Digitalisation, key to enabling sustainability?

All aspects of business continuity

Digitalisation makes it possible to manage an abundance of complex and related data: collecting, aligning, connecting and processing information. Digitalisation is here to stay and affects all parts of a sustainable business.

In the near future, strategic business decisions will be based on a vast amount of digitally processed information. This includes data on operations, but also on the value chain, environmental impact and consumer patterns. It impacts all aspects of business.

• Digitalisation supports optimised resource use – raw materials, water, energy – and helps to increase productivity. Sharing information throughout the value chain helps to improve planning and quality while preventing loss. Digitalisation can fundamentally change and improve product design, including the design of processing facilities, supply transportation processes and operations.
• Digitalisation enables continuous performance monitoring and data management. This helps to meet increasingly stringent sustainability reporting requirements.
• With the use of applications, consumer behaviour and consumer preferences can improve product development. Online branding has taken a huge leap forward.
• Increasingly, investors and banks require information about the positive impact of their investments. Digitalisation can help organisations to deliver this and gain access to finance.
• More and more, consumers want to know about the source of ingredients and a company’s environmental and societal impact. Digitalisation helps organisations to better understand and demonstrate their impact. It is essential for a license to operate.

Integrated approach

The true value of digitalisation can be unlocked if companies apply an integrated approach and start at the core. Purchasing stand-alone applications, and creating an isolated digital team, can be considered marginal progress. In sectors such as the built environment and agro-food, front runners started by reflecting their mission and vision: how their organisation creates value for society and the environment. Then they investigated how digitalisation would enable their transition to a sustainable company. This goes beyond purchasing certain applications. It entails finding the right skill sets and integrating digital experience in all layers of the organisation.

Sector collaboration

Digitalisation is not limited to the company level. Sustainable resource management involves the entire value chain, including consumers. Sustainable asset management and circularity call for the involvement of all stakeholders in the life cycle of an asset or product.

Regulations are required, for example, in quality and food safety management. Capacity building is necessary at sector level to create the digital workers of the future. Policies are needed to protect information and privacy. And a common language is vital for mutual understanding. All these prerequisites for the digital transformation call for action at sector level.

If anything, this digital transformation is not of a technical nature. It requires a behavioural change, both at company and sector level. And that is what makes it scary. Nevertheless, by ‘stopping the bus’, reflecting on what is needed and taking an integrated approach, digitalisation holds the key to a more sustainable and resilient pet sector.