Sustainability services

Sustainability matters to business

Ensure future profits

Financial metrics -such as those based on sales, costs and earnings-largely represent past performance. Trying to predict a company's future based solely on past financial performance is like driving at night using only taillights for guidance. For example, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published an empirical study, which concluded "The usefulness of financial reporting has declined steadily over the past 20 years.[1]"

Moreover, one need only look at the ratio of a company's book value to market value to see the relative importance that investors place on business intangibles such as human, social and environmental capital.

Environmental and social performance matters

Today's environmental and social performance impact tomorrow's profits. Community relations in the present may impact access to new markets in the future. HR policies today can impact tomorrow's productivity, innovation, employee retention and ability to recruit. Current supply chain decisions can impact future environmental liabilities in the form of embedded substances of concern, environmental impairment, or downstream reclamation.

So it's no wonder that many investors are looking to complement financial information with environmental and social or non-financial information. And for companies this means getting a handle on their current environmental and social performance. And then figuring out how to improve organizational performance by systematically including environmental and social considerations.

Sustainability-related activities and information

Sustainability is not a single solution to a single problem. The issues that are most important vary by industry, company, and location. These may include: supply chain and sourcing decisions, production methods, distribution methods, HR policies, and partnering strategies. In fact, a recent study suggests that the business impact of sustainability-related activities can even be negative if the company is generally perceived as a laggard[2].

So stakeholder engagement is crucial to keep on top of issues that matter to various constituencies and to figure out which issues are most important to the future success of the business. Click here to see an overview of major CSR activities

DSSlab's sustainability services

DSSlab provides a wide range of sustainability (or Corporate Social Responsibility 'CSR') services that cover the gamut from companies who are just getting their feet wet, to companies that are trying to optimize their CSR information systems. We provide strategic consulting on the costs/benefits of doing CSR. We provide analytical services to help you understand your performance in the context. And we provide sustainability information systems analysis, design and implementation services.

If your company or organization:

.. is thinking about or just getting in to the game we can help you answer the many value questions you probably have like the following..

.. is already doing CSR reporting we can help you answer the many performance questions you're probably wrestling with like these

..already recognizes the strategic business value in CSR reporting and the stakeholder engagement processes that support it, we can help you with the many information systems and integration tasks that need to be performed like the following..

Information solutions you can trust