Clive Margolis

Sustainability reporting key goal of Rio summit (and other news)

admin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:39:32 +0000

The United Nations has put global sustainability reporting by companies among its proposed key outcomes for the Rio+ 20 environmental summit in June.

See the Guardian newspaper report:

A samba school dancer at Rio Carnival 2012. Image by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo, via Flickr

The key to sustainability is data
I found this interesting blog on World Water Day, which was March 22, by Amy Sample Ward: Key to sustainability article

There are so many dedicated “days” – International Men’s Day, Women’s Day, Environment Day … there must be one for each day of the year by now. I wonder who appoints them? Or is it anointed? I’ve always assumed it is done by some part of the United Nations. Maybe there’s a big office somewhere where people think this kind of thing up and let the world know. I wonder if there’s a “something-day” calendar that brings them all together. Probably several the way the world is.

Starbucks 2011 sustainability report – energy use down 7.5%
Starbucks has released its 2011 sustainability report.

Some interesting snippets:

- community service hours by employees doubled to 442000
- energy usage down 7.5%
- 50% of worldwide energy from renewable sources

You can download the report from here: Starbucks sustainability report

GRI announces tagging language for sustainability reports
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has announced its new Extended Business Reporting Language (xBRL), a new taxonomy designed for tagging sustainability data thereby making it easier for users to locate and analyse information in sustainability reports. More information: here

Graduates help Iowa town develop sustainability metrics
Graduate students from the Department of University of Iowa’s School of Urban and Regional Planning have teamed up with the local town of Dubuque to develop a set of sustainability metrics for the town of 58000.

At the time of writing the team has identified 59 draft metrics, under expected themes such as energy utilisation, water use and recycling, but also themes such as open space, heritage and housing affordability. Details here

Oracle to announce new BI and analytics strategies
Oracle is to announce new Business Intelligence and analytics strategies at an event planned for April 4. Co-President Mark Hurd and Balaji Yelamanchili, Senior Vice-President of analytics and performance management will talk about integrated analytic applications between CRM and ERP on Oracle’s Exalytics machine, as well as “new analytic solutions” aimed at SAP customers, according to the Oracle website.

Exalytics, like SAP Hana, features in-memory processing, which can greatly improve data throughput,especially when crunching large volumes of data.

China sustainability reporting on the increase
Interesting article examines how sustainability reporting increased from one company to 600 between 2001 and 2009, and how this increase has partly due to stock exchange pressure. However the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the China Securities Regulatory Commission have also launched a “green securities” policy, making it harder for polluters to raise capital. article

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UK to press for green accounting at Rio

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:58:53 +0000

Britain will be calling on governments to adopt “green accounting” at the forthcoming world conference on sustainable development, to be held in Brazil in June.

Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, will announce an initiative to get all countries to produce accounts based on “GDP-plus”, an enhancement of the traditional gross domestic prduct (GDP) including assessments of “natural capital” such as rivers, forests and other natural resources.

The UK Government plans to have its own “GDP-plus” national accounts by 2020. The Rio conference marks the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, attended by more than 100 world leaders and home of the first international climate change treaty.

Says Ms Spelman: “It’s recognised that the snapshot of the state of the economy based on GDP is too narrow today, and that’s what we’ll be advocating in Rio.”

And what is green accounting? you might be asking. Put very simply, green accounting is a way of bringing environmental costs into account when doing – well – accounting. Traditional accounting and government measures such as GDP usually ignore most or all of these costs.

Why are environmental costs ignored? The environmental costs of making things and doing business have traditionally been ignored in the accounting process for two main reasons: (1) the impact of say, polluting the odd waterway here and there, was relatively insignificant in the past and (2) it is easy to measure what goes in and out of the factory and how much it all costs, but far more difficult to measure, say, the damage caused by sulphur dioxide blown by the wind across national borders. Governments need something they can measure, hence GDP.

But now there are so many more people, and productivity is many times what it was when measures like GDP came into being. Something has to be done about environmental loss.

Can we replace GDP with green accounting, then? Many wish we could, but it’s probably not going to happen. It’s just too complex and imprecise to measure. But we can use it to give insights into our impact on the natural environment, which will raise awareness and also help to control that impact. It’s coming, quite soon.

Has any government actually done any “green” accounting? Well, China introduced green GDP reporting in 2004, but then effectively withdrew from it in 2007 due to the huge impact of environmental costs on its GDP. India has started to measure green GDP and is planning to adjust traditional GDP to environmental costs from 2015. The UK looks like it has started the process too (see above).

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Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit 2012

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:16:46 +0000

Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre
Feb 21 – 22, 2012
More info: http://www.gartner.com/ap/bi

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Study finds corporate responsibility data “appalling”

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:14:18 +0000

Environmental claims by UK companies are often based on “incorrect and irrelevant” data, according to a Leeds University study.

The researchers from the University of Leeds and Euromed Management School (France) found unsubstantiated claims, gaps in data and inaccurate figures when they analysed more than 4,000 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, rankings and surveys published by companies worldwide, going back ten years.

Dr Ralf Barkemeyer, a lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility at the University of Leeds, described the quality of the data as “appalling at times”.

The study due to be published will show that fewer than one in six out of 443 European Union companies featuring in the FTSE All World Index between 2005 and 2009, reported greenhouse gas emissions that covered all corporate activities, while others did not say which activities their data referred to.

