Companies need to partly reinvent themselves, because becoming as profitable as possible is no longer enough. As Volkert Engelsman, CEO of Eosta, puts it: “We should be fully aware of what we are putting other people through, or the planet for that matter. With awareness comes the power to decide to make a change. Averting your eyes is a choice. You could say: profit can only be profit if it doesn’t jeopardize people and planet.” There are other factors to reckon with too. Companies need to be mindful of employee demands, government demands, and the ease with which customers nowadays can switch between companies and services. As an organization, you must take this into account, more than in the past. You may have set up the most cost-efficient production process, but if no one wants to work for you, or if your production is very bad for the environment, you have a problem. Optimization of business operations is very different from ten years ago. You can only tackle that by using new techniques and available data to come up with answers to these new questions.

Bridge the digital divide

Using data effectively is an essential tool to help achieve this, and organizations are adapting to profit from these technological developments. The spread of information, communications technology, and global interconnectedness has great potential to accelerate human progress and bridge the digital divide, using science and technological innovation. For companies across the globe, it is a matter of keeping up, adapt, and innovate. Becoming strong and well equipped in this digital world means you are ready to take up the challenge of sustainable business development (People, Planet, Profit).

• INTERCONNECTIVITY
• Machines, devices, software applications, people, and processes are more and more connected and integrated. Technologies like the Internet of Things are boosting this development. As a result, more actions can be automated, and more decisions can be made integrally (fewer silos).
• (REAL-TIME) DATA EXPLOSION
• One of the big accelerators of the ever-growing data streams is the fact that just about every device today is connected to the internet. This leads to new, real-time, and untapped data sources that organizations now can use for their benefit.
• MATHEMATICS
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) is symbolic for the power of mathematics today. There is an enormous collection of mathematical techniques that can be applied to automate and improve decision making. AI is one of these techniques, that has become more powerful due to the availability of data and computing power.
• CLOUD COMPUTING
• Finally, cloud computing makes it possible for us to have computing power available on demand, and at a nearly unlimited scale. It enables capturing and storing of large data sets and utilizing as much CPU/RAM as you need to run very heavy algorithms.

Every company needs to adapt to and use these new technological developments to innovate and benefit from them. So, how can you apply data, mathematics, and cloud computing to solve larger, more integrated puzzles? And how can you solve puzzles with multiple goals for People, Planet and Profit, to become future-proof as a company?

The combination of these developments makes it possible to solve problems that have never been solved before. Using more detailed, more real-time data, applying advanced mathematical techniques (like machine learning and optimization), and utilizing the unlimited availability of computing power, it is now possible to solve larger and more integrated models – and therefore, to simply make better decisions in the end. It’s what Rogier Havelaar, Head of Sustainability Parcels & Logistics at PostNL, means when he talks about the rigorous analysis that PostNL has made of its current operation: “We’ve been reinventing our entire network. We don’t believe in simply replacing all our diesel vehicles with electric ones; instead, we feel that we should take advantage of this opportunity to further innovate all of our processes. That’s why we’re re-examining all of the links in our logistics process – collection, sorting and distribution – to find out what we can do smarter or differently in our journey towards greater sustainability.” Of course, what works for one organization may not work for the next. The challenge is to find your sweet spot, to determine which sustainable development goals are most important to you, and how to balance them to remain relevant as a company.

Mathematics and data analytics can help you find that balance, but according to Richard Emmerink, Director of Strategy & Airport Planning at the Royal Schiphol Group, everything starts with vision. He distinguishes several key factors that go into creating a sustainable business. The first is a sense of urgency. But on top of that, sustainability should be integrated into the company’s overall vision and strategy. “I don’t believe in isolated sustainability departments as part of a greater whole. For me, that approach amounts to little more than greenwashing. Rather, the company as a whole should endorse the importance of sustainability.” One company that embodies that vision is Eosta, as Engelsman explains: “We are frontrunners, which makes us the prototypers of the new normal. We answer to no one apart from our own conscience. That said, we’re operating in a market with an uneven playing field, in which polluters have a competitive advantage. You have to develop a USP that puts you in the vanguard. Rather than competing to sell mangoes at the best possible price, you should compete in thought leadership.” It’s also important to note that the move towards more sustainability takes place within an ecosystem, in which many businesses can operate. Working together is often the best way to maximize impact, but it’s not always easy to get others to cooperate. “Not everyone is as eager to share their data”, as Emmerink observes, “but showing that everyone will benefit is often a convincing argument.” Or, in the words of Engelsman: “Anyone with a vision, or dream, will have to co-create. Prototype the new normal in a coalition of the willing, because you’ll never make it on your own.”