Enterprise Sustainability

Consulting offerings

For a long time, sustainability was an important but specialized issue. Then it was the domain of a few compliance and sustainability officers. Now, corporate board members and C-Suite executives are looking at sustainability as a critical business issue. Some companies are transforming the entire business to be more sustainable. How has this issue come so far so fast? Is it here to stay? And if it is, what should executives do about it?

Because sustainability is in varying stages or maturity in an environment of regulatory uncertainty, many organizations have a difficult time knowing whether they’re on track or falling behind. We offer services designed to help companies in their efforts to gauge progress and build a sustainability & corporate responsibility strategy that makes effective use of resources already in place improvement. It’s an approach designed to help organizations better position themselves to be more competitive and innovative and to generate real results. If you’re ready to move forward, we’re ready to help. Learn more about Enterprise Sustainability.

What we offer

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What does green look like in the dark?

Many companies are awaiting clear signals on regulatory and legislative issues related to sustainability. Regulatory bodies still have a long way to go to develop consensus on these issues. In the mean time, companies aren’t immune to risk-- calls for greater transparency, integrated reporting, evolving environmental and social impact measurement standards, brand risk, energy cost and security, emissions trading or tax schemes, clean water availability and license to operate- all have the potential to impact short term performance and long term strength.

Companies have to evaluate sustainability on their own terms. For many companies, undertaking a structured approach to developing sustainability strategy provides surprises in terms of how much the company already has underway to be more sustainable.. From there, a path forward begins to emerge. Does it lead to reporting, more effective quality information management, external assurance? Does it support the idea of rapid transformation, or a series of measured steps? For many companies, evaluating sustainability in the context of traditional functions-- such as supply chain, finance, HR, IT, operations-- helps define business value- sustainability changes everything. Whatever’s next, we can help with your efforts to achieve sustainability goals.

Bottom-line benefits

Help align the sustainability mission with corporate strategy and use sustainability to drive enterprise value
Generate a differentiated market position to drive growth through business model and produce/service innovation
Address the needs of key stakeholders including customers, staff, policy makers, investors and regulators
Deliver cost savings or efficiency improvements by reducing, reusing or recycling value chain inputs and outputs
Mitigate sustainability-related risks through compliance and enhanced risk management processes

How to create more value now

We’ve helped many companies generate business value from their approach to energy, sustainability and the environment. Here are a few things we’ve learned along the way.

Define it. What does “sustainability” mean? It’s different for each company – it depends on the business model, industry and market context. Examine sustainability through a better understanding of customer, competitive and market issues, use that understanding to develop the definition that works for your organization, and build your strategy around that. Focus on value generation- link future sustainability investments to near-term results.
Open your eyes to what you’ve already done. Many clients are surprised to see the sustainability activities they have undertaken in a single view. They’ve never assessed all of the energy, emissions, water, waste and related issues in a comprehensive way. Understanding the baseline is an important first step – and often an encouraging one.
Balance local concerns with an enterprise approach. While sustainability is important at the local level, the key is to show results across the enterprise. At many companies, local efforts aren’t connected to one another. A smarter approach is to find good ideas at the local level and institutionalize them across the enterprise in a systematic way.
Engage at every turn. Some leaders think that before engaging their employees, customers and business partners on an issue like sustainability, they need to have a game plan. In fact, it’s okay to initiate open-ended conversations with stakeholders about sustainability. The key is to start a dialogue. Chances are, you’ll glean useful information you need to map out the end state for your efforts.

How we can help

There’s a long list of sustainability efforts your company could take on right now. But that doesn’t mean you should . One of the toughest challenges in sustainability is knowing what’s appropriate, and when—and developing the hard business case to justify the necessary investments. And what you do can be as important as when you do it. We have experience helping clients understand where they are on the sustainability journey, where they need to be, and how to get on track. We bring together a wide range of disciplines and capabilities to help develop a business-centric approach.

Here are some of the services we offer: