[Video] Sustainability: the leading role of data and digitalization

“Organizations that want to boost their sustainability performance and meet the reporting duties, have to collect, process and analyze big amounts of data. A solid data infrastructure and technology can help them,” said delaware’s Evelien Vanhooren to conclude blog 2 of our series on sustainable business. So, we wondered how our roundtable participants are coping with the challenge – and how data helps them to make more sustainable decisions.

Discover in the video below how measuring and reporting sustainability efforts can put a stop to greenwashing.
 

Struggling with data collection

“Data is crucial to track sustainability performance, report consistently and avoid greenwashing. You simply need numbers and a context to understand what’s going on,” says Ann Peeters of the Agoria studies center. When drafting their sustainability report for the Belgian tech sector, however, Agoria learned that many companies are struggling to capture the information, data and documents they need to monitor progress on their ESG strategy and report on their commitments and results. Agoria even encountered difficulties themselves when they were creating the report, Ann admits.

Erik Peeters of VPK Group, agrees: “Gathering all the data on topics as diverse as CO₂ emissions, diversity, ethics, etc. was and still is quite a bit of a challenge. While our financial data is easily available via our SAP platform, other data comes from an extensive range of sources and is then summarized in spreadsheets. That makes data collection very time-consuming and error-prone. While data consistency is key: for solid reporting, you need one version of the truth.”

The importance of data quality

“Collecting the data is one thing, data quality is indeed another issue,” Barco’s Jan Daem continues. “About 10 years ago, when Barco embarked on its sustainability journey, we set our first KPIs in a fairly unstructured way. Over the years, however, customers and investors have urged us to continually raise the bar. This year, we’re expecting an assurance audit so the pressure is high to generate consistent, high-quality data. And we really want to, as high-quality data help us to gain the insight we need to constantly improve our performance.

Still, data collection remains one of our biggest bottlenecks. It’s simply not easy to capture these large amounts of often complex data from an extensive range of sources, process it and convert it to useful, meaningful results to take action on. Poor and inconsistent master data will invariably lead to incorrect results. So, Barco is working hard to get that straight.” 

From data lake and BI to automatic data harvesting 

“We’ve always relied on our ERP system and Salesforce as data sources,” says Sam Strijckmans of Nitto EMEA, “yet, that is no longer enough to track and trace our progress. There are so many other sources we want to integrate. Our PLCs, for example, are equipped with sensors to control the energy consumption of our operations. That data is captured via our MES system, yet there’s no connection to our ERP yet. And to measure the impact of our products from cradle to gate, we need to gather and analyze data from our suppliers too. To collect all that information, we are now building a data lake. A Business Intelligence solution will then help us analyze the data, in order to gain better insights.”

“We are using SAP BPC but we need a solution to collect structured data more efficiently and streamline reporting,” Erik adds. “Efficiency really is our focus going forward in order to keep up with the increasingly stringent ESG reporting requirements.” 

Standardization, automation and intelligence

Barco is setting up semi-automatically data harvesting, says Jan: “Standardization and automation will become a must to ensure the transparency that authorities and all other stakeholders expect from us. Just look at the Digital Product Passport that the EU will introduce from 2024 onwards. To create such a passport, the entire supply chain will have to cooperate and provide information from source to end of life. A Product Lifecycle Management solution will be needed to cope with that challenge.”

Last but not least, Jan stresses the need for intelligence to get the full picture on your ESG performance: “It’s no longer enough to just track and trace simple KPIs. You need to understand the interaction between data too. You can’t launch a product with exceptionally low energy consumption that contains harmful pollutants or has a negative human rights impact.”  

How digitalization supports ESG efforts

“There are so much opportunities for digitalization to support ESG efforts,” says Ann. Evelien agrees: “At delaware, we have been collecting CSR-related data for a while, which we use as a guideline to step up our efforts. As an IT service provider, we have the tools and the expertise needed to efficiently collect, store, visualize and analyze data and report on it. We’re now using that knowledge to optimize our in-house sustainability reporting. Based on the insights we’re gaining, we can provide our clients with hands-on recommendations.”

Over the past few years, more and more customers ask delaware for advice on ESG reporting. Evelien: “Organizations really struggle with the multitude of metrics, reporting standards, rating agencies and platforms. We can offer advice in every domain. 

At delaware, we have been helping clients realize efficiency gains and gain insights with data- and AI-driven solutions for years. These solutions can now help organizations to efficiently collect, analyze and visualize ESG-related data, exchange it with their ecosystems and even make predictions or simulations to base new targets on. In this way, they can turn their sustainability goals into actions. After all, that’s what a sustainable business is all about. ”

Remember: sustainability pays off

Does all this sound overwhelming? Don’t feel discouraged to kick off your ESG efforts. Dream big but start small. And remember: consistent reporting cannot be your end goal. In the first blog in this series, we explained how sustainability really pays off. Investors, customers and employees: they all choose sustainable businesses. Moreover, as Jan explains: “The insights that we gain not only help us to go for sustainable impact but also to streamline our processes and achieve more efficiencies.” 

Last but not least, everyone around the table agrees: “Sustainability is not a compliance and reporting issue. It is simply the right thing to do and the only way forward.”