Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon, and good evening also. We have people connected from many different places. Welcome to this webinar organized by Bureau Veritas in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group. My name is Renato Catrib, Senior Vice President at Bureau Veritas, in charge of the industry and facilities global service lines. I will run this webinar together with my colleague, Antoine Giros, Vice President in charge of innovation and advanced services at Bureau Veritas. I also have the pleasure to welcome Francesco Bellino, Managing Director and Partner at the Boston Consulting Group. At BCG, Francesco leads the social impact practice in France and will share with us some insights on how to execute efficiently CSR strategies. Francesco, thank you very much for joining us today. Well, companies do not only commit on financial figures.
Every organization now seeks to demonstrate its positive impact on the planet and the population. Of course, defining consistent and long-term sustainability strategies is essential, but companies now have to switch from commitments to delivery. Ensuring their efficient and reliable implementation through concrete actions has become instrumental. Today, we will discuss how to best implement efficient sustainability strategies. We propose to structure this webinar around three main sections. First, Francesco Bellino from BCG will give us his vision on what the new normal is when it comes to CSR roadmap execution. Then, together with Antoine Giros, we will share Bureau Veritas convictions on how to implement and monitor ESG deployment roadmaps efficiently. Our latest sustainability management solution called Clarity will also be presented to give you concrete elements and illustrations on how to bring transparency, trust and credibility to sustainability commitments.
Finally, we propose to have a live Q&A session with all of you. For this, we will use the chat available in the Teams application. Feel free to ask all your questions along the webinar. The questions will not be visible by everyone, but we will share them at the end of the webinar to provide answers. Now, I would like to hand over to Francesco for the first part of our webinar.
Thank you very much, Renato. As you said, more and more companies have been committing to CSR over the past few years. Just to give you a few examples of what happened over the last five years, if you take the number of companies that committed to science-based targets on climate, this figure is in 2021, 20 times what it was in 2015, more than 2,000 companies as of today. If you look at the UN initiative that was launched in 2020, the Race to Zero, where basically it was asked to companies to commit on a net zero target and greenhouse gas emission reduction by 2030 and 2050. More than 5,000 companies joined the race, and among them, more than 1,000 financial institutions.
Showing that today when it comes to commitments, I talked about climate, but the same is true for sustainability, for social responsibility. The companies have today the set of commitments that they need to deliver to get up to the CSR agenda that the world needs. Now, for the next decade, the challenge will be delivery. It's already a challenge as of now. BCG, we surveyed more than 1,000 companies about how they were coping with the commitment they took on CO2 emission reduction. Out of 1,300 companies, only 11% actually said that they were getting the results they had to get as of now to be in the right trajectory.
Execution is already a challenge for them and will increasingly become a challenge because of the scarcity, for instance, of resources, whether recycled plastic, whether carbon credits, that will need further anticipation on those challenges and monitoring on how effectively the companies are delivering on the commitment realization side.
Thank you very much. This is a very interesting subject. May I raise some questions about it? The first one is, how market leaders differentiate themselves in their sustainability strategies, roadmaps and defined targets?
Probably the most differentiating element is the level of integration that the sustainability leaders bring between their sustainability strategy and agenda and their business strategy and agenda. It really means strong integration with the core business of the companies of their sustainability initiatives. Concretely, it means that they build roadmaps along with the strategic roadmap of the company. They put in place the models, the incentive as close as possible to the business functions, that operate their core business. They have steering, monitoring, and tracking tools embedded or close to the financial monitoring tools, for instance, that they might be using. It's really this connection between core and sustainability that makes the most out of it.
Thank you, Francesco. Actually, I think I would like to get also your views on how you see the differences between how the topic is seen by large corporations and mid-size corporations. Of course, we understand that large international corporations have already started their sustainability journey some years ago, actually. How do you see the pressure from society among the small and mid-sized companies?
I think first of all, you mentioned the pressure from society. We see more and more consumers and customers having sustainability expectations towards the products they buy or the companies they trust. This is true for the large, this is true for the small companies. Also, when we think about the small companies or the smaller companies, they are very often part of a supply chain or an ecosystem of the larger one. Meaning that for the large one to get to the commitments that they took, Scope 3 on carbon, for instance, they also need the small and medium companies to deliver on their own commitments. You said pressure, but sometimes it can also be an opportunity.
Mm.
Walmart launched yesterday a program of financial incentives for their small and medium suppliers to get better financing conditions, assuming that they take strong climate commitments and act to deliver on it.
Thank you very much. Maybe one last question. What's the vision of BCG in terms of added value created by sustainability? To what extent we can assume ESG is creating value? When I say that, I'm thinking about direct value-creating products or differentiation in terms of brand image.
Definitely we at BCG are convinced, and we see the proof that sustainability is not only a license to operate, but it's a value creation opportunity. Just a couple elements on that. First, for talents. We recently conducted a study showing that 40% of the millennials takes into account the ESG credibility of a company when making a decision about taking or quitting a job. To get tomorrow's talents, ESG is a must. When it comes to products, as you were saying, we see probably some of the most powerful innovations in terms of products that are triggered by sustainability, which is maybe a constraint, but also a way to think differently about a customer, about a product, about a business model. A lot of innovation is coming from that. You actually find that innovation as a proof also in the financials.
When we look at the top quartile of the best-in-class in terms of sustainability compared to the bottom quartile across industries, we see a premium in terms of profit of 2-5 percentage points for the best-in-class, and we see a valuation premium of roughly 10%. Even financially speaking, the value is already there.
Very interesting. Well, Francesco, thank you very, very much for your collaboration. I know that you have a busy agenda, so unfortunately, you won't be able to stay with us during the rest of the webinar. Once again, thank you very much.
Thanks to you.
I'd like to start by doing a quick step back to share how we have been seeing the evolution of the sustainability top-topic over the past few years. As you know, Bureau Veritas has been supporting its clients in their sustainability journey for decades through different sets of services like, for example, social, environmental, and safety audits and inspections, green building certifications, greenhouse gas measurements, food safety testing and inspections, or traceability audits. Traditionally, we were delivering those services separately, often talking with different stakeholders within our clients' organizations, with no real consistency nor synergies between the requests we received. In addition to this, the angle taken by our clients was mainly the one of compliance and control. This is still very important for our organizations, but it starts to change.
Since sustainability is now a strategic concern for our clients at all levels of their organizations, all their stakeholders pay more and more attention to those topics. For example, employees, candidates, clients, investors, shareholders, and of course, regulators. As a result, organizations don't see any more sustainability as a topic on which they have to comply with, but as a way to differentiate in a value creation driver. This trend is clearly materialized in the ESG commitments of companies which are made public and which are increasingly customized according to their respective business segments and strategic ambitions. Defining your strategy, setting your targets, and designing your roadmap is key. But monitoring and ensuring an efficient deployment is the main challenge. First, it requires time and resources to make sure you have a close monitoring of your actions.
This takes time, especially in industries dealing with complex supply chains or large networks of assets. Second, enabling the improvement of your footprint on very specific topics such as energy efficiency, working conditions, animal welfare, or climate resilience is complex. It has to be supported by expertise in those fields to make you monitor the right things at the right time. Complex global networks must deal with different regulations, requirements, and practices from different geographies and market sectors. The harmonization and consolidation of those multiple criteria requires the association of local expertise with global understanding of your ESG commitment priorities. Third point, which is very important to me, steering an ESG strategy is not about sharing information. It's all about sharing credible and verified data. Without the certainty on what you really deliver to society, building up improvement plans becomes quite inconsistent.
