Sustainability embodies some of the great challenges facing us, including the impacts of population growth, increased energy demand, resource depletion, water scarcity, and waste-stream management. Businesses are feeling pressure to address sustainability issues from many stakeholders, including shareholders, supply chain partners, customers, nongovernmental organizations, regulators and lawmakers.
At ecoMarkets Advisory Services we work with organizations to create business value by building sustainability into profitable business strategies, strengthening brands, increasing revenues and reducing risk and cost.
We help our clients understand how to adopt sustainability values, how to transfer them into actions, how to prioritize environmental and sustainability initiatives and how to communicate enterprise sustainability principles and practices to stakeholders and to the community.
Sustainability is no longer reported by many corporations just as an effort to portray their good corporate citizenship. Today, being a sustainable business ie: an organization that integrates environmental and social performance with financial results – is a growing imperative, because it makes excellent financial sense.
A 2009 Economist Intelligence Unit survey shows that only 24% of executives polled believe that in the short term (1-2 years) there is a strong correlation between the commitment of sustainable business practices and the financial performance of the firm. Yet, less than half of companies report their environmental and sustainability goals.
While sustainable business practices may not have a significant impact in the minds of executives in the short run, over the period of 5-10 years 69% of executives polled believe that there is a strong link between sustainability and profitability. Companies worldwide are redeveloping their core business practices to meet sustainable goals in every aspect from supply chain to energy use policy to corporate finance.
According to this survey, 34% of executives polled said that their firm’s immediate financial goals were of more importance than practicing sustainability. This is the cause of the major roadblock between corporate profit and sustainable business practices. However, this practice is fast becoming dated as sustainability initiatives are driving profitability.
Executives believe that in the long run, integrating sustainable business practices into their firms, will allow them to operate more efficiently and increase profit margins. Fifty-four percent say sustainability efforts have been led by top management, which is the reason sustainable practices have been growing at such a high rate.
Sustainability’s emergence as a core business issue adds a new dimension to finance, including setting finance strategy and vision and designing and implementing changes across the finance organization.
Sustainability, as it creates these new demands, can also become a catalyst for finance transformation initiatives intended to help the business grow, improve efficiency, and manage risk and compliance.