Head of Intelex recognized by peer CEO group for leadership

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

We Intelexians couldn’t be more proud of our President and CEO Mark Jaine.

AceTech Ontario, a group of more than 50 CEOs in the technology sector, handed Mark a unique leadership award during its annual retreat in Ontario’s Blue Mountains last week. Four CEOs in the organization were recognized for their leadership and accomplishments. Mark was singled out for an aggressive and highly successful sales and marketing strategy.

“It is truly humbling to receive this unique award from a network of peers that I both respect and admire,” Mark said in response to receiving the award. “I have learned so much through my participation with AceTech Ontario over the years, so it is a great honour to be recognized in this way.”

Head over to our press room for more information about this significant accomplishment.

Congratulations, Mark!

Successful Sustainability Strategy Series: Tip #5 — Communicate your performance

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

We’ve covered the importance of developing a proactive plan, quantifying financial gains, understanding the role of metrics, and using software to manage your sustainability program for the most effective results.

Today let’s talk about the often overlooked element of a winning sustainability program: communicating your progress.

5. Communicate Commitment/Performance to Stakeholders: While the primary function of sustainability initiatives will be the returns they deliver through conservation efforts and a number of other cost-savings effects, don’t miss the boat on the wealth of opportunities that accompany clearly communicating sustainability efforts and accomplishments to stakeholders. When developing a sustainability strategy, consider incorporating an ongoing sustainability reporting plan that conforms to existing frameworks (such as the IIRC, GRI and others).

While some critics have complained that comprehensive sustainability reporting can dominate resources and distract from essential business operations, proper planning, resource allocation and the use of software solutions (with configurable reporting capabilities) can render reporting a seamless and automatic process.

Even before sustainability benchmarks have been achieved, once a commitment to sustainable development has been solidified by way of a documented sustainability strategy, an organization can begin touting its agenda. The marketing, publicity, sales and customer relations benefits that flow from flaunting environmental, social and financial sustainability are too substantial to ignore.

In closing

We hope you’ve enjoyed our overview of the elements we believe are integral to a successful sustainability strategy. Please share your thoughts with us! We’ve barely scratched the surface of what can be a nuanced, multilayered file, but we’ve tried to provide some beginner-level guidance to the uninitiated organization that aspires to be more sustainable.

As a parting thought, do not fall into the trap many newcomers to the sustainability game find themselves in by being either overly ambitious or forgetting to frame priorities accurately. Remember that your organization is a business first and foremost: instead of framing your business priorities in terms of environmental issues, frame environmental issues in terms of your business priorities.

Successful Sustainability Strategy Series: Tip #4 — Forecast and track with software

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

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.

Successful Sustainability Strategy Series: Tip #3 — The role of metrics

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

We’ve discussed the value of a proactive strategy and quantifying financial gains in building a sustainability strategy.

Today we’ll look at another critical component of a sustainability strategy that is the heart of the adage “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

3. Understand the Role of Metrics: Before you make your first step into the world of sustainability – before you install that first compact fluorescent lightbulb – it’s imperative to understand you need to know where you’re at.

Along the lines of the lightbulb example above, it can be as simple as starting with an energy audit of your plants, offices, sites and other business units. If you know where you’re at, you can begin to set goals and targets, key elements of any successful sustainability strategy. The progress achieved through each action and each campaign within your sustainability strategy will be much more significant if they can be measured against where you were at when you launched your strategy.

Without defined, tracked sustainability metrics, you have no sustainability program. Not only will you be unable to monitor the success of sustainability initiatives and continually improve sustainability performance, you won’t be able to tie such initiatives to ROI and you won’t be able to share your track record with stakeholders.

Successful Sustainability Strategy Series: Tip #2 — Calculate the ROI

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

Yesterday we discussed the role of developing a proactive plan in building a successful sustainability strategy.

Today is all about a term CFOs, VPs, Directors, executive team members like to hear a lot: ROI.

2. Calculate the ROI: You may have achieved the buy-in of senior management, or your CEO may have provided a clear mandate to undertake sustainable development initiatives. Either way, acknowledge sustainability programs are an investment and spell-out in clear, concrete terms the tangible ROI a sustainability strategy will generate on a short- and long-term basis.

As suggested above, some indirect savings values will be coloured by probabilities and expressed as ranges. However, an honest, comprehensive breakdown — which can be developed in-house or facilitated by a consultant or software solutions provider in many cases — will give your organization a clear analysis of what gains can be expected from the adoption of a comprehensive sustainable development program.

As the years roll on, your organization can compare actual data against ROI expectations to tweak its sustainability program for the most effective results.

Successful Sustainability Strategy Series: Tip #1 — Develop a proactive plan

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Paul Leavoy

Thinking of developing an organization-wide sustainability strategy?

An uninitiated organization — perhaps a young, yet fast-growing company just beginning to toy with the idea of pursuing sustainability initiatives in the interest of boosting financial performance — might wonder, given the multifaceted, complex purview of sustainable development, where exactly to start. The answer is simpler and more straightforward than you might suspect.

This week we’ll be reviewing five components of a successful sustainability strategy. The first aspect is all about a word we use a lot over here at Intelex: Proactive.

1. Develop a Proactive Strategy: Just as a sustainability framework is an intrinsically integrated framework of interrelated elements affecting all areas of business management, ad hoc and reactive actions have no place in a sustainability management strategy.

Rather than defining policies on a reactive basis, develop a comprehensive, proactive sustainability strategy to build a sustainable development program that is holistic, effective and worth reporting on. Certainly, start small: plan a series of simple conservation initiatives to roll out within the first few months or year. After all, your organization can’t expect to become an industry leader in one day.

However, integrate short-term goals with anticipated long-term accomplishments and delineate exactly how you want your organization to progress towards its sustainability objectives over a four- to five-year time frame. Also, as a part of your sustainability strategy, conduct a SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) analysis as well as an assessment of Risks and Opportunities to determine where your organization can have the greatest impact.