Lastly, you need expertise and know-how to be able to make the right decisions. Since the commitments of organizations are increasingly customized, being able to take the right decisions on all the critical topics appear to be very challenging. All organizations simply cannot have all required competencies in-house. At Bureau Veritas, based on our experience with thousands of clients we work with, we identified that there's no measurement tool nor method enabling them to accurately assess the economic and environmental impacts of their sustainability action plans. What is actually difficult for companies is to measure in the field the impact of their actions, meaning that how efficient and credible is the deployment of their ESG strategy, how to build trust with their stakeholders. We believe in three golden rules that all companies should apply to better assess their sustainability actions implemented within their operations.
Rule number one, be neutral and independent. To give credibility to what you measure, you need to be supported by an independent third party to bring trust and transparency to your sustainability commitments. Rule number two, mobilize the best experts. Enabling change and making improvement happen is not easy. How should I change my energy mix? What kind of measures should I put in place to improve animal welfare in my farms? How to better control my chain of custody? What are the best practices in my industry when it comes to improving working conditions? Those are just some examples of difficult questions. To answer it, companies have to mobilize the best experts to support them. Rule number three, be close to the entities you want to assess.
As you know, the major risks for your brand are usually not located close to your eyes, and are not always under your direct responsibility. Having a local presence all over the world, close to your critical points of concern, and which can be mobilized whenever is needed, is critical to ensure an efficient deployment of your strategy, manage risk, and also to enable change. For all those reasons, we believe that any organization with ambitious ESG commitments should be supported by a recognized and reliable third party. At Bureau Veritas, we have packaged our sustainability offering in what we call our green line of services and solutions to empower organizations in the implementation, measurement, and achievement of their ambitions towards sustainability.
Our scope of action is quite vast, starting by responsible use of natural resources, renewables, and alternative energies, and carbon footprint verification, traceability of supply chains, sustainable buildings and infrastructure, new mobility, and ethical business practices, and CSR strategy management. In all these fields, we support our clients in managing risk and compliance, in bringing trust to the way they are doing things, as well as improving their performance along their supply chain. In doing so, we contribute to proving the impact of our clients' ESG actions by making them traceable, visible, and reliable. In parallel, Bureau Veritas has recently launched Clarity, our new turnkey solution to bring trust and transparency to companies' sustainability commitments. Clarity helps organizations to simplify their ESG deployment process and, in turn their results into aggregated scores that can be steered efficiently in a digital dashboard.
Antoine Giros will present to you the details of this solution in a minute. Let's start by a short video giving you a heads-up of Clarity.
Today, you do not only look to highlight your company's financial performance or its capacity to innovate. You seek to demonstrate its positive impact and sustainability performance. To earn trust, you need to prove that you are acting responsibly throughout your value chain. To maintain trust, you want to provide concrete evidence that your sustainability commitments are grounded in real actions. Defining a consistent and long-term sustainability strategy is essential. Making sure this strategy is implemented effectively and monitored closely with reliable data is critical. Clarity by Bureau Veritas is a comprehensive and customizable suite of solutions to manage the implementation of your sustainability strategy and to improve your sustainability maturity. Clarity aggregates all the observations of BV auditors on one digital dashboard to monitor closely your critical topics.
Thanks to this digital dashboard, you gain 360-degree visibility on your sustainability performance, and you can draw consistent corrective action plans. Your displayed information is independently verified by Bureau Veritas experts, whether it comes from your suppliers, internal sites or assets. Thanks to Bureau Veritas' global footprint and unique verification capabilities, Clarity tracks the information that matters to you and your business and brings credibility to your sustainability commitments. Clarity gives you the reliable information you need to manage and assess your sustainability priorities and actions so you can communicate with transparency and build trust with your stakeholders. It empowers you to protect your brand's reputation and create value. Your sustainability strategy is unique. Make it actionable and trustworthy.
