So far in our week-long discussion on building a successful sustainability strategy, we’ve reviewed the importance of developing a proactive plan, quantifying financial gains, and understanding the role of metrics.
Now let’s turn our attention to another critical aspect and something that’s dear to our hearts at Intelex: the role of software. Yes, it could be argued we’re more than marginally invested in the role software plays in sustainability, but we still deeply believe it is an essential part of building an effective program.
4. Use Software to Track Metrics and Forecast: Certainly, though conventional paper- and spreadsheet-based platforms can be and are used to track environmental, social and economic performance, the advantage of integrated software solutions over such archaic means is undisputable.
In particular, some configurable software products already geared towards streamlining the management of EHS systems can be extended to cover most if not all aspects of a complete sustainability program.
Moreover, some systems are prepared to capture, correlate, assess and automatically report on sustainability data, eliminating the time and effort spent on manual data collection, entry and assessment by employees—personnel that could most likely focus their energy on improving the caliber and scope of your sustainability program.
By automating the assessment and reporting on key sustainability metrics with software, organizations can analyze trends and forecast to streamline the allocation of resources and identify potential weaknesses in their sustainability programs and, critically, cut costs.
