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Finance for a sustainable future A new dynamic opportunity

So where can Finance help?

Sustainability, climate, and equity: many organizations are considering what these concepts for a better future mean for their businesses now. The steps leaders take in the near term can have an impact for years to come, but it’s hard to know where to start. But good things can happen when an organization tackles all three at once: for our planet and people, and for an organization’s future sustainability and prosperity.

Trending now—and the opportunities for Finance

Nearly every facet of an organization’s practices has a sustainability angle—a challenge, an opportunity, or both. For Finance, the considerations are as myriad as the tasks they’re charged with undertaking.

Finance has a role to play

If we can agree that the world as we know it currently is at risk, we should all care—and every day, another global organization makes a commitment to think and act differently. Finance has a role to play in the moves an organization makes toward a sustainable future, including holding it accountable for enterprise performance, data analysis, cost-savings, market guidance, strategic planning, talent considerations, and more.

Survive

First, Finance can assist the organization in bringing it into alignment with existing compliance and regulatory measures and provide transparency in financial and sustainability data through reliable and efficient processes and controls. A transformation mindset, with a strong, flexible foundation of technology, processes, data, and talent, means Finance can be dynamic no matter how complex the regulatory measures may be.

Drive

Finance can help drive a sustainable operating model shift and operational efficiency with Lights Out FinanceTM and a capacity to sense, weigh, and mitigate risks—and prepare the organization for what’s next. With deep insights on the value drivers to the business, Finance understands the risks and opportunity for its decisions—especially ones based on sustainability, with such deep implications. It can also partner with the business to manage the performance of sustainability initiatives and investments, demonstrating impact and results that can build confidence internally and externally that the organization is investing in the appropriate outcomes, and unlock access to investors and capital to continue to fund the sustainability journey.

Thrive

New markets, new products, new consumers, new value—all of it can be on the table when an organization successfully incorporates sustainability practices. Finance can evolve new avenues of business partnering to drive the sustainability strategy, enabled by an empowered workforce, advanced data governance, and an overall dynamic finance capability. Being able to balance revenue growth and sustainability impacts can be a common trait of leading organizations in a sustainable future.

It's time to get moving.

As a CFO or Finance executive you may be looking to build your vision and strategy to incorporate sustainability practices and to help understand the opportunity they hold for your organization—and the risks to the organization if it doesn’t take advantage of them. There is opportunity in an organization’s data, technology, reporting, operating models, and people. Over the coming months, we’ll examine how Finance can partner across all facets of an organization to help drive improved reporting and sustainability decision-making, considerations for talent and operating models, modeling and decision support for climate risk, and more. Survive, drive, and thrive: a dynamic and future-forward finance function can find the opportunity in each of these stages and help empower its organization to stay relevant, keep stakeholders and customers engaged, and do good for the planet and their community. The destination—a better world and a sustainable organization—is well worth the journey ahead. Let’s get moving.

1 World Resources Institute, “Net zero targets: Which countries have them and how they stack up” webinar, 62:05, June 16, 2021.

2 Alan Murray and David Meyer, “The latest Fortune 500 CEO survey does not show a lot of optimism,” Fortune, May 24, 2022.

3 David Vetter, “How do you tell if climate laws really work? Start by counting them,” Forbes, August 11, 2020.

4 Deloitte Insights, “The world is ready for climate action,” infographic, 2021.

5 Tom Schoenwaelder et al., The purpose premium, Monitor Deloitte, 2021.

6 Deloitte Global, Deloitte 2022 CxO Sustainability Report, 2022.

7 Richard Mattison and Molly Mintz, “Accounting for climate: The next frontier in ESG,” S&;P Global Market Intelligence, October 11, 2019.

8 Deloitte Insights, Success personified in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, 2019.

The future is sustainable—and it starts in finance

Finance organizations should empower your ESG and sustainability reporting. Learn how finance can shape the sustainability decisions that help companies survive, drive, and thrive.

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