MetricStream Solutions for Corporate Social Responsibility

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With appointments of Chief Sustainability Officers, practical measurements for energy efficiency, establishment of waste reduction targets, “pay for plastic bags” programs at checkout counters and preference for local suppliers - the Green DNA is manifesting in many ways.

As the requirements for CSR and sustainable growth become progressively more demanding in terms of their degree of transparency, reliability and ability to be audited, companies will need to look past the initial excitement and establish the infrastructure – resources, budgets, planning, IT support, etc. - to support them as ongoing enterprise wide programs. focus. By definition, the true value of CSR and sustainability initiatives can be realized only after prolonged implementation long after the newspaper headlines have faded.

MetricStream is committed to developing and supporting best practices in CSR and sustainable development and helping to shape how global organizations can create an eco-friendly footprint and compliant growth. As a market leader in Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions, MetricStream provides comprehensive offerings to ensure success and results from CSR and sustainable development initiatives.

Some of drivers of climate change programs within corporations include the need to plan for risks emanating from new government regulations, industry standards and desire to preserve the corporate brand and image. Other drivers include reducing costs of energy, improving quality of products and services and commitment and responsibility to local communities where they operate. Complementing these forces are external factors such as demand for greener products, investor expectation need to gain a competitive edge through innovation.

• Recording initial assessment of emissions profile and development of a complete inventory of direct and indirect GHG emissions from operations and supply chain.
• Assessing risks and opportunities posed by GHG emissions from operations and how they can be mitigated by optimizing climate-friendly or risk-reducing business lines.
• Developing and evaluating action plans to reduce GHGs that support core business objectives by conducting root-cause analysis, learning what options are available for reducing emissions and analyzing how your climate related strategies can enhance top-line and bottom-line objectives through what-if analysis.
• Setting goals, schedules and ownership for implementing action plans and recording expected cost savings from social responsibility and reputation enhancement that can be compared against actual realizations in the future.
• Engaging the organization through communication, training, policies and cross-functional teams for environmental programs.
• Ensuring a verifiable emission inventory though collection, management and reporting on carbon emissions based on industry standards (WRI/WBCSD, EU Emissions Scheme, California Registry, IPCC and others) including direct and indirect carbon.
• Maintaining auditable emission inventory data and analysis that meets complex reporting protocols and standards.

Sustainable Workplaces
Work culture and environment are emerging as two of the key areas of focus, not only towards providing basic health and safety for regulatory compliance, but also for ensuring respect for human rights in operating environments. New compliance norms on workplace safety such as the OSHA 28 CFR and OHSAS 18001 framework have resulted in traditional plant-level management systems giving way to enterprise-wide safety management policies and systems. Employees’ well being is now seen as one of the most important aspects for an organization’s smooth and effective functioning.

To streamline Environmental Health and Safety programs, support creation of sustainable workplaces and ensure compliance with various federal, state and local reporting requirements, companies are looking at new ways to strength environmental health and safety related processes. MetricStream's environmental health and safety solution enables organizations to effectively comply with internal policies and regulatory mandates by automating key procedures to discover and document safety issues and also track, manage and close corrective actions.

The solution provides an integrated set of applications driving a closed loop process for reducing potential risk of safety incidents. Key capabilities of the solution include the ability to capture and report on incidents and provide information on hazardous materials, initiate and implement containment, corrective and preventive actions and powerful reporting and generate analytics based on a variety of parameters such as by incident, by plant and by division. Executive dashboards provide real-time visibility into key process indicators and email-based alerts and notifications ensure prompt response.

These changes have created a need for organizations to put in place management systems to increase visibility into supplier processes and improve supplier accountability. Some of the best practices being employed by leading global manufacturers who are leveraging MetricStream solutions include conducting Supplier Quantification Process for formal environmental programs and active waste-reduction programs. Using the MetricStream solution, suppliers can be audited and rated according to how effectively they are enabling companies to attain their goals - from researching alternative materials to incorporating measurable targets into their flow charts.

The MetricStream solution enables automated review and approval workflows for environmental performance data in real-time by following a systematic process for collecting, plotting and analyzing inspection data to identify risk areas and corrective actions. Monitoring supplier performance on scorecards to proactively identify and implement timely corrective actions improves supplier performance. These scorecards measure key performance indicators (KPI) in real-time and track improvements over time supporting sound decision-making based on data.

Conducting supplier audits to ensure that they are meeting established product and process specifications and requirements drives continuous improvement in the supply chain MetricStream provides capabilities to plan, schedule and conduct audits, enables the initiation of follow-up activities such as corrective action requests and re-audits.