1. Using sustainability metrics for business performance www.eq2.eu.com
Managing The Future Today
White Paper
By 2020 the most profitable organisations will be the most sustainable
…economic sustainability delivers ecological sustainability
Operating sustainability is managing granular efficiency that multiplies across an enterprise to deliver macro effectiveness.
Organisational sustainability is being able to manage the total sphere of the functional impacts and mitigating their effects.
Financial sustainability will come from closed loop supplier cycles.
2. Using sustainability metrics for business performance www.eq2.eu.com
Managing The Future Today
Managing The Future
If we are going to use the finite global resources to build a sustainable
global economy we need to accurately understand our utilisation
processes and consumption limits. These metrics should be mapped to
our business models to understand the financial pathway to maintain
economic profitability.
Our industrialisation history contains incredible innovation and ingenuity
although usually based on a plentiful resources model with only cursory
investment for long term sustainable performance. Efficiencies have
been gained through controlling resource allocation with just-in-time
supply chains and lean manufacturing processes.
The post eighties business model has spurned boom and bust cycles
with customer convenience being the dominant driver. Today’s
consumerism economics requires the use of inordinate volumes of
commodities to deliver a ‘now gratification’ customer experience. The
financial focus is on volume and margin not waste and recycle.
The food industry is an example of ‘now gratification’ by eliminating
seasonal shortages through logistics, climate control and production
intensity. The consumer has been conditioned to expect strawberries
year round while the related commodity requirement to provide the
convenience is financially priced but never resource efficiency equated.
Given that we need to maintain the current customer service
performance and competitive cost levels the focus has to be on business
efficiency.
Today
During the industrial revolution we saw mechanisation provide
productivity gains. Since the seventies, computerisation has been the key
driver to higher productivity. Although each has reduced resource
consumption, resource reuse and waste minimisation remain in embryonic
stages.
The means to control resource usage, waste and reuse across an
enterprise in a bottom-up granular process has yet to be applied. This is
partly to do with the means but mostly to do with will. Business
performance is being driven by fiscal reporting cycles, incentive bonuses
and short term investor returns.
The next level of business efficiency will come from granular management
of resources. Business freely accepts that there is still significant resource
under-utilisation and waste in supply chains, manufacturing processes and
resource application. Grid energy being a prime example with 40% plus
being lost from point of generation to usage.
Balance sheets drive value and investment with resources usually being
seen as an asset, however some resources could quickly become a liability
due to their acquisition cost, availability (Geopolitical) or process cost.
By 2020 granular management of resources, eliminating wastage and
maxmising reuse will be the foundation of sustainable balance sheets that
in turn will drive long term investment returns.
3. Using sustainability metrics for business performance www.eq2.eu.com
Managing The Future Today
Tomorrow
Managing resources is not new, it has been done since mankind first
needed to eat. Resources have been managed by successive populations
and empires with varing degrees of success. History provides numerous
examples of the consequences of miss-management however what is
new is globalisation with interconnected economies.
Past ecomonies have failed due to resource depletion but the effect was
limited to a geographic area, with limited global impact. Never before
have we been depleting resources on a global scale with no means of
replacing a given resource. With resource consumption rapidly
outstripping physical reserves, resource management is critical for
future business sustainability, economic growth and social stability.
To date measuring, tracking and controlling resources at a granular level
in an organisation or country has not been a viable option due to its
cost, lack of technology and value return. But those barriers are now
being eroded through the next generation of the internet (The Grid) and
the growth of sensory devices.
The day of the machine, where machine talks to machine talks to
humans is rapidly becoming a reality. A world where data from all levels
can drive planning and decisions using cloud flexability with internet
connectivity will drive waste, process and costs down. Granular control
processes will expose multiple resource efficiencies across an entity that
cumulative are significant.
The Day of The Machines
What if companies could plan and programme consumption processes
through real time interfaces using intelligence at granular levels to
influence business and living environments? What if companies or
countries could recycle/remanufacture a resource without requiring
additional virgin material? What if all resources were on-demand driven,
rather than on supply availability?
Enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems have addressed resource
management to a point with significant efficiency gains. Although used by
many organisations for resource control in manufacturing and product
logistics they are widely acknowledged as expensive, time hungry and
cumbersome. ERP systems are rigid customised systems for a specific
processes management, rarely involving outside-the-factory processes and
have little connectivity functionality.
To gain the next level of efficiency, enterprises need to apply the ERP
model to all resources throughout their operation and supply chain. The
model needs to include all aspects of an organisation’s business sphere,
providing measurement, tracking and the ability to effect change actions
as required.
When organisations are able to control all their resources the effect will
appear in bottom lines. Leveraging granular resource control into multiple
granular savings will deliver substantial profit returns.
4. Using sustainability metrics for business performance www.eq2.eu.com
Managing The Future Today
2013
EQ2
has developed evolutionTM
an enterprise/city/country platform that
provides the infrastructure and connectivity to measure, track and
report all types of resource consumption with their related emissions,
costs and secondary social impacts. It provides…
Intelligence
- Identifies micro-to-macro resource use, consumption purpose,
related impact liabilities and economic costs
Connectivity
- Automates data acquisition from ERP, building, energy, fuel,
and meter management systems, connects executives to
operating teams, supply chains, citizens to government
Total Sphere Management
- Total organisation impact perspective and performance metrics
from cradle to grave/cradle mapped to GHG Scope 1, 2, 3.
Reporting
- Provides tracking, benchmarking, financial, regulatory and
custom reports.
Automated Sustainability
evolutionTM
takes the cost and complexity out of resource efficiency
management by connecting business devises, systems and
management teams. It provides operating intelligence as required in a
simple and user friendly interface at all team levels.
evolutionTM
is designed to deliver for sustianability what Dun &
Bradstreet delivers for financial/procurement teams and CFOs.
- It has a significant emissions database for over 200 countiers of
energy, fuel, water, waste and chemical factors down to individual
creation sources.
- It provides the global platform to collect and use big data sets for
energy, fuel, water, waste, chemicals etc to understand
consumption patterns, purpose and emissions.
- It identifies consumption from a local building or transport level
through to a global perspective.
evolution™ is 'Designed for Sustainability Management'. It addresses
the costly and nebulous sustainability issue by turning sustainability
metrics into business information.
S Burt 2013 ( sb@eq2.eu.com )