Renato, thank you very much for sharing with us those insights. For the next 15 minutes, I would like to give you more information on what our Clarity solution is meant for. First, I would like to share with you that what we are presenting today is actually the result of 12 months of intense work. Based on our convictions just explained by Renato, our idea has always been to provide credibility to all the ESG commitments taken by organizations. To do so, we did a lot of internal developments, pilot projects and of course, client interactions. Our main intent is really to support organizations in the management of their ESG roadmaps. To ensure that their strategy is efficiently implemented in their operations, companies have to answer a series of complex questions. To name some of them, are my operations in line with my commitments?
Where are the riskiest areas for my brand? How can I improve my sustainability practices over time? No matter which commitments are taken, organizations need to get reliable answers to those questions. With Clarity, the 78,000 experts Bureau Veritas has all over the world are mobilized to collect on-the-ground data within sites, subsidiaries, suppliers or assets. We strongly believe that non-financial communication should be highly correlated with field execution, and this point was highly raised also by Francesco a few minutes ago. This is why with Clarity, our ambition is to offer a turnkey solution where all the information coming from the field becomes highly valuable insights at all levels of the organizations. When I say at all levels of the organization, it starts, of course, at operational level, where we need to take concrete actions in a timely and efficient way to improve performance in the field.
At all levels means also at management level, to be able to steer your strategy and support your non-financial communication with reliable and credible data. Since the beginning, we decided to structure our solution around four main drivers that are, for us, critical to successfully implement an ESG strategy. First driver, accuracy. Accuracy, which is brought by the assessment that Bureau Veritas can conduct all over the value chain. Performing audits, inspections, and verifications on the ground is the DNA of Bureau Veritas. With Clarity, we customize our control plans according to the targets and the commitments of our clients. Wherever we go, we assess what is critical for companies to bring them from the field, the reliable insights they need. Second driver, the ability to monitor a roadmap with more efficiency.
All the observations coming from BV auditors, of course, are displayed in formal reports, but they are also aggregated in scores and indexes, enabling a fast and efficient decision-making process for continuous improvement. Third main objective we were looking for, and this was very important for us when we designed the solution.
Exactly.
Make the life of our clients easier when it comes to managing their CSR roadmap. All the insights coming from the ground are aggregated in a best-in-class digital dashboard that I will showcase in a minute, where all the data can be analyzed at any desired level of granularity. By site, of course, but also by geography, by product category, by activity, by critical topic, and even by United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, our obsession when we built Clarity was to design a solution that would enable action prioritization. Thanks to the dashboard, organizations have all the needed insights to prioritize their targets, identify the riskiest areas, and draw up corrective action plans according to their goals. Of course, such a program should be part of a long-term journey with continuous improvement at its heart.
This being said, it was also very important for us to make sure that our solution would address all the externalities a company can face. It starts, of course, by ourselves, our offices, our subsidiaries, our production units, our points of sales. All the sites under our direct responsibilities need to be monitored closely. They are the easiest one in which we can act and enable change since they are part of our own organization. Companies need to assess what's going on outside their own internal operations, basically, which means their suppliers. This must be an area of concern, especially for industries of increasingly complex supply chains. I'm thinking here about food and agri, oil and gas, retail, textile industry, which are industries relying a lot on suppliers. Besides this, we also believed it was critical to pay attention to one last type of site.
I'm thinking here at all the assets owned by organizations. Buildings, facilities, or even the assets on which a company has invested need to be precisely looked at. This point is, of course, very valid for investment funds and real estate companies, but also for any type of organization managing assets. Another conviction we had was that we needed to design a flexible solution, and this is a point we discussed a lot together, Renato. Especially in the way to perform site assessment within a value chain. Renato, I know this is a topic on which you would like to spend some time, so maybe you have some elements to add here.
