I came across a collections of comments I’d saved about why sustainability managers struggle with implementing ESG reporting software solutions.
There is a need – managers start by being frustrated by the enormity and tedious nature of the task and the amount of manual effort they and their teams have to put in.
So they look for solutions. And there is an overwhelming list of solutions. Along with solutions to help you select from the list of solutions.
If you then pick one of these using a procurement process, it appears that the promise and flash at the pitch or demo is unable to deliver in practice.
Many tools give you more work rather than less because now in addition to collecting all the data in the first place you need to organise and manage it in a new package.
Frustrated, they head back to the still frustrating but less expensive approach of managing things in Excel.
Many of the conversations I have with sustainability managers have begun at this point – they’ve tried a solution, it hasn’t worked and they’re looking for something that does. It’s been the same story since we started providing services in this area in 2016-17.
And what works is going back to basics, simple, reliable, maintainable processes – informed by sound operations research principles.
Easier said than done, of course.
Handcrafted insight 