Study: Digital to drive sustainability in next three years

The inaugural Digital Sustainability Index (DSI) tracks the adoption and leverage of digital technologies by enterprise, along with the social and environmental objectives of those organisations. It aims to evaluate and uncover the factors critical to the pursuit of sustainable digital solutions across social, environmental and financial outcomes.

Developed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in partnership with the Centre of Digital Enterprise (CODE) at the University of Auckland Business School, the DSI hopes to map, measure and understand how sustainability goes beyond compliance or risk-based exercises, identifying the need to fuse sustainability with digital and business strategy to create a future-fit business. It also unpacks differing approaches and attitudes across sectors, industries and geographies.

Key findings include:

• 87% of all respondents agreed that Digital Sustainability could deliver a competitive advantage and be their organisation's central value.
• 98% of respondents believe the use of digital resources, systems and platforms to address sustainability outcomes will either remain the same or increase in the next 36 months.
• 87% of the respondents are looking for new strategic partners for digital sustainability, demonstrating the need to collaborate with innovators or specialist partners to deliver win-win outcomes.
• 84% of respondents indicated that they measure sustainability outcomes against their objectives.
• On index scoring, Australia has been identified as a key strategic player (60%), yet it lags in terms of leadership as compared to our APAC counterparts.
• As a developed nation and an early adopter of sustainable practices, it is surprising Australia ranks the second lowest on social objectives.
   

Based on the framework developed, TCS surveyed business leaders across the Asia Pacific to ascertain their digital sustainability readiness. The survey responses were used to create the DSI to assess how advanced a company is in deploying digital resources to achieve its sustainability goals. The survey was conducted across 10 markets including Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. Participating companies span 12 industries and annual revenues of US$25m to >US$10bn.

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