Yeah. In fact, Antoine, we have spent a lot of time discussing this topic, and I agree with you. This point is very important. Since organizations are now taking highly customized ESG commitments, they need to build their own customized control plans. In addition to this, all the sites involved in a supply chain and all the assets are not equally critical for an organization. They don't all expect the same level of control. Just as an example, the need to audit the working conditions is much higher in a textile manufacturing plant in Asia than in a small commercial office in Spain. Building a differentiated and customized approach based on their own commitments and business specificities of companies enables to both focus on the most critical points and stick to the budget constraints of organizations.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Renato. Actually, this is exactly why we propose a modular approach with two types of assessments that can be conducted. First, what we call the light-touch assessment. It would clearly be too costly to send an auditor in all the sites involved in your supply chain. Our light-touch options combines both scalability and reliability. Scalability first. Scalability because it's made of affordable self-assessments performed within Bureau Veritas digital platforms. Sites are invited to connect to our platform, and they simply have to register and answer a questionnaire online. This process is easy, fast, and particularly adapted when you need to get a first maturity mapping of a large supply chain. This light-touch option also offers reliability since every self-declared questionnaire is verified.
When a questionnaire is fulfilled by a site, justification documents must be uploaded in the platform, and Bureau Veritas verifies every single evidence. Having such a reliable process makes our scores reliable for sites of organizations. Second type of assessment in green here, the in-depth audits that we can conduct in the field. Clearly, in some cases, remote verification is not enough. This is why the most critical topics and the most critical sites must be verified on site by an independent third party. Bureau Veritas' international coverage and extensive know-how can mobilize the right experts and auditors where your most critical sites are. With this highly modular approach, Bureau Veritas offers an à la carte solution for its clients. The entire value chain does not require the same level of monitoring and attention. With this approach, you can be sure to allocate your resources only where you need to.
Now that we've talked about who we should assess, let's spend some time on what we should look at during our assessments, on which topics Bureau Veritas can perform assessments. The ESG commitments taken by organizations can vary a lot from one company to another. Some of them are generic and common to all industries, and others could be very specific to the business of a company. This is why we have designed two types of assessment referentials. First, for all the topics which are relevant for all companies, we have designed cross-industry assessment modules. They cover a wide spectrum of topics. People-related topics, of course, where we address social, health, safety topics. Planet-related topics with environment, biodiversity, and climate change modules. And ethical trade-related topics with modules addressing business ethics and responsible sourcing.
As you can see here, each topic is addressed by a full checklist covering its main areas of concerns. For instance, a social assessment will look at forced labor, child labor, working hours, inclusion, diversity, employee well-being, et cetera, et cetera. We have also developed industry-specific assessment modules to make sure we can cover the critical needs of some industries. Maybe, Renato, we can give some examples here. First, food and agri market sector. Sustainability commitments for food and agri clients can be linked to many specific issues. Improvement of animal welfare, implementation of a more sustainable agriculture, notably through a better control of the chain of custody or waste management. To stick to those concerns of our food clients, we have designed those specificities within Clarity. Another topic on which actually we spend quite a lot of time.
Yeah.
Climate resilience for infrastructures. Infrastructure owners want to make sure that the assets on which they have invested are ready to face the potential climate changes that will be coming in the next years or decades. Recent examples in Australia, in Texas, in the U.S., or even more recently in Canada, have shown us how floods or fires can affect infrastructures and stop their activity. With Clarity, we have a specific module to assess the level of vulnerability of an asset against climate change and supports the organizations in the identification of adaptation measures. Last example that we started to mention earlier, our net zero module for oil and gas and building and infrastructure markets.
This is very important.
As we all know, Renato, it's going to be quite challenging to reduce emissions and to reach carbon neutrality in a few years from now. Our net zero module has been designed to help organization both quantify their emissions in details and at the same time, assess their level of maturity towards this ambitious zero carbon target.
Yeah, very interesting, we can see that Clarity is really covering all the specific needs of each one of the market segments. Thank you very much for that, Antoine. Antoine, maybe it's the right time to give more concrete examples on how data collected with Clarity is displayed in our platform.
