track with sustainable practices? Instead of focusing on the bottom line, more companies have now adopted the triple bottom line (TBL) philosophy, considering how their organization affects the people consuming their products, the planet, as well as their profits. This mindset is encouraging decision makers to look at the community as a whole and how your business impacts the environment in which you live, as well as the products you market. With a focus now more broadly shifted to the holistic impacts, organizations must address how to manage this corporate social responsibility to maintain sustainable operations.
Gensuite, cloud-based compliance and management systems software solutions provider, highlights five considerations for establishing and managing a corporate sustainability program to protect your triple bottom line.
- Regulatory Compliance
Regulatory compliance is the cornerstone for maintaining sustainable operations in any industry. From environmental, waste, and water, to responsible product sourcing, companies face numerous regulatory obligations to keep their facilities and organizations operating safely. As regulations change or new ones are implemented, ensuring continued compliance could mean the difference between continued operations or suspended production and hefty fines.
With increasing expectations from new regulations, managing compliance to regulatory mandates is essential. Companies from a variety of industries have turned to new solutions in software to manage their environmental compliance and sustainability programs. Gensuite’s Sustainability Reporting module alone is trusted by more than 3,020 global sites world-wide to identify risks and opportunities in resource usage or emissions outputs and define and track KPIs.
- Global Guidelines
One guideline that was created to help push global leaders and businesses towards a more sustainable planet are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This United Nations initiative, also known as the “2030 Agenda”, are a set of 17 goals thoughtfully created to address all the challenges we face on a global scale. Challenges including poverty, a lack of affordable clean energy, climate change, and environmental stability being just a few examples of issues the SDGs are committed to solving. In addition to being used as a guideline for some nations, SDGs are also being used by a myriad of companies who use these 17 objectives as inspiration to reach their personal corporate social responsibility goals.
With the globalization of organizations, regulatory compliance is no longer limited to just one set of country-specific guidelines. Organizations can more effectively keep track of and comply with global guidelines using a sustainability software that allows for simultaneous management and reporting on various goals.
- Community Impacts
While regulations are plenty reason enough to invest in energy and sustainability tools, there is also the increasing conversation of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Even without CSR being mandatory, companies are putting forth the effort to make a decision that will be more beneficial to society and the environment at large. An easy example, over the years, Starbucks has taken the initiative to source 99% of its coffee from ethically sound places in an effort to achieve their sustainability goal of 100%.
When operations negatively impact the communities in our own back yard and at large, they are not sustainable over time. Set operational goals and enterprise standards for managing environmental and societal effects brought on by your organization and track those guideposts to remain accountable and report to stakeholders.
- Stakeholder Perceptions
The good done by an effective sustainability campaign can also be seen in the eyes of the general public. Consumers are more easily able to relate to those companies who show their commitment to causes like treating wildlife affected by oil spills or investing in companies who stand by their promise to make more sustainable products. Consumers are increasingly taking a more active role in what products or service providers they choose based on the social responsibility and sustainability of those goods. And companies are reaping significant rewards to their TBL.
Gensuite’s Sustainability Reporting module is designed to help identify your organizations sustainability footprint, track effectiveness, and report to stakeholders. Collectively, these sites have seen a 29% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and a 13.5% reduction in water consumption.
- Increased Efficiencies & Cost Savings
With all of these considerations, how can any company effectively manage their sustainability and corporate social responsibility programs, in addition to reduce costs for the organization? The answer lies in reducing the time spent manually tracking regulatory changes, conservation opportunities, and community impacts within one centralized platform. By automating these processes, companies have more time and visibility to address opportunities of reducing costs across sites and in the field. With powerful reporting functionality to track key performance indicators, companies can save on the amount of time and money they spend on their sustainability program while also elevating their efforts to impress stakeholders.
One example is the Gensuite Sustainability Projects application, a one-stop application to managing all of your sustainability projects while also keeping you up to date with automated emails and notifications that can be customized depending on what projects are most applicable to any one employee. Within the application module, all of your company’s energy, waste, and water conservation projects can be tracked from inception to completion. Tangible ROI – companies who’ve implemented Sustainability Projects have collectively produced over $200 million in actual cost savings.
Gensuite’s sustainability program management solutions
Gensuite is committed to helping your organization with our sustainability software suite, a digital solution for environmental and sustainability management. Our line of Sustainability Tools empowers companies in a variety of industries to become more efficient in their sustainability and reporting efforts with quicker reporting times and more consistent data entry methods. And, with many industries now facing a large global push towards more intensive sustainability, software like Gensuite allows you to keep up with shifting expectations with an up-to-date, cloud-based system.
For more information on how you can improve your Sustainability program and CSR, download our white paper to learn more.
