【 Big Data Development】How to Achieve Sustainable Development through Big Data?
Introduction
Technological advancement has promoted a decrease in data storage cost, driving exponential growth of global data volume and officially entering the era of big data. According to IBM’s forecast, the total amount of global data will increase by 300 times in 2020 as against 2005, reaching 44ZB (1ZB = 1 billion TB. TB stands for terabyte). Nowadays, big data has gradually penetrated into our daily life and become widely used in various industries. More and more companies and institutions begin to take advantage of the vast potential of data and turn to different big data analytics to address challenges. Sustainability and climate change, as one of the greatest challenges in the world, require companies to generate high-value business insights from proper collection and usage of information and data. Based on these information, companies could formulate corporate sustainability policies， which can not only make great contribution to their sustainable development and combat climate change, but also create new growing opportunities and value.
Why Companies Need to Adopt Big Data?
The continuous growth of world population has caused serious problems such as environmental pollution, resource scarcity and ecosystem destruction, which have brought both profound risks and opportunities to companies. Meanwhile, stakeholder awareness over these pressing issues has left companies unable to ignore the impact of their business activities on climate change as well as the consequential risks and opportunities. To better meet the challenges of sustainability and climate change, companies need to evaluate their impacts on climate change while integrating sustainable development into companies’ core business activities.
Quantitative management is a symbol of corporate excellence and a necessary element for managerial success. Companies often encounter difficulties in data collection as different stakeholders expect to understand corporate performance in different aspects, while the information and data is usually sporadic across various departments with inconsistent formats. To meet the expectations of stakeholders, companies need to make effort to standardize data formats and improve employee awareness of data collection so that data access and analysis can be done easier.
Although the process of gathering large amounts of data is not easy, companies can have a clearer picture of the focus areas of their work through adoption of big data to identify relevant environmental impacts, even neglected impacts, throughout the corporate sustainable management. This ultimately enables companies to formulate corresponding policies, refine targets and allocate existing resources to their work priorities.
I．Comprehensive Understanding of the Potential Impact of Business Operation
Big data could allow companies to understand the environmental impacts of their businesses both within and beyond their control. At present, some companies still find it difficult to understand the impacts of their operations. Even relatively simple data, such as energy consumption, need to be obtained from various departments. More and more companies are trying to understand their end-to-end impacts across the entire value chain, including the processes outside of their direct control, such as raw material extraction, consumer usage, product disposal, etc. While companies evaluate the impacts of their value chain, they can also encourage their suppliers to quantify environmental impacts and take more responsibilities of their operations which could create a domino effect.
II. Resource Optimization
Another major contribution of big data is to help companies optimize resource utilization. Most companies hope to reduce energy consumption in their businesses and supply chains by optimizing resource allocation so as to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy costs. Through big data analytics, we are able to help companies identify business process with large resource consumption and launch for targeted resource management.
III. Formulate Sustainable Development Strategy
The emerging big data analytics could help companies identify critical sustainability issues, focus on potential sustainability risks, conduct performance benchmarking with peer companies, and analyze best practices in sustainable development. Through analysis and understanding of the above aspects, companies can further formulate their own sustainable development strategies.
How Leading Companies Apply “Big data”？
Case One：Ford Motor Company
Figure 1: Ford 2015 F-150
Over the past 20 years, Ford Motor Company has constantly increased investment in big data to improve fuel efficiency, reduce automobile exhaust and push forward sustainable development in other aspects by leveraging big data analytics. Ford has set up a panel of experts to reconsider its product design and create a more sustainable business model. This has not only drastically reduced Ford’s impacts on environment but also improved its profits. Back in 2014, Ford had used big data and climate change models to redesign its then best-selling F-150 pickup truck to an all-aluminum body which has achieved a weight savings of 700 pounds and reduced fuel consumption. At the same time, Ford has set up a fuel efficiency goal through a science-based model to predict the amount of automotive carbon dioxide emissions within the next 50 years.
Case Two: Nike
Figure 1: Nike’s Efforts in Sustainable Development
Big data analytics and macro-scenario planning have enabled Nike to achieve its vision of separating its business growth from limited resource consumption, such as fossil fuel and water. Nike unveiled a breakthrough innovation by significantly reducing production waste through product design and launched high-performance, eco-friendly running shoes. Nike also developed waterless dyeing technology and created a substitute for cotton.
Conclusion
Putting big data analytics into practice is far from easy. There are challenges from data collection and analysis to extracting valuable business insights from within. Nevertheless, we notice some of the leading companies in sustainability have already guiding their suppliers and clients to address these challenges and seek opportunities. As more and more companies attach great importance to sustainable development, big data analytics will bring more data-driven solutions and help companies secure an invincible position in future competition.
Listed companies with multiple branches and subsidiaries usually face challenges in data management. Based on the professional knowledge and profound understanding of the ESG information disclosure needs of domestic and foreign companies, CECEPEC has independently developed the industry’s first smart ESG data analysis and management platform, namely EnvAI, seeking to offer a comprehensive solution to accommodate different needs of companies. As a multi-functional platform, EnvAI is designed to ensure data collection accuracy and information security management with capabilities such as multi-dimensional analysis, online report editing and generation. It is committed to provide an integrated and customized ESG management platform with one-stop service for various companies.
CECEPEC attaches great importance to client experience and strive for excellence in system optimization and upgrade. After a year of operation, EnvAI has gained valuable insights with better database management, functional modules and client experience to satisfy growing demands. EnvAI will continue to upgrade and deliver more powerful functions with a 2.0 version aiming to be launched by the end of this year. This will simplify the process of data collection, summary and analysis, and help companies to have more comprehensive and accurate understanding of their current status in sustainable development so that more realistic and effective development goals and solutions will be formulated.
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