Yes. Maybe, Renato, it's the moment to showcase the platform and show the details of what the platform looks like. You should see now all the dashboard. This is what it looks like. As you see, the scope is detailed on the top right corner, 53 sites here. On the left, you have the menu. The main pillars of your ESG strategy are displayed in the center. The scores are the aggregation of all the conducted assessments. On the right, you can play with filters as much as you need. Going down, you have a map to show all the sites that have been assessed, a chart displaying the total volume of non-conformities which are open, and a mapping of the supply chain with the links between all suppliers. Let's now have a look at the map.
Here, you have full visibility of all the sites that have been assessed. Many in Europe here, a few in Americas, some in Asia. Let's click on one of them in India, Asian Paints. Bureau Veritas conducted their social, climate change, environmental, and health and safety assessments. Let's now visit this entity's dedicated page. On the Asian Paints page, you directly see the four topics on which Bureau Veritas conducted assessment and the list of non-conformities displayed on the right. Going down, you get a deeper level of information by key topic with a score breakdown. You can also have access to each assessment report by clicking on the dedicated button. Back to the homepage. You can now use the filters on the right. Example. You can type India, and all the scores are automatically being aggregated for India only.
This can work also for another country like China and of course, any type of filter that you would like to add. My filter being now cleared, I can decide to click on the health and safety pillar to have a deeper look at it. I have then access to all the information related to this topic, scores, sub-scores, non-conformities, et cetera, et cetera. Clicking on the map, you see that the country colors have changed since it's now focused on health and safety topic. Back to the home page, you have access on the left to the different tabs in the menu. One of them offers a view by UN Sustainable Development Goal. The other menus can provide a smart visualization of the supply chain, as you can see here, with soybean and tomatoes.
Some analytics that can be completely customized based on what companies would like to analyze. The full list of non-conformities is also available with filtering capabilities, and of course, the list of all the sites assessed that can be sorted by score, by topic, or by country. We can of course, download the list in an Excel file by clicking on the button.
Well, Antoine, I believe that after this quick review of the platform, it would be interesting to present some cases or some business cases developed with some of our clients.
Yes, very good idea, Renato, and I propose to share with you two examples. I will start by the first one, Auchan. This French multinational is an enormous retailer with over 4,000 locations and 350,000 employees worldwide. Auchan decided to move forward with a customized approach of Clarity to improve the production practices of their supply chain with better visibility and transparency. They will know where the highest risks are and be able to take corrective actions accordingly. Second example, Renato, Accor. Accor is the biggest hospitality company in Europe, and one of the largest in the world, with 5,000 hotels and residences in 110 countries. They were looking for a trusted partner to support them to monitor their network in South Europe on some specific ESG aspects.
With our Clarity off-the-shelf offer, we display all the results of our audits in a best-in-class digital tools for real-time access and consolidated visibility for top management. These are just a few examples, Renato, of clients with whom we have implemented Clarity. Now I propose to hand over to you to conclude the session and introduce the Q&A one.
Thank you very much, Antoine. I would like to thank you, Auchan and Accor for that close collaboration on the development of this solution. Before looking at the chat and answering the questions that might have been asked, I would like to focus on one very important point, delivery. Today, organizations will not differentiate themselves anymore just by announcing a smart ESG strategy with clear targets. To create value, companies need to demonstrate how efficiently executed their plan is. Social ambitions towards sustainable development are rising fast, and our supply chains are not always structured to efficiently support this inevitable evolution. Our role is to make things change for real on the ground in a reliable and transparent way. Well, now let's look at the questions that have been raised in the chat. Well, Antoine, I believe that we have the first question here.
Well, how did you build the standard checklists of the solutions to be confident about its alignment with different markets and sectors needs? Do you want to start with this one?
Yeah, yeah, I can start, of course. We try to develop everything in various steps. It started first by the mobilization of the Bureau Veritas experts that we have all over the world. Whenever we talk about animal welfare, social practices, biodiversity, et cetera, we have experts everywhere in the world. We've been acting in this business for almost 200 years. What was even more important for us was to test and challenge this content with clients, and this is why what we are presenting to you today is the results of 12 months of work on which we had extensive discussions with clients. This is how we've been able to fine-tune our solution to make sure that it's aligned with what clients and companies are looking for.
