ERM Annual Review 2008 - (Page 2) The Geographic Mismatch The Sustainability Question The speed at which these current market conditions have developed, and their specific character, have given rise to a complex business challenge for our clients. Organizations have had little time to prepare for the demands of juggling operations in growing and slowing markets. As more and more investments are made in Asia and Latin America, the question for many of our clients is how to meet their environmental commitments and requirements when most of their current technical and managerial capabilities are in one location and their facilities are in another. Some new approaches are emerging to address this geographic mismatch, such as leveraging local knowledge and implementing next-generation assurance programs. However, there are no easy answers. To support our clients, we have been building our capacity in Africa and the Middle East and continue to grow our offices in China, India and elsewhere across Asia. We remain focused on developing our capabilities to share knowledge and manage multi-site projects for our North American and European-based clients. Our staff numbers have grown to more than 3,500, ensuring that we have People in every corner of the globe. This means that we are constantly developing new tools in one part of the world that almost inevitably are useful in another. To foster this transfer of tools we launched our award-winning global knowledge sharing platform called Minerva in May 2007 1. This remarkable tool is changing our firm’s culture and enables us to provide even higher value to our clients. Alongside these changing market conditions, continued stakeholder pressure is driving sustainability up the corporate agenda. Organizations are looking at both their processes and products in terms of what it really means to be sustainable and what the business advantage will be. This involves comprehensive evaluations to reduce resource usage. Organizations are also seeking to involve their employees in these endeavors to increase engagement and find innovative ideas. As part of this effort to address the broad sustainability agenda, organizations are also considering what steps they need to take to deal with climate change and how they can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Last year we provided a range of on-site climate change services, from calculating carbon footprints to green building assessments. We also saw our clients look in greater depth at potential business strategies that are more sustainable and climate conscious. This involves accounting for the risk of climate change during due diligence assessments and factoring in the reputational advantage or risk when expanding their operations. � 1 Organizational Innovation Award, Environmental Business Journal (EBJ), February 2008 03 07 01 05 02 02 ERM Annual Review 2008 04 06 08
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.