A win-win proposition for customers and the climate
The realities of climate change are becoming ever more apparent. From supply chain risks to rapidly increasing consumer sustainability demands and a host of other challenges, businesses must evolve and adapt now, if they are going to survive. Digital transformation and an innovation mindset are essential tools in this critical process.
Leading global professional services firm
PwC's mission to build trust and solve important problems means that climate change has long been on their radar. PwC knew their customers would require trusted insight and deep expertise to make the climate risk assessments necessary to navigate both the changing climate and the even more rapidly shifting regulatory landscape.
With no time to waste on laborious manual processes, PwC partnered with SAP, combining their climate risk-assessment expertise with SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) advanced analytics, to create the Climate Excellence tool.
This episode of the Better Together series features PwC’s lauded Climate Excellence tool, enabled by
SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
We spoke to Gunther Dütsch, Partner, PwC, Germany and David Jensen, Digital Transformation Programme Coordinator from the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
- Podcast: Gunther Dütsch talks with Tamara McCleary, CEO of Thulium, about how PwC’s Climate Excellence solution helps organizations navigate climate change and its many associated challenges and opportunities. David Jensen also weighs in with his thoughts on how digital transformation and innovation are critical to sustainability efforts.
- LinkedIn session: I sat down with Gunther Dütsch to talk about the process of moving from an idea to a product and about how the PwC Climate Excellence solution came to be and how business stand to gain while cutting carbon and caring for the planet.
Here are some key insights from these conversations:
Digital Innovation is the First Step
As organizations look to prepare for the physical and the policy impacts of climate change, they must grapple with data in a serious way. There's so much data out there; there's so much analysis,” David Jensen told us, but it can be hard for organizations, from small business to large corporations, to make sense of it all.”
As regulatory efforts to fight climate change mount, so will the demands on data. Jensen explains: “The task force on climate related financial disclosures and the
EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive are big regulatory pushes putting a lot of pressure on companies to collect and account for their internal climate and carbon data and to disclose that into the market.” This transparency will be critical as both investors and consumers seek sustainable enterprises.
Consider Your Customers
When PwC set out to create the Climate Excellence tool, they knew they needed an agile approach. Inspired by design thinking, they worked to keep feedback loops open with their clients, who were closely involved with development. Dütsch summed up this iterative approach with one key question: “What is the use case for the client?”
When it comes to sustainability, the use case is clear. It is critical, Jensen explained, for businesses to take climate and sustainability data and "project into the future, and run models, and look at different scenarios, and really start to question the underlying business model of the company. Is this business model going to be relevant now and into the future, and if it's not, how does that company begin to shift?”
Assessing climate risk can be a daunting process. Dütsch gave the example of a financial institution that wants to identify their portfolio's climate risk. “You could sit a bunch of analysts down and say, ‘Look at all the 5,000 companies in my portfolio…and make your assessment about how they will perform in the future under climate risk,’ an operation that could consume countless months and untold resources. With SAP BTP and the
Climate Excellence tool, the same operation can be performed in a single day, helping us all arrive at net zero that much faster.”
Embrace Innovation
For David Jensen, tackling climate change is "all about accelerating innovation," and PwC knows that the advantages of an innovative mindset can reverberate far beyond the four walls of a company. Once an organization has deployed the Climate Excellence solution they are armed with insights and poised to act, from creating new, resilient business models to seizing innovative, climate-friendly opportunities for growth.
And through this informed action, Dütsch explained, organizations not only benefit themselves but also the planet. “Climate change is affecting us all, and this is our future,” Dütsch said. Jensen, too, sees reason to be optimistic: “I think it's a really exciting time to be in this space and to think about how we can use data and digital technologies to enable the kind of global sustainability we've been trying to achieve for the past 50 years.”
Check out these additional stories about digital innovation and sustainability initiatives:
- Deloitte Africa: How does embedded cloud technology empower an organization to make an impact that matters?
- Lloyd’s Register: How a risk assessment tool helps protect people and the environment while increasing productivity and operating performance.
Visit
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