Increasingly, organizations are under pressure from numerous stakeholders to incorporate sustainability practices into their business strategies. As companies set ambitious environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, they often look to providers of sustainability management software to help them reduce their environmental impact and ensure employees are treated fairly.
What is sustainability management software?
Sustainability management software, also known as ESG software, helps organizations of all sizes track and report on metrics related to their ESG goals, such as greenhouse gas emissions, waste production, energy consumption, and more, said Abhijit Sunil, senior analyst at research firm Forrester.
“These tools help with data collection from different parts of the organization for calculating the carbon footprint of the organization,” he said. “And they enable companies to create dashboards to help multiple personas internally make decisions accordingly.”
Sustainability management tools also help create scenarios that enable companies to understand the pathways they can take to reduce the carbon footprints for the business and how they can set targets for the business to do that, according to Sunil.
In addition, sustainability management software helps enterprises with reporting this data out into standardized reporting frameworks and standards, such as the CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project), the Global Reporting Initiative, the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, and others, he said.
However, sustainability also means paying attention to social and governance issues — the “S” and “G” in “ESG.” While much of the attention in sustainability is focused on emissions reporting, it’s not unidimensional, said Amy Cravens, a research manager at IDC. Increasingly, organizations are expanding their ESG initiatives to track performance in other environmental issues (water, waste, circularity, and biodiversity), as well as social (workforce and community impact) and governance (compliance, ethics, privacy, and security) issues.
“A holistic ESG program will be significantly more impactful in reducing the organization’s risk and benefiting the community and environment,” she said.
IDC is seeing a huge demand among organizations for sustainability management software, said Cravens. “That’s because ESG is still kind of new for a lot of companies, and they’re still struggling to understand what they need to do and how to approach it,” she said. “The software in conjunction with service providers is helping companies get around their ESG reporting.”
Benefits of sustainability management tools
There are a number of benefits to implementing sustainability management software, including:
Better data collection: Sustainability management tools provide automated data collection and monitor a company’s energy use, how much waste it produces, how much water it…
2023-08-28 10:24:03
Original from www.computerworld.com rnrn