Business sustainability ambitions are hampered by four major obstacles:

Research shows that companies need to address these gaps if they are to achieve their sustainability goals.

In a report titled “The Gap in Sustainable Value Creation,” Salesforce presents the results of a sustainability study conducted in partnership with GlobeScan, noting the following key findings:

• 93% of senior IT, finance and ESG leaders say sustainability is important to commercial success.
• 37% of senior leaders believe sustainability is “very much embedded” in the core of their business.
• 23% of senior management teams allocate significant capital to achieve sustainability.

The report identifies four key gaps in integrating sustainability into core business functions: data quality, cross-functional collaboration, capital allocation, and implementation. The report, co-authored by Professor Robert Eccles of the University of Oxford and Professor Alison Taylor of New York University's Stern College, surveyed more than 200 experts, including 76 executives from North America, Europe and Asia. .

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Here, we provide further details on the four key gaps identified in the report (capital, implementation, integration, and data) that stand in the way of making sustainability meaningful for corporate strategy and value creation. Masu.

Understand the four gaps

1. Capital Gap: Despite its importance, capital is limited — More than 90% of survey respondents say sustainability is “very important” (67%) or “quite important” (26%) to commercial success. According to the survey, approximately 50% of senior management teams say they are highly focused on sustainability risks, opportunities, and impacts, but are unable to reduce risks, seize opportunities, or It has been shown that only about half of them are able to obtain the level of capital required to manage them. their influence.
2. Implementation gap: Sustainability is seen as creating value primarily through reputation rather than operations –Respondents believe that sustainability provides the most value in marketing and PR: enhancing a company's brand and reputation, strengthening stakeholder and community relationships, and fostering partnerships and collaboration. These areas focus on perception, are difficult to associate with monetary values, and are disconnected from operations.
3. Integration gap: Less collaboration limits progress — Integrating sustainability can also be difficult without sufficient capital and coordination among teams. Despite stating that sustainability is important to commercial success, only 37% of respondents believe sustainability is “very integrated” into the core of their business . Low integration of sustainability into key functions such as finance and technology means members of the sustainability team have less opportunity to understand the commercial opportunities of the business. While these functions are considered important for making real progress on sustainability within companies (86% for finance and 75% for technology), senior leaders are We recognize that collaboration between departments is limited. However, despite the low baseline, most respondents reported an increase in collaboration over the past two years (70% with finance and 63% with technology).
4. Data gaps: Poor quality data on sustainability performance hinders value creation. — Technology can help track and manage sustainability risks, opportunities, and impacts, as long as you have high-quality data to analyze. 80% of respondents said high-quality data on sustainability performance is “very important” to realize the full value of sustainability, and 15% said it was “quite important” is the answer. However, only 8% say they currently have “very high quality” data, and she goes on to say 19% have “high quality” data. A lack of data makes it difficult for companies to test hypotheses about how sustainability creates value. Given this challenge, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they have increased funding for sustainability data collection and management solutions in the past two years (63%) and will do so in the next two years. (65%) say they plan to.

A closer look at the data gap reveals that 95% of leaders believe access to high-quality data on sustainability performance is critical to unlocking the full value of sustainability. However, accessing high-quality data is a challenge, with fewer than 3 in 10 executives (27%) saying they currently have high-quality sustainability data at their disposal. .

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The report found that nearly two-thirds of leaders reported increasing funding for data collection and management solutions in the past two years to close the data gap, and expect to increase funding further in the next two years. It is pointed out that

The report offers the following recommendations for companies looking to close four key gaps:

• capital gap: It is not enough for senior management to list sustainability as a focus area. Allocate sufficient funding to sustainability efforts and hold your team accountable for the actions they take.
• implementation gap: Make a stronger case for how sustainability impacts not just relationships, but core operational and commercial focus areas such as innovation, cost and sales. Aligns with measurable areas to guide capital allocation.
• integration gap: Make a stronger case and build buy-in by better integrating key departments, especially finance and technology. These departments have the expertise and tools to help measure and manage progress in line with senior management team expectations.
• data gap: Leverage better data to build business cases and meet growing compliance demands, while ensuring data is a tool for guiding, challenging, and validating strategic decisions, not just reporting and compliance. be used for.

Click here to learn more about the Sustainable Value Creation Report.