Last week, we had the pleasure to attend TIBCO’s Customer Success Series event. Companies like ABN AMRO, KLM, SMT Shipping and ilionx came together to share best practices around analytics, business reporting, process automation, IoT and other new technologies.
In this blog
- Sustainability in business reporting: a shifting landscape
- Sustainability data will need the same rigour as financial data
- Visma Sustynex and TIBCO
- SMT Shipping: an inspiring story
- Taking your sustainability reports to the next level
Our colleagues René van der Meij and Erik Breen hosted a presentation and discussion focused on building up the sustainability reporting practice. In this article, we’ll share some valuable insights and learnings from the event.
Sustainability in business reporting: a shifting landscape
In the past, sustainability reports were seen as something that’s “nice to have.” Today, they are being mandated by law. Regulators are exerting more pressure on companies to improve sustainability disclosure. And for good reason. Humanity is facing unprecedented challenges like climate change and biodiversity collapse. Citizens are demanding action. It’s time for corporations to rise up to the task. This is driving momentous shifts in the reporting landscape.
The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive will require 12,000 companies to report on audited sustainability metrics as of 2024. This list will grow to 50,000 companies by 2025. These larger companies will also demand that their business partners disclose sustainability metrics, impacting many smaller enterprises down the chain. After all, a large corporation’s sustainability data is only as good as its partners’.
In North America, you have initiatives like the US Business Roundtable emerging. Nearly 200 CEOs have committed to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders. A couple of days before the TIBCO event, the US Securities and Exchange Commission also announced it was putting forward a proposal for US-listed companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal would also impact all listed oil and gas companies if adopted in its current form.
In short, there is increasing demand for the exchange of reliable sustainability data between companies, governments and capital providers. Companies will need to report on their sustainability metrics and they will be expected to prevent and mitigate any adverse impacts they have on the environment and society. This poses a very big challenge.
Dare to Make Sustainable Business Choices: Lessons from Jack van der Veen
We are living in a time of great uncertainty and change. As citizens, more of us are demanding sustainable transformation from businesses and governments. Regulations like CSRD are also making this a priority in corporate agendas. But to achieve this transformation, we need to make difficult choices. We spoke with Jack van der Veen, who is a distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management, to understand how leadership teams can drive the change. Read the full conversation here
Sustainability data will need the same rigour as financial data
To make informed decisions about their sustainability impact, organisations need high quality and accessible data. But unlike financial data, sustainability data is not standardised. It’s also notoriously hard to collect. This is where systems like Visma Sustynex and TIBCO can help.
Visma Sustynex and TIBCO
Visma Sustynex enables organisations to gather Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) data from both internal and external sources (like suppliers). It validates data according to a taxonomy, helping you create standardised sustainability data sets and reports and share them with authorised parties like regulators, partners and investors.
Combined with TIBCO, Visma Sustynex helps you deliver sustainability reports with extensive dashboarding and data visualisation capabilities, so your receiving parties can view aggregate data and drill down into insights. This can also empower your internal stakeholders to make informed decisions that drive value creation and improve sustainability performance.
SMT Shipping: an inspiring story
One of the many inspiring stories we heard at the event was presented by SMT Shipping. SMT Shipping provides solutions for the effective handling of many types of bulk cargo. They offer both shore-based and vessel transport operations. During their presentation, they discussed how they use shipping data and sustainability ratings to assess their ships’ performance. They use TIBCO to visualise and report on this data.
Taking your sustainability reports to the next level
It was great to see how large companies are using TIBCO to visualise their data; sustainability data in particular. This strengthens our vision that sustainability data will become increasingly important in the years to come.
Visma Connect uses TIBCO solutions as part of our Standard Business Reporting platform. We combined our strengths for sustainability reporting as well. While Visma Sustynex is able to receive high quality trustworthy data from external parties, TIBCO can collect it from internal sources to create the full overview needed for sustainability reporting.
