4 (less obvious) tips for selecting the right sustainability software
Sustainability software helps companies collect, manage, report and ultimately drive positive change using a variety of data sources and areas. However, it can be difficult to know where to start. We’ve outlined what to consider when choosing the right software for your business.
When we talk about sustainability data, we mean more than just data relating to the environment. It also includes governance, health and safety and social data (such as diversity and inclusion) and more. ‘Sustainability’ is a broad term that means different things to different people. There are now a huge number of software solutions available to help manage this broad range of sustainability, environmental, and health and safety data, supporting companies in driving positive change through effective data use.
Choosing and implementing the right tool can be a lengthy, stressful, and expensive process. However, investing time at the start can lead to a system that provides a good return on investment and adds value to your data management. We have extensive experience helping clients plan, search for, and implement large software solutions. Here are four less obvious things to consider when selecting and implementing a new sustainability platform.
1. Cultural fit
Cultural fit might not be something you immediately think of when choosing software, but it can be crucial. The sustainability and EHS software market is large and diverse, with a mix of big enterprise solutions that come from a stringent risk and compliance culture and more niche, boutique softwares from startup businesses with a flexible, user-focused culture. One of the main reasons we’re in business today is the difficulty of maintaining a strong relationship between a company and its software provider; a good cultural fit (and understanding the way they communication) can help build a lasting relationship.
2. Understand your internal procurement process
It’s essential to involve the right stakeholders throughout the software selection and implementation process, especially when it involves various departments. Typically, the departments involved would be sustainability, legal, IT, finance and procurement but could also be any other department requiring data input or output from the software. Building a cross-functional project team that understands the processes required by all members early on is crucial to your success.
This is even more critical if you’re part of a large organisation looking to purchase an ‘enterprise solution’ like UL360 or Enablon, for example, which would mean a central solution for all your non-financial data and reporting. We have lots of experience working with businesses to find the right software for their requirements – acting as the interpreter between them and the vendor – as well as implementation, optimisation and ongoing day to day support.
3. Understand your critical requirements
Start by building a detailed and agreed requirements specification (we can help with this!). Once defined, weighting your requirements becomes a vital step in quantifying responses from software vendors. Companies often use a scale like MoSCoW for this purpose, but defining your ‘absolute’ or ‘critical’ requirements is essential. These could be technical, such as ‘must comply with ISO 14001 standards’, or functional, like ‘must have a library of emission factors updated automatically within the system’. Understanding these and the expected workflows from all stakeholders will save time and help progress the decision-making and implementation process. Even the most complex RFP for an enterprise sustainability data management system can boil down to how well the software meets these critical requirements. Many other workflows and parts of the system can be configured later, and we often see an unofficial decision to focus on the critical requirements when choosing between solutions.
4. Current versus future scope
This can be really challenging, especially when creating a cross-departmental roadmap for the system where you’re almost certainly going to learn as you go. But being aligned internally will help you be clear externally when speaking to software vendors. This links to the critical requirements tip but goes further. A large-scale system implementation will usually be approached in phases; identifying what your company cannot live without straight away versus what can be configured later. Being clear with software companies will help them provide a more accurate quote and advice. Another benefit of a phased approach is that, following initial implementation, you and your stakeholders will have a better grasp of the system’s capabilities, making discussions about changes and increased scope more targeted and less conceptual in the long run.
Software vendors increasingly encourage companies to start with a simplified version of their tool to speed up implementation and adoption and to start embedding the system into the company. While this is partly a sales tactic, there are significant benefits to this approach in general.
The sustainability and EHS software market is vast with many different solutions available. Building a detailed requirements specification, engaging your internal stakeholders, finding the right cultural fit, and meeting your critical and future needs are all vital to ensure you choose the right solution the first time.