Maybe one last point, Renato, is that we believe that this should be completely a collective work to make sure that we are all aligned and going into the same direction. This is why for some specific topics, we also discussed with some NGOs to make sure that the way we address some critical topics is also the right way to do it, and we get with us the NGOs.
Thank you very much, Antoine. Just to add something, I believe it's also important to mention that Clarity is a solution which is designed to be continuously evolving. No? We know that regulation is changing. We know that we have different expectations from society, from clients. Because of it, since from the beginning, we have defined that flexibility was important for our solution. We have the capacity to follow the evolution of regulations and expectations and our clients' ESG strategies.
Yeah.
Another question here. If, let's say, we select only two models in the dashboard, they will show two models, correct? Yes, exactly. This is what we mean when we say that it's a flexible solution. The solution, in an end-to-end way, can be adapted to the specific needs of our clients. If they want to apply Clarity just for one of our modules, all the reports, dashboards, and every single element of the solution will be automatically adjust for this one specific model. Anything to add?
No, it can change over time.
Yeah.
I'm thinking about a client starting with two modules and enriching the solution over time with additional modules. Modularity is, I think, one of the key topic of today.
Yeah. Once again, Clarity has been designed to help you along your journey, because sustainability is a journey, and the solution is ready to evolve according to your level of maturity on sustainability. Hello, do my providers need to be equipped with Clarity as well as for verification along the value chain? Would you like to answer this one?
Yes, sure. No. When we talk about providers and suppliers, we don't expect any specific equipment for them. That's the short answer. To give you a bit more details, two types of assessments. One is on-the-ground assessments. In that case, we send the Bureau Veritas auditor. Nothing to do for the supplier or for the provider. Second option, the light touch option that I explained, who starts with a digital self-assessment combined with the verification, remote verification provided by Bureau Veritas. In that case, no system, nothing for the supplier to get. We just sent the supplier a web link, a URL, on which the supplier needs to connect for self-assessment. It's a very easy process, completely supported by a digital platform.
Perfect. Thank you very much. We have another question here. Can I use Clarity to measure my carbon footprint? Well, this is a very good question and very important one. Well, we strongly believe that carbon footprint goes beyond just quantitative, no, measurements. We believe that the qualitative assessment about processes behind or supporting carbon footprint KPIs are very important and Clarity can support you with both elements, no? Both the quantitative and the qualitative measurements of carbon footprint. Would like to add something?
Maybe an example comes to my mind now, where we had some clients on some topics which had not very good quantitative measurements, but looking at the processes, the results was not that bad, actually, which means that the client was expecting his quantitative measurements to improve very soon because he knew that all the measures, the processes were already implemented. It's a good way to balance between the objective you try to reach and the means that you put in place to reach those objectives.
Perfect. Another question. The regulation is evolving quickly as regards sustainability. How do you track these evolutions with Clarity? This is a very interesting question and very easy to answer. Thanks to our global footprint, we can say we have experts everywhere, meaning that we have the capacity to monitor the evolution of regulations and make sure that it's fully reflected in Clarity. The answer is we monitor the evolution of regulations thanks to our global footprint and our network of experts, everything supported by the methodology mainly, and also the digital solution we have in place. Anything to add?
Nothing to add, Renato.
Okay.
Very clear answer.
Another question is there a minimum size of a company to implement Clarity? Is Clarity suitable for large organizations only? A very good one, and I know you would like to answer this one.
Again, one short answer and then some explanations. Short answer is no, there is no minimum size. The longest answer is to say that of course, the larger the organization, the higher the need to get a central dashboard to manage everything. The dashboard, of course, makes even more sense when you have a large network of sites to assess. Even small organizations, and we have some examples of clients, by the way.
