SustainIT Solutions | Medium-Sized Organisations

Why is sustainability important for your business?

Differentiation - Gain a competitive advantage and stand out from the crowd by showing your commitment both to reducing your environmental impact and to saving costs and resources, for you and also for your customers. Also, ensure that when you tender for business, your demonstrable Sustainability Policy means you get selected over others. Don't try to fool your customers with "Greenwash", they want to see real and provable commitment both to changing our environment and to saving costs and resources.

Your customer - Your customers are increasingly aware of environmental and ethical issues and will engage with companies who have a clear commitment to sustainability; they care, so make sure you do.

Your obligations - Nowadays, as a SME, you are required by law (COMPANIES ACT 2006) to act in a way you consider to be the most likely to promote the success of your company; however, you must have regard of the interests of your employees and the impact of your operations on the community and the environment. If you are a quoted company the Business Review must include information about the company's environmental impact, the company's employees and all social and community issues (often known as Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR). Analysis using KPIs to show development, performance and position of the company's business will ensure they are measured effectively.

Cut costs - Tracking, collating, standardising and reporting on data can be time-consuming and resource-hungry - which means costly. By streamlining this process, you could cut costs and, by identifying and improving areas of waste and inefficiency through your reporting, you could reduce costs even further - several companies (Northern Foods is a good example) can now pinpoint several million pounds of annual benefit from their sustainability programmes.

By collecting and managing information you will be able to set performance improvement targets enabling you as a company to reduce your costs. The adage, "If you don't measure it, you can't manage it" is very true. By streamling processes and information and by improving areas of waste and inefficiency through your reporting, you could cut your costs even further.

Want to know more? Just visit our other helpful pages, What is Sustainability? and Helpful Links - or Contact Us.

You can also register for our free and informative monthly newsletter which will keep you right up to date with key environmental and sustainability issues, key events and other useful information.

PLUS - book a free, independent assessment and demo here.

The challenges you face as an SME - and how SustainIT can help you

Clarity - It is often the case that you both want and need to show your commitment to sustainability but don't know how or where to start and what to measure and quantify; furthermore, the amount of information surrounding the subject can render it bewildering and seemingly over-complex - at SustainIT we can help you. To get you started, simply click here to receive our FREE Sustainability Policy Guide. This will get you going and start you thinking about what your company needs to be doing. To get an idea of how some simple software will help you, click here for a DEMO. We have built a standard set of guideline KPIs to help get you going.

Data control and coherence - Another problem is often ensuring you get relevant data, regularly and in a systematic, manageable format; without this, hours are lost either chasing data, re-formatting it and re-presenting it. Once again, we can either provide very cost-effective data capture and processing solutions or manage that data for you - either way, the return on a small investment will be substantial.

Helpful, no-nonsense advice - Our experience and understanding is both deep and wide (see a snapshot of our other work) and we will happily share this with you to help your business run more efficiently, responsibly and cost effectively.

We will happily take some time to get an understanding of your business, share our experience and provide you with an initial, no obligation assessment and consultation at our cost. From there and only if appropriate, we can formulate the most relevant solution for your business, from simple, clear advice and consultancy to software and ongoing assistance services if you need it.

If you feel that would be of benefit just click here to send us an e-mail and we'll be in touch; alternatively, call us on 01275 774168.

Information - You can also sign up for our free monthly Sustainability update which will keep you right up to date with what's going on in sustainability terms, provide useful information and tips and keep you in tune with future developments. Simply register here and don't worry, we absolutely promise that we will never share your e-mail address or details with anyone else unless you ask us to.

We look forward to helping you.

Call SustainIT on 01275 774168 or e-mail

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