Finance for a sustainable future

Companies in general are establishing sustainability commitments and strategies that touch across all parts of a business. To stay accountable, they should measure, track, and report on progress against those objectives, internally and externally. This may not be an easy task, and it can be complex. Translating a sustainability strategy into execution, and demonstrating its progress, demands an integrated and cross-functional organizational construct to drive change, and help an organization stick to its goals.

Think about reporting and performance management: many functions have to do data collection and metrics calculation, and those functions are responsible for performance monitoring. But when it comes to achieving a common goal, like sustainability, those responsibilities can become a lot harder. Reporting on greenhouse gas emissions, employee metrics, environmental effects on supply chains, and energy consumption of business travel and office buildings—and a whole lot more—add up to evidence of an organization’s sustainability goals, strategies, and accomplishments. Sustainability reporting can come from all over the organization, and organizations may not have done a data audit or metrics prioritization. And yet another challenge: as regulatory environments evolve, sustainability reporting expectations are often not prescriptive, which adds another layer of complexity.

To lead and support sustainability reporting and performance management, organizations should consider a sustainability command center, a centralized hub that coordinates across metric definitions, data collection, reporting, tracking, and monitoring of performance—with finance at the helm. With this command center construct, finance can drive integrated approaches to their enterprise’s sustainability initiatives, institute clear guardrails for data governance, and help inspire, enable, and guide decision making across the organization. It’s not a center of excellence (COE) that builds specialized expertise in a single function; instead, it’s a coordinating body that takes an organization’s sustainability strategy and executes it through cooperation and cross-functional collaboration, desiloing work, and providing true pluralistic perspectives across the organization.

Think of a space launch: the command center gathers people across disciplines with a common goal, and helps break down barriers, speeds up decision making and actions, allows for quick pivots and analyses, and keeps everyone connected to execute the mission. The individuals own their processes, but the command center — and its lead — provide direction, pull people together, keep things moving and focused, and enable the mission. Similarly, this is where finance can play a key role and increase its ability and visibility as a strategic business partner for the organization, enabling sustainability goals while keeping a close eye on the bottom line. With a sustainability command center, everyone can keep their eye on the mission while keeping communication open, governance clear and accountable, and collaboration constant. While a sustainability COE or working group can set the mission, the sustainability command center can make sure the mission is accomplished.