Global Consumer Products Manufacturer Sustainability Reporting System

Objectives

Our client is a global consumer products manufacturer with a reputation for quality and corporate responsibility. With a group-wide set of 2020 sustainability goals, they had been struggling to manage and track over 100 environmental and social performance indicators. And with no robust way of collecting and validating data from across the group, reporting to GRI and UNGC standards was time-consuming and error-prone, and limited to an annual exercise.

The lack of analysis tools or dashboards prevented efficient target setting, analysis and reporting, and made it hard to provide feedback to their business units. This prompted them to seek a solution in the form of a company-wide sustainability performance and reporting system.

Project

The client asked Anthesis to develop a single, integrated solution for collecting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability data, setting targets and tracking performance, and for easy analysis and reporting. Their particular requirements included:

• A simple web-based portal for each business unit to enter data.
• Monthly tracking of data to feed into performance management.
• Dashboards with standard tables and graphs to monitor their progress against targets.
• The ability to view rolled up data and slice it according to business unit, region, and group levels.
• A structured database for easy storage and retrieval of content for GRI and UNGC reporting.
• The capability to expand the solution to include additional impacts, KPIs and users.

Services

Following a detailed review of the client’s requirements, Anthesis and Footprinter^TM built the solution using the Green Operations and Green Social modules of the Footprinter^TM platform. This was done in a collaborative and agile way with the client, including features such as:

• An online web platform, accessible anywhere and designed for collaboration.
• Robust and standardised data entry in one place.
• Dashboards that allow business units to see and analyse their own data.
• Portfolio dashboards that roll up performance and slice by business unit, region and KPI.
• Customisable reports available on screen and exportable to Excel.
• A database capable of storing all relevant content and structured according to GRI and UNGC standards.

Impacts

The solution has enabled the client to store all relevant data on a single platform, meaning they spend less time and effort on data collection and checking, and are able to analyse data at a business unit and group level. Similarly, their sustainability and CSR teams have benefitted significantly from less time-consuming tasks, allowing them to focus their efforts on engaging the business and driving performance improvement.