From the course: Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability: ESG and the Future of Business

Sustainability challenges

From the course: Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability: ESG and the Future of Business

Sustainability challenges

- [Instructor] Traditionally, businesses have focused on just their bottom line. That is their margins. ESG research has indicated that the generation of long-term sustainable returns is dependent on stable, well-functioning, and well-governed social, environmental, and economic systems. This is the term called triple bottom line, coined by business writer John Elkington. The writer expressed in 1994 that the company should think about three P's, people, planet, and profit, not just profit alone. As we discussed at the start of this course, sustainability at its core is a data challenge. In order to start covering for other P's, we need better access to data, which is not within the internal systems of an organization. I was talking to one of my retail customers and they asked me, "Favad, what if the supplier of my supplier of my supplier, seven chains down the link is using NT environmental practices? I'm responsible for them under the Scope 3 regulations as I am indirectly benefiting from their actions." The problem is that most ERP systems of the companies have data about their direct suppliers only, but not of the companies who are supplying their suppliers. This is exactly the problem that Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability sets out to solve. Now that we have covered different challenges in the sustainability space, let's discuss how Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability can address these challenges.

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