Metrics
Gaia Metrics ... Applications

Applications from Gaia Metrics for Organizations

COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Applications from Gaia Metrics for Organizations

Gaia Metrics for Finance

Many companies have spent years taking advantage of differentials in labor and environmental compliance costs, outsourcing product and component production to cheaper locations. However decisions that may have made sense in the past are now being systematically revisited.

Gaia Metrics is the key to assessing environmental and social risk in your supply chain.

Looking at the moment, into the past and also projecting forward, Gaia Metrics assesses and qualifies the financial risks originating with your suppliers' environmental and social performance. Risks for which you may now be responsible.

Gaia Metrics helps you understand the impact of outsourcing decisions on human capital.

'Cheaper is better' was usually the mantra driving a lot of outsourcing decisions. Yet what are the implications, if for example, R&D and other key talent is hollowed out in the process? With Gaia Metrics, supply chain executives get a far more complete picture upon which to base their decisions.

Use Gaia Metrics to:

• Monitor the performance of your supply chain
• Decide whether a certain function should be out-sourced or in-sourced
• Adjust financial projections for your own company or for companies being evaluated for acquisition
• Ensure you have identified all relevant risks for disclosure in public filings such as 10ks
• Identify those aspects of your environmental and social performance that carry the greatest financial impact for your company, both in terms of balance sheet-like stocks and income statement-like flows
• Gaia Metrics is inviting a limited number of companies to participate in its upcoming beta of Gaia Metrics for Finance. Please let us know if you're interested in learning more about this program.
• Learn more about how to use Gaia Metrics for Finance to determine risk in your supply chain

Gaia Metrics for CSR is the foundation of Gaia Metrics information services. It provides the information that fuels reporting and recognition of who and what are important to your company and its stakeholders. It also powers the comparative analysis performed by Gaia Metrics Benchmarking and financial risk assessment accomplished by Gaia Metrics for Finance.

Process not event

Corporate Sustainability Reporting is an ongoing process. Whether or not you publish a formal report, you’re engaged year round recognizing stakeholder points of view, finding common interests, weighing differences and performing due diligence.

Gaia Metrics for CSR helps you weigh stakeholder views of how to improve your CSR process. Few stakeholders consider a formal report sufficient and many may consider one unnecessary if the right information is easily accessible on your website. Those who want a formal report may differ about whether to roll your own or use a pre-existing standard such as GRI.

Taking the pulse of stakeholders

To succeed at your job, you need to meet and engage with stakeholders. But you can’t stop there. You also want to digest their web sites, blogs and other documents, and to show you are considering their points of view. And focus discussion on how their views of CSR may affect your bottom line and business model, not just what to put in an isolated report.

A quick start

Gaia Metrics for CSR is the jumpstart solution for companies looking to show CSR is an integral part of their business model.

Gaia Metrics searches company sources to extract the key concepts, words and numbers that are the basic ingredients of CSR. It then links them in concept frameworks that may fit a standard recipe, like a GRI Content Index; blend reporting schemes; or take a custom approach. It’s the content that helps CSR professionals structure dialogue with constituents, shape consensus and fuel the stories that bring CSR reporting to life. And it’s the content that helps you decide whether a formal CSR report is worth the cost.

Interactive reporting

For many companies, the process of engaging with stakeholders helps shape the type of reporting. With Gaia Metrics, it becomes easier to shift from downloadable reports to highly interactive forms built around stakeholder dialogue.

Building a business case for social investing With Gaia Metrics for CSR, you can prove the business value of social investing by showing the impact of your social investments on the bottom line.

Comprehensive

With Gaia Metrics for CSR, you know your reporting is thorough, comprehensive and linked to the business model.

So gaps in discussion and reporting are spotlighted and can be addressed before they attract the attention of regulators, media, community groups and other stakeholders, and before they become a risk to hard won brand equity.

Semantic search technology tuned to CSR Gaia Metrics semantic search technology substantially automates the extraction and synthesis of meaningful information from large quantities of documents and sites, so you can quickly, easily and inexpensively acquire the information you need.

Gaia Metrics for CSR helps CSR professionals:

• • Distill all the electronic information your business reports, to ensure the CSR team is aware of supporting or conflicting information that stakeholders may consider material.
• • See, weigh and analyze stakeholder positions in one easy place, based on what they report on their own websites — before engaging with them.
• • Create an easy to navigate index for any CSR reporting standard such as GRI, linking CSR indicators to relevant snippets of information, not just a file name.
• • Jumpstart the CSR reporting initiative by building a CSR site map to the information dispersed around your website or other sources.
• • Ensure CSR reports aren’t missing anything relevant (positive or negative) that can be gleaned from a public information source …before you publish.
• • Compare what the company is reporting relative to industry peers, and also what it’s not.
• • Identify the gaps in reporting in order to meet or exceed peers’ reporting.
• • Expand the breadth and depth of reporting so the company can show conformity with multiple standards (GRI, UN Global Compact, AA1000, Ceres Principles, Pacific Sustainability Index, ISO 14000 & 26000, etc.)
• • Stay up to date with changing regulatory and reporting requirements.

High impact/low cost

Gaia Metrics for CSR costs just a fraction of typical CSR-related information services. Click here to get started saving time and money on the way to publishing your CSR.

Assess and decide

Gaia Metrics can also help companies that want to know where they stand and what may need to be done, before actually committing to a CSR.

• • Determine the GRI profile (or other baseline indicator) before actually publishing a report.
• • Gauge distance to goal, in order to determine what needs to be done.
• • Get actionable insight for just a few dollars a day.

Contact us to get a fix on your sustainability profile. We have a service level package right for your company.

Click here to learn more about how to use Gaia Metrics for CSR to help populate your Corporate Sustainability Report.

Gaia Metrics for CSR also offers a Benchmarking option. It's the answer for companies that want to know how they match up with competitors, company peers or industry aggregates on a wide range of sustainability measures.

Gaia Metrics Benchmarking helps companies compare their sustainability indicators against industry norms. It provides for comparison of social, human and environmental indicators broken out by industry, including toxic substances, hazardous materials and health risks, CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, non-reduction of hazardous substances costs and location costs.

Gaia Metrics Benchmarking can even be used to track the performance of your company over time and to compare the performance of different operating units within your company.

You can also rely on Gaia Metrics to benchmark your company against custom frameworks or groupings, comparing both quantitative and qualitative metrics.

If you're thinking of publishing an CSR but want to know how you will stack up before you publish or make sure your company is ready to publish, you need Gaia Metrics Benchmarking.

• Benchmark your company relative to baseline indicators against industry norms.
• Benchmark against a range of reporting frameworks and for both quantitative and qualitative indicators (for issues such as governance, risk assessment and corporate responsibility).
• Coming soon, you'll also be able to benchmark for financial impacts, so you can evaluate the financial implications of lagging behind, meeting or exceeding industry norms across a range of indicators.

Request a Demo of Gaia Metrics Benchmarking using your own company data.