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Sustainability strategies for companies

In today’s world, practicing responsibility in our daily lives encompasses in no small part a commitment to sustainability. As companies are the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem losses, they must accept a key role in fulfilling this commitment. Their actions, when viewed as a whole, have the scale necessary to assure an environmentally sustainable future with a truly positive net impact on the planet.

In support of companies seeking to shoulder this responsibility, Detecon has developed its own sustainability consulting approach, which focuses on one of the most important levers for sustainable development: Digitainability, the use of digital technologies for sustainable resource efficiency.

We will be happy to help you in the development of a digital sustainability strategy that prepares your company for a sustainable future.

Digitainability: Concept for a sustainable future

Digitainability emerges wherever digitalization meets sustainability. Originally conceived by the Bonn Alliance for Sustainability Research (Prof. Jakob Rhymer and today´s Detecon consultant Shivam Gupta), this integration of the terms digitalization and sustainability designates the interplay between digitalization and sustainable development and their fruitful interrelationship. In this sense, it is at the heart of Detecon’s sustainability consulting approach.

Learn more about digitainability

Analysts rank T-Systems and Detecon as leaders in business consulting and sustainability

Detecon is recognized in the ISG Provider Lens™ survey "Digital Business Enablement and ESG Services 2022". In addition awarded with "Best in Class" in the PAC Innovation Radar "Leaders in Sustainability-related IT Consulting & Services in Europe 2023".

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BDU Guide to Sustainability in the Consulting Industry

Sustainability in consulting industry is not only a matter of managing own business. Consulting activities in companies are a relevant lever for more sustainability in the economy generally. In this sense, consultancies bear not only entrepreneurial but also ecological and social responsibility.

Good enough reason for the BDU association to develop a guideline for sustainability in the consulting sector, to which our expert Christoph Zorn contributed considerably: Read more in the BDU guide!

Six steps to digital sustainability

Digital technologies are the main drivers for the transformation toward environmentally and socially responsible corporate governance. But they must be used correctly if they are to realize their full potential.

Detecon’s sustainability approach is based on a six-step procedure:

Define scope

Creation of a common understanding about the requirements, the essential fields of action in the company, the scope of cooperation, and the sustainability goals.

Assess baseline and maturity

Assessment of the current status in the organization of methods, standards, and tools now in use and of strategies for achieving sustainability goals now and in the future. Furthermore, definition of the relevant data sets, data collection and harmonization, and data aggregation; calculation of the baseline.

Set expectations and ambitions

Screening, evaluation, and prioritization of present expectations and ambitions, taking into account various influencing factors (including global frameworks, stakeholders, competitors, and general legal conditions).

Implement strategy and measures

Development of a strategic approach for achievement of the defined sustainability goals along with short- and long-term measures to reach the defined level of ambition, elucidated in a road map with performance indicators.

Anchor governance

Creation of a comprehensive governance plan for the long-term anchoring of the defined sustainability goals in the company, taking into account all relevant stakeholders, contacts, and strategic departments (e.g., Compliance). Recommendation for potentially suitable instruments for measuring target achievement and the internal and external rollout of the new strategy that will ensure the solid anchoring of sustainability in the corporate culture.

Change Management

Concept development to convince major stakeholders of the value of the realignment of the corporate vision. Ensuring that all stakeholders share the same goal of climate neutrality requires consistent communication and an active learning culture. Managers must expand their role model function and motivate employees in all areas. Sustainability ambassadors scale the new culture into all divisions of the company.

Fields of Action

There are many different possible starting points in companies for anchoring sustainability in corporate management.

Sustainability strategy

The development of a tailored and coordinated sustainability strategy, taking into account all pertinent influencing factors.

Energy efficiency and green IT

The development of a green IT strategy or measures that will affect the full length of the value chain. From the selection of hardware and vendors to “make-or-buy” decisions and the choice of sustainable energy sources to (cyber)security aspects or procedures to be followed toward the end of the lifecycle.

Click here to go to our website "Green IT"

Client enablement

The integration of a client enablement concept that aims to demonstrate the positive environmental impacts resulting from the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). Either by optimizing ICT itself to make it more sustainable or by making long-term changes at the systemic level.

Sustainable supply chain

Actions for handling the impact of environmental and social factors along a company’s own value chain have become even more pressing since the entry into force of the Supply Chain Due Dilligence Act (LkSG). Companies must create data transparency and implement risk management systems, governance models, and complaint mechanisms or face harsh penalties. The requirements can also be viewed as an opportunity to transform the company and prepare it for the future, however.

Environmental, social, and governance management

The prioritization of ESG criteria within the company and the implementation of strategic measures to improve the company’s positioning in conjunction with the effective use of digital tools and reporting structures.

Reporting

Establishing and building clear reporting structures go hand in hand with an understanding of the legal requirements and the capacity to create or consolidate essential data streams and evaluate them appropriately so that the adjustment of existing targets and measures is possible.

Corporate carbon footprint

The analysis and calculation of the carbon footprint in accordance with the three scopes of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG): direct emissions, indirect emissions, and corporate value chain emissions, plus the derivation of related sustainability measures.

(Digital) Product Carbon Footprint

The analysis of the carbon footprint of inter alia (digital) products and the associated infrastructure and the emissions caused by the human resources employed along the product lifecycle.

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Set the Right Goals Now: Digital Sustainability Strategy for Companies

Global warming demands immediate action. Digitalization — when used intelligently — is a powerful tool for reducing the CO2-footprint. Companies have a special duty to act.

Learn more about Sustainability Strategies

Consult our expert

Ana Miola accompanies our clients as a Manager in the field of sustainability and digitalization in strategic and interdisciplinary transformations. Together with all stakeholders, she develops and implements sustainable business models that align technological advances with environmental and human limits to achieve a net positive impact.

Nature is a system in constant change, searching for constant balance. It is a system that understands all the functioning patterns of its elements and adapts considering changing events. Or, in our words: it is a resilient data-based sustainable system.

Ana Miola, Manager

Sustainability in Finance

Sustainable finance appears to us to be an essential tool for overcoming these challenges both inside and outside a company - especially when accompanied by technology and high-end data management.

Sustainability as a tool for cutting costs

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Everything about the Supply Chain Due Dilligence Act (LkSG)

The new Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz; LkSG) will fundamentally change the reality of German companies as of the beginning of 2023. As if there were not enough, more EU regulations are on the way.

The new regulation requires the implementation of strict risk management systems, grievance mechanisms, and transparent reporting at various corporate levels to address the risks of human rights violations and environmental harm along global supply chains.

We believe that companies should take advantage of this situation and seize it as an opportunity to adopt digital transparency measures that will enable them to make the right — and sustainable — data-based decisions.

Read a summary of the most important aspects of the law and a use case here.