Successful business drives sustainable growth

A recent study of nearly 1000 CEOs, business leaders, and academics conducted by Accenture and UN Global Compact has identified a uniform theme that good performance on sustainability amounts to good business overall. Sustainability is no longer just a case of good deeds, but a good business case.

93% of CEOs surveyed see sustainability as important to their company's future success. Although sustainability is supported by the business case and is becoming part of the business strategy for many organisations, there are still hurdles to overcome in executing the strategy. The survey identified five conditions needed to enable sustainability to be integrated throughout a company, and become part of its organisations DNA. These conditions include:

• Reform to education in order to create sustainability skills and mindsets in executives and workforces
• Financial reforms to enable sustainability to be incorporated into valuations by investors
• New concepts of value and performance need to be developed to measure positive and negative impacts of sustainability strategy.

Chartered Accountants are uniquely placed to develop solutions to some of these hurdles. They have the skills and ability to measure value and develop metrics which will assist both the company itself, and its investors in understanding the impact of the sustainability strategy.

The impact of sustainability on core business metrics such as revenue growth, cost reduction, risk management and reputation should be measured. CFOs and finance departments need to embrace the sustainability strategy and provide the 'real story' that investors can understand, rather than a company's sustainability story being told only in terms of marketing or public relations.

Once the metrics are right the next step is ensuring the reporting process is also right. The sustainability performance needs to be integrated into a company's general business reporting. (See the Institute's Broad Based Business Reporting initiative for more information).

Yes integrated reporting is coming and sustainability reporting will be part of this story.