Mm-hmm
Just go for the field assessments on one specific topics on which they need expertise on the field. The dashboard is, in some cases, even not used by some clients. Really, it's a solution that can be adapted for any kind, any size of company.
I would say, Antoine, that for small and medium-sized companies, Clarity will bring a very good framework for them to define their priorities in terms of sustainability strategy. Okay, another question. I already have my dashboard to monitor my sustainability strategy deployment. Is it possible to integrate it to your solution? Well, sorry, Antoine, but I know that you are quite passionate about this topic also, so I will let you start.
I'm very passionate today. The answer is yes, but we need all of us to have in mind that Clarity is not a digital software. You know Bureau Veritas, we are an auditing company, we are not an IT company. At the core of Clarity, we have the field assessments enabled by the experts we have everywhere in the world, and those field assessments, those results are displayed in a digital dashboard. This being said, we know that all our clients have also some other systems they use to monitor existing sustainability data or sustainability actions. This is why the dashboard that I showed to you a few minutes ago is completely from an IT perspective open.
Open, it means that it can accept any kind of information coming from any other software, so that it can become, for the organization, the unique source of sustainability management.
Well, thank you very much. We have another question here. How often do we recommend updating this course? Monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annually? This is a very interesting question, and it's quite common to have it coming from our clients. Well, basically, the base solution and our recommendation, let's say our general recommendation, is to have an annual update of this course. Why? Because for many of the topics, all the action plans related to the continuous improvement of the KPIs and the objectives are related to cultural change, are related to the implementation of critical process, and most of the time, in the complete ecosystem of the organization, meaning that a significant change in the KPIs and results will take some time to appear or to be materialized.
Our recommendation in principle is for annual review of the KPIs, making sure that it will be updated, and also to make sure that our clients will be able to monitor the evolution of their sustainability strategy implementation.
Of course, as for any rule, there are exceptions.
Yeah.
We have some cases where clients are telling us, "Okay, for that specific topic, it's too sensitive for me. I would like to run assessments twice a year," for example. It happens to have some exceptions, but globally, yes, once a year.
Yeah. We have one additional question here. Are there any similar solution on the market already? Where we start this one, well, the short answer is no. We have discussed with many clients, we had many meetings with different organizations, you know, from different sectors, and we can see that there are solutions nowadays supporting companies in different areas associated with sustainability but implemented in a very standalone way. No? Meaning that companies nowadays, they have a fragmented portfolio of solutions and services supporting them to monitor the implementation of their sustainability strategy. This was a conclusion after several meetings with our clients, as I said. Because of it, exactly because of it, we have identified, this need from our clients to have one single solution covering the main aspects associated to sustainability strategy implementation.
Because of it, we have launched Clarity. You want to add something?
Yeah, maybe because we discussed a lot about this positioning. I think the two points which make our solution quite unique is first, we don't only focus on supply chain management. It's not only supplier assessments that we propose. We can cover a wide variety of sites. We mentioned these.
Mm-hmm.
assets, internal entities, et cetera. Second point is that it is not at all a rating solution.
Mm-hmm.
It's not standard checklist on which we apply everywhere, you get a rating. It's completely customizable. The purpose of Clarity is not to publish external ratings, it's to manage an internal strategy. I think this makes the solution quite unique.
Exactly. Fully agree. I believe we have time for one last question. Yes, we have a question here. Hello. Is it possible to receive some access to demo version of this interesting tool? Thanks for your reply. Yes, of course it's possible. You will receive some details to contact us. We can organize it with pleasure. Okay. Well, I believe that we have no more questions. Just some additional comments from my side. You will shortly receive in the chat contact details as well as further materials by email tomorrow. Thank you very much for attending this webinar. Thank you very much, Antoine.
Thank you, Renato.
Feel free to contact us. I believe that we have not answered all the questions posted in the chat, but it will be a pleasure to answer you offline. If you want to contact us, you will receive all the contact details. Thank you very much for your attendance and thank you very much for your attention.