The 2007 sustainability report from UK telecoms giant BT is of particular interest. 99.8% of its waste is apparently due to a few Belgian office workers, while none of its Southeast Asian or Australian employees consumed any water.

Italian energy company ENEL cited its carbon emissions as 122,089 million tons – four times the total produced on Earth.

Dr. Barkemeyer was critical of CSR metrics produced by companies such as KPMG, which often use GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) metrics. He noted that very few criteria applied relate to the actual impact of corporate activity on the environment and society, focusing instead on aspects such as the existence of a strategy or the implementation of environmental management systems or policy formulation.

Companies get kudos for stating where they want to go, but no one bothers to check if they actually got there.

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Tableau Software’s 2012 BI Predictions

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:43:03 +0000

There’s something about punters that seems to appeal. Here’s a summary of Tableau’s predictions:

Big data gets even bigger
Self-reliance is the new self-service
The “Consumerization of Enterprise Software” accelerates
Mobile BI goes mainstream
Some companies start to get comfortable with social BI
Companies explore the BI cloud
Most jobs will require analytical skills… leading to talent shortages
BI projects flourish under aligned IT & business
Interactive data visualization becomes a requirement
Hadoop gathers momentum – unstructured data isn’t going anywhere

Click here for Tableau’s 2012 predictions

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Event: TDWI Solution Summit for MDM, DQ, DG

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:55:16 +0000

March 4 – 6 2012

The TDWI Solution Summit in Savannah, Georgia is a two-day event focusing on Master Data Management (MDM), Data Quality (DQ), or Data Governance (DG) solutions

The summit promises expert guidance for senior business and technology leaders planning a project in the next 12 months.

The conference will use case studies to show how to initiate and grow implementations and programs for MDM, DQ, and DG and how to coordinate them for the greatest business value.

More information

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Today’s MBAs – the “sustainable generation”

admin — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:47:35 +0000

Good news – tomorrow’s business leaders are a lot “greener” than today’s. According to a new study commissioned by Sky MBA students are likely to see themselves as part of the first “sustainability generation”. They are more knowledgeable about sustainability and see business opportunities in it which today’s leaders are not generally taking advantage of.

Better still, 96% of respondents plan to be involved with sustainability in their careers.

‘The Sustainable Generation: The Sky Future Leaders Study’ covers 750 corporate graduate trainees, high potential middle-managers and MBA students and looks at their attitudes and ambitions relating to sustainability. It found a high level of confidence in their ability to deal with issues relating to sustainability.

Considering most of us throw up our arms in despair when faced with environmental problems it’s comforting to know our future leaders are finding ways to deal with them.

A high percentage (79%) see the visions and values of a company as important when considering potential employers, while 69% say their personal beliefs affect which companies they trust and use.

70% believe sustainability can create new opportunities for business, while 66% do not believe businesses should use difficult economic conditions as an excuse to ignore sustainability.

Our future leaders are not that impressed with our current ones, by the look of things. Only three per cent believe they are succeeding in integrating sustainability into their organisations, although 78% believe they are making a genuine effort to do so. 35% do not believe their employers provide adequate training or education on sustainability.

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Ice packs can leak!

admin — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:59:41 +0000

When I put my back out two weeks ago I did not realise there would be some lessons in it for me. Here’s what I learned:

- It’s not that easy to just “carry on” when you’re hobbling around like a 250-year-old on a bad day

- I get frustrated when I can’t leap around on all my various dubious missions all day. I didn’t cope 10% as well as I thought I would when everything was fine

- Mobility is a valuable thing we take for granted until we lose it. There’s a lot of people out there who don’t have it. Now I know just a little how they must feel

- Everyone has a different opinion on back care – osteopaths are good, osteos are bad, accupuncture is the only way – you decide!

- Ice packs can leak, and when they do it’s a cold, wet, trickly goo sliding down your legs. But I love it really!

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ZDnet lists BI in top Five for 2012

admin — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:51:09 +0000

ZDnet blogger Heather Clancy ranks Business Intelligence second in an entry entitled “Five Essential Technologies for Small Businesses”.

Heather reckons “big data” will be adopted in a major way by small companies in 2012, citing an SMB Technology Group study which indicates 16 percent of small and 29 percent of medium sized businesses have bought a BI solution in the past two years. A similar proportion plan to make BI investments over the next twelve months.

2012 is likely to be “a transformational year” for small business technology, says Heather.

Top of the list came tablet computers such as the Apple iPad. Also featuring were social media marketing tools, cloud-driven storage and disaster recovery services and video-enabled collaboration applications.

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Launch – sustainability reporting guidance for event organisers

admin — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:15:27 +0000

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) launches its Event Organisers Sector Supplement on 24 January 2012 at the London 2012 offices in Canary Wharf, London.

The launch will be of interest to event organisers wishing to report on sustainability issues such as impacts on communities, natural environments and local and global economies. The range of events is diverse, for example business meetings, conferences, sports events and cultural festivals. Each has a different environmental impact.

Date: Tuesday 24 January 2012
Time: 5.00-7:30pm (GMT)
Location: London 2012 offices
One Churchill Place
Canary Wharf
London E14 5LN
United Kingdom

RSVP by 15 January 2012 to: http://conta.cc/siMDh3

There is also a webinar on 25 January at 4pm CET. Register: http://bit.ly/tVQuK7

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