How can data management disciplines help Chief Sustainability Officers?
A successful sustainability strategy has to go hand-in-hand with a solid data strategy. Data provides the evidence and transparency necessary to calculate and demonstrate ‘green compliance’.
The Chief Sustainability Officer is often somebody who isn’t immersed in data management. They’re not an expert in data governance, data collection and data modelling. They will need guidance and support.
They'll need that support from their own internal people and a consulting partner like Amplifi to help them build their blueprint for what a data led ESG strategy looks like. They also need to consider how the right technology can help them collect and manage that mammoth amount of data, which is where a master data platform like STEP comes in. Organisations will need to apply the disciplines that we regularly assert and employ on traditional master data, to their sustainability data, since the data challenge is significant, and the governance and reporting process must be robust.
As is consistent with all MDM projects, sustainability data, like master data, is scattered across a variety of applications, departments and many external sources. It is therefore critical to deploy a system that can capture and govern not just product data but even supplier and location data and combine this diverse data into a 360-degree view.
This is what makes the difference between a multi-domain MDM, such as STEP, and a regular PIM, since sustainability data reaches well beyond just product information. A multi-domain MDM platform allows a CSO to create one-to-many relationships between sustainability metrics and multiple products, locations, suppliers, reports, assessments and public ESG submissions. This approach minimises redundant effort, centralises governance and stewardship, is scalable and ensures that the same (accurate) information is consistently and unambiguously shared.
To get ESG right, it has to be a team effort between the CSO and the data leaders in an organisation. Together, they can define the sustainability data policy and the configuration of the MDM to support the organisation’s sustainability KPIs.
Want to understand more about all-things ESG? Download our guide ESG Unchained: a guide to finding your ESG hotspots below to get the full story on how data management can impact your ESG initiatives.
ESG Unchained: A guide to finding your ESG hotspots
