Our 6th February webinar shared early findings from our Sustainability Value Triangle research, published later this month. We explored key questions including:
How can sustainability drive value creation? What are the practical lessons from the companies that realize the most value through sustainability? How can collaboration between Finance, IT and Sustainability functions accelerate this journey?
Key Discussion Takeaways:
- Integration Drives Value Creation: Companies that achieve high levels of integration between finance, IT, and sustainability functions realize significantly more commercial value. These “advanced integrators” report better access to high-quality data, more resources allocated to sustainability, and greater innovation and strategic planning capabilities. Integration leads to tangible benefits such as increased efficiencies, reduced costs, and enhanced investment attractiveness.
- Companies need clearer business cases and communication of the value of sustainability: This includes better focusing on the financially material issues and explaining this to investors, not just relying on ESG ratings or proxies. That involves upskilling finance and accounting colleagues to measure and manage this, including better alignment with key teams like long-range financial planning and analysis. But doing this requires strong underlying data.
- Data Quality and Accessibility are Crucial: High-quality, accessible data is fundamental for driving decision-making and reporting in sustainability efforts. The collaboration between finance, IT and sustainability teams is essential to develop integrated data collection systems and ensure data is centralized, accessible and useful. This enables organizations to meet mandatory reporting requirements and leverage data for strategic planning and innovation.
- Role of AI in Sustainability: AI has the potential to significantly accelerate sustainability efforts by providing advanced data analytics and decision-making tools. However, it is crucial to ensure responsible scaling of AI, considering environmental sustainability and ethical implications. IT teams play a key role in implementing AI solutions that support sustainability goals while managing the associated risks and ensuring equitable outcomes. and useful. This enables organizations to meet mandatory reporting requirements and leverage data for strategic planning and innovation.
The webinar was run by the Sustainability Value Creation Partnership of Accounting for Sustainability (A4S), SustainableIT.org, the ERM Sustainability Institute, Salesforce, and GlobeScan. The study is sponsored by Salesforce.
In addition to representatives from the partners, we dove into the findings and stress-tested them with renowned expert:
- Dr. Robert G. Eccles, Visiting Professor at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
