Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is becoming ever more important. Some recent headlines;

Tesco is to test putting "carbon labels" on its own-brand products next month in a move to enable consumers to choose products which are less damaging to the environment. Guardian

Marks and Spencer is to begin charging its food shoppers for carrier bags. BBC

Of course Corporate Social Responsibility reporting isn't new in itself, it's the increased focus and level of detail that is changing. As a result, companies will report in ever more detail on these issues and refine their definition of Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR is an increasingly important part of a company’s annual report and CEO’s are making ethics and sustainability claims that need to be backed up. The trend therefore is that CSR data is being treated like financial data which requires greater accountability and accuracy in the reporting of Corporate Social Responsibility objectives, increased levels of corporate governance, and stronger internal control documentation across the enterprise. On the back of increased CSR reporting will come increased auditing requirements as mandated by good corporate governance.

Several governing bodies have arisen to provide guidance and best practice such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Each of these has their own protocol for calculating and reporting environmental KPI's such as carbon emissions. Invariably these rely on excel spreadsheets that are manually entered, in disparate locations around the field of operation. This is going to become less and less acceptable.

Corporate Social Responsibility data will need to be audited and we'll see security, workflow and audit trail issues seeing increased focus in the capture and reporting of CSR data. Here at Retail Monster Consulting we can help you deliver CSR reporting in a robust and usable manner through Business Intelligence (BI) technology. Our CSR dashboard and data model experience, can help you fast track a CSR implementation.

We are actively blogging about CSR related topics such as Green Credentials and Carbon Labelling.

If any of this interests you then please talk to us