Sustainability Reporting
In a fairly recent trend, many organizations put equal importance on producing non-financial reports as part of annual disclosures. Sustainability report is the foremost of them and is mostly done voluntarily to show a company's commitment towards accountability and transparency.
Sustainability reporting is defined by GRI as the practice of measuring, disclosing, and being accountable to internal and external stakeholders for organizational performance towards the goal of sustainable development.
In simpler terms, a sustainability report is an organizational report that gives information about economic, environmental, social and governance performance.
So what are the capabilities required in a Sustainability Reporting Platform?
As per my opinion, a true sustainability reporting platform should focus on both functional and techno-logical capabilities. Key performance areas monitored by a sustainability platform should include Environmental (materials, energy, water, emissions, biodiversity etc.), Social (labor practices training and development, occupational safety, diversity, human rights, local com-munity, corruption etc.) and Economic (economic performance, economic impact, compliance, product responsibility etc.)
The platform needs to technically capable to bring out business intelligence reports from captured Enterprise Data. The dash-boards should support internationalization and data level security due to the sensitive nature of the data and processes.
What is GRI Reporting framework:
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is a non-profit organization that promotes economic, environmental and social sustainability. It provides all companies and organizations with a comprehensive sustainability reporting framework.
GRI guidelines focus on two major areas:
Reporting Principles and guidance: How to define report content, what to put in a re-port, how to ensure report quality, how to define range or boundary of the report and finally how to derive the key indicators to report.
Standard Disclosures: Economic, environ-mental and social KPIs, the Management Approach to arrive at these performance areas and measures, finally organizational strategy for creating a sustainable future.
Latest is the G3.1 release.
Sustainability reporting and Hyperion :
Oracle has launched Sustainability Reporting Kit for HFM very recently. It ensures both financial and sustainability reporting from a single application. This starter kit is a
Sustainable Reporting at Infosys:
To quote S.D. Shibulal, "For Infosys, sustain-ability means that while we add value for our stakeholders - customers, employees, investors, and the society - we also need to be conscious of building a tomorrow that is sustainable". Our sustainability report adopts GRI's 2011 sustainability reporting guidelines (3.1). Infosys sustainability initiative involves around 'Social contract', 'Resource intensity 'and 'Green innovation'. The report can be downloaded at www.infosys.com
