As some of you already know, I’m quite interested in the linkage between corporate sustainability, also known as corporate social responsibility or CSR, and business intelligence. There’s a very logical place for BI teams, processes, and technologies in CSR.

CSR wraps the traditional, profit-making business efforts in ways that reduce their impact on both the environment and society. This is often referred to as the triple-bottom line-balancing financial, social, and environmental ROI.

Each company’s sustainability goals will be unique. Manufacturers may look at reducing fuel consumption through optimizing shipping routes. Hoteliers may look both at recycling guest waste and hiring from the local community. Builders may look to use more renewable building materials.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was formed to create a common framework for companies to report voluntary reporting of economic, environmental, and social activities. It doesn’t specify what to report, but rather how to report. The GRI has adopted strategies to promote standards and provide assurance to stakeholders. These include consultation panels, internal audits, and independent reviews.

Though CSR metrics are not always easy to measure, companies should make sure the metrics they gather are both suitable and available. The metrics should be objective, relevant, complete, and consistently measurable.

Today, many large, well-known companies are producing annual corporate sustainability reports. These are actually done in a very similar fashion to the “annual report.” Companies use these reports to inform shareholders and communicate with the public to:

• Demonstrate their interest in the environment, their employees, and the communities they serve
• Show their commitment to human rights and fair labor policies
• Promote transparency with employees, shareholders, government regulators, and NGOs
• Enhance or protect their brand or reputation
• To grow shareholder value

Some of the companies reporting include Nike, PepsiCo, McDonald’s, AT&T and Intel. There are even more in the GRI featured report list. Take a look at some of these reports. I think you’ll find them fascinating and you’ll see the depth in which they’ve been able to establish metrics for CSR.

As a BI practitioner, consultant, or vendor, it’s time to start planning how you can support CSR. Are you being given a seat at the table? Can you help the CSR team think differently about gathering data for hard-to-measure metrics? Perhaps a CSR scorecard is in order to provide ongoing visibility.

More companies are realizing they can no longer selfishly think only of their profits. Stakeholders are beginning to demand they reduce their impact on the environment and contribute to social justice both with employees and the community.

What will be your role?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I’m very pleased to see another business intelligence software company has added an offering for corporate sustainability reporting. On December 15, 2009, SAP/Business Objects announced their comprehensive sustainability solution, joining both Actuate and SAS.

Corporate sustainability is increasingly becoming an integral function of the business and reporting plays a key role.

“Sustainability is increasingly mission-critical across the corporate world,” Stephen Stokes, vice president of Sustainability and Green Technologies at AMR Research, said in a statement. “Managing and reporting an organization’s sustainable performance via transparent and high quality data collation, analysis, optimization and modeling is a new basis for defining and communicating operational excellence.”

Businesses are looking to their business intelligence providers for reporting solutions they can integrate into their current BI environment – solutions that will help get them up and running quickly.

That thought led me to wonder how easy it is to find reporting solutions for sustainability. I first did a Google search for “corporate sustainability reporting solution.” The good news is SAP made it to the first page. SAS made it to the second page, and I was five pages deep and never found Actuate.

Interesting, what I did find was Oracle talks about sustainability but doesn’t have a dedicated solution.

Next, I went to the SAP, SAS, and Actuate websites. I wanted to know how difficult it would be to find their sustainability solutions. With SAP just releasing their news two weeks ago, you would have thought it would still be front and center. Intuitively, I thought I would find it in their Business Objects section, but no luck. Finally did a search and found it in their SAP solutions section. However, I tried going straight to the solution section (without using search results) and could find not it.

So I tried SAS. They were a little better. Nothing on the home page under “solutions” but hit the “more products & solutions” link and you’ll find their offering.

Lastly, took a look at Actuate. Nothing mentioned on the home page about sustainability solutions. Nothing in the navigational menus. Making it more difficult, they organize by product and don’t have a menu for solutions. Finally resorted to doing a search. Actuate’s sustainability solution came up easily.

All of this shows that business intelligence solution providers are making good progress in addressing the demand for sustainability reporting, but they are still falling down in helping prospects and customers find their solutions.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I still remember my first Earth Day, which was also THE first Earth Day in 1970. I was in 4^th grade (go ahead, do the math… I’ll wait). Preventing littering was about as much as I understood about being environmentally responsible and its relation to Earth Day.

Since then, there has been a fair amount of progress, though not near enough, in the almost 40 years since Earth Day started. The term “green” used to primarily represent recycle and reuse, but has expanded in scope to include Corporate Sustainability, also known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR uses a triple bottom line that measures success based on financial, environmental, and social metrics.

Many companies are embarking on sustainability programs and mostly for the right reasons, treating people and the environment with care and respect, and not just for PR. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t communicate your company’s CSR efforts.

Whether your company is involved in a formal CSR program or just embarking on various green initiatives, make sure your efforts are being communicated to your stakeholders who include customers, employees, partners, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and local communities.

CSR Communication Benefits

In addition to increased revenues and decreased costs, CSR programs offer a number of benefits. Many of these benefits are enhanced by communication including:

·         Improved reputation – easier to hire good employees, build customer loyalty, and create shareholder value

·         Improved community relations – local involvement builds community support and makes doing business with local authorities easier

·         Improved compliance – public officials are inclined to work together with companies making efforts to meet regulations

With CSR, there are many ways to provide information and exposure regarding your company’s efforts, and all should be considered. The CSR stakeholder community is pretty diverse, so it’s to your benefit to get information out using a variety of media. Media should include all of the usual suspects such as press releases, newspaper articles, television news casts, radio public interest stories. Online mediums should also be used such as company and industry blogs, company Facebook pages, Twitter announcements, and posted podcasts.

In addition to news-type information, success stories and thought leadership from company executives can be used to create an interesting and powerful image to stakeholders.

Beware of Greenwashing

Lastly, be careful how you present your content. Information must be honest and accurate to avoid what is now being called “greenwashing” which is the act of making your company sound greener than it really is.  Don’t highlight your environmental or social improvements in one area to cover up for negative activities in another area. Companies that try and create a perception of sustainability to gain customer and stakeholder favor without backing up their claims will actually do more damage to their reputation than good.

Build up CSR Knowledge in Marketing

One way to help ensure you communicate accurately is to make sure you are knowledgeable about CSR. With recent changes in the government and an increased focus on sustainability, more and more companies will be embarking or expanding on CSR programs. Now is a great time to educate yourself on corporate sustainability, aka corporate social responsibility, so you will be ready to frame your company’s efforts in their best light. Aquinas College does a good job of explaining sustainability in layman’s terms.

Business Link says it best: “A successfully implemented corporate sustainability strategy positively impacts a company’s reputation and brand image by demonstrating that the company is taking responsibility for its actions and embracing change for the greater good.  In fact, an essential part of a company’s success is the engagement and development of strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders based on trust, respect, and cooperation.”

Another Earth Day has come and gone this year. I am grateful that it is no longer just about recycling or being green, but that it takes a larger stance, one that compels companies to take a good hard look at their impact on the earth and make the changes needed to ensure our children will enjoy the natural assets we have today.

What do you think about the role of companies as it relates to CSR?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI