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Lower-cost digital tools are breaking boundaries for SMEs in sustainability. From automated ESG reporting analytics and carbon calculation, to ESG risk ratings, embracing sustainability is at last achievable and cost-effective.

Do you want your firm to be more sustainable but worry about how much it will cost? Sustainability is becoming essential for businesses as stakeholders and regulators demand greater transparency and accountability on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues.

For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the cost and complexity of managing and reporting sustainability initiatives have been daunting. Although the global economy has so far avoided recession, it is still a strong risk, says the World Bank. A recession would tighten the financial squeeze on firms already struggling with the impacts of war in Ukraine, persistently high inflation, and higher interest rates.

Such worsening conditions could tempt time and cash-poor SMEs to delay critical sustainability initiatives. But help is at hand.

The perception that sustainability involves expensive, resource-heavy activities out of reach for SMEs is changing with the emergence of affordable digital tools. These tools help you automate ESG reporting, analytics and carbon calculation to reduce costs; and they make ESG risk rating more affordable and achievable too. Let’s explore how these new technologies can support your journey to sustainability and positive impacts.

1) Automated ESG reporting

In the past, ESG reporting has been a time-consuming and resource-intensive process that requires extensive data collection and analysis. However, digital tools have simplified and automated this process, enabling your SME to generate ESG reports efficiently.

By centralizing data collection and using pre-built templates, these tools streamline the reporting process, saving time and effort. For example, you can now easily track and report your environmental impact, social initiatives, and governance practices while reducing the burden on your internal resources.

2) Analytics for performance insights

Digital tools offer affordable analytics that give SMEs powerful insights into their sustainability performance. These insights allow your SME to make informed decisions, prioritize initiatives, and optimize resource allocation effectively. By collecting and analyzing data on factors such as energy consumption, waste generation, carbon emissions, and social impact, you can also set sustainability targets, monitor progress, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate continuous improvement in your sustainability efforts.

3) Carbon calculation tools

Calculating and managing carbon emissions is a crucial aspect of sustainability. Carbon calculation tools enable SMEs to measure and track their carbon footprint accurately. They consider various emission sources, including energy consumption, transportation, and supply chains, to provide a comprehensive assessment.

By understanding your SME’s emissions, you can target reduction strategies and offset programs, leading to cost savings and a positive environmental impact. The good news is digital carbon calculation tools are now affordable to SMEs. So even if the world nudges into recession and you’re feeling the financial squeeze, you can still start or continue your journey to carbon neutrality without it costing a fortune.

4) ESG risk rating and benchmarking

ESG risk rating and benchmarking tools enable SMEs to benchmark their sustainability performance against industry peers and established standards. These tools evaluate a range of factors, from environmental impact to social practices, governance structure, and ethical considerations.

By understanding your firm’s relative position, you can identify improvements and implement strategies to enhance ESG performance. ESG risk rating tools also assist SMEs in understanding potential sustainability-related risks and opportunities, enabling you to make proactive decisions and mitigate risk.

Cost savings and competitive advantage

Embracing affordable digital sustainability tools helps your SME achieve significant cost savings by optimizing energy consumption, reducing waste, and improving resource management. These tools help you achieve long-term financial benefits by identifying opportunities for process optimization and efficiency gains.

But integrating sustainability practices also enhances your reputation, and helps you attract environmentally conscious customers, investors, and partners. By enabling you to demonstrate this commitment to sustainability, digital sustainability tools can ultimately help you gain competitive advantage without straining your resources.

At Rimm with our myCSO product, we believe sustainability should be accessible, actionable and affordable. Let us be your Chief Sustainability Officer and handle all your company’s sustainability needs. Get started today.

Today on World Oceans Day, Dr. Lee-Ann Modley shares her expertise on ocean risks and opportunities and the steps SMEs should take to act responsibly and transparently on ocean-related governance.

“A healthy ocean is our most important ally in the fight against climate change.”

World Ocean Day is an international day that takes place annually on June 8. On this day, we aim to inform the public of the impact of human actions on the ocean, develop a worldwide movement of citizens for the ocean, and mobilize and unite the world’s population on a project for the sustainable management of the world’s oceans.

As a consequence of human actions that fragment wetland habitats and restrict landward migration, coastal ecosystems progressively lose their ability to adapt to climate-induced changes and provide ecosystem services, including acting as protective barriers.

Projections show that beyond 2100, sea levels will continue to rise for centuries due to continuing deep ocean heat uptake and mass loss of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Air Insulated substations (AIS) and will remain elevated for thousands of years. Risk related to Sea Level Rise (including erosion, flooding and salinization) is expected to significantly increase by the end of this century along all low-lying coasts in the absence of major additional adaptation efforts.

The Blue Economy gives us the opportunity to produce economic resources related to the oceans, while restoring damaged ecosystems and introducing innovative technology that helps us efficiently and sustainably manage everything the seas can offer us.

What does this mean for SMEs?

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have a critical role in restoring ocean health as they represent 70% of employment and 90% of total enterprises in developing countries across all sectors of the Blue Economy. On the basis of research, knowledge and data, ocean industries and SMEs can drive the innovation needed to meet the Green Deal targets and address the grand challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and post-pandemic recovery.

As a step in this direction, SMEs based on, depending on or affecting the ocean should integrate relevant ocean-related risks and opportunities into their corporate strategy, risk management and reporting. In supporting the use of sustainable ocean finance principles and other voluntary mechanisms led by the private sector and multilateral financial institutions in recovery and stimulus efforts, companies can guide, de-risk, incentivise and monitor investments in sustainable ocean activities to increase transparency and ensure reporting consistency.

How can Rimm help?

By leveraging technology, companies can mitigate risks to optimize their environmental and financial performance. Rimm offers automated ESG reporting services and analytics tools that provide insight to help organizations improve their corporate strategy, risk management and sustainability performance.

To learn more about Rimm’s sustainability and ESG solutions, browse our solutions catalogue or book a free demo!

For asset managers, tracking sustainability performance in portfolio companies is complex. manage+ simplifies the process.

Asset managers are increasingly under pressure from investors, regulators and other stakeholders to disclose information about the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in their portfolios. In response, many managers need to shape up their processes for tracking and organizing ESG performance in their portfolio companies.

But this requires aligning with a complex mesh of sustainability frameworks and standards. So many asset managers are desperately seeking something that helps them more easily track and manage sustainability reporting. But they can relax – a one-click ESG reporting solution is at hand, and it’s called manage+.

4 ways to improve ESG data management and reporting

manage+ helps asset and fund managers reduce the time, cost and resources they spend on ESG data management and reporting across their portfolios. manage+ provides a bird’s eye view of your portfolio sustainability performance, helping you track it seamlessly from one dashboard; boost communication with your portfolio companies; and generate your portfolio’s aggregated metrics in one click.

Here is more detail about the four key ways manage+ helps asset managers.

1. Comply with global sustainability standards and frameworks

manage+ enables you align with frameworks relevant to your company, such as Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD); Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR); Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA); Global Reporting Initiative (GRI); Sustainable Accounting Standards Board (SASB); and ESG Data Convergence Initiative (EDCI).

Asset managers invite their portfolio companies to input their details and create a myCSO account, including information about their industry and sub-industry. myCSO then automatically generates assessments tailored to material topics for each company.

This aligns companies with the relevant international standards and frameworks to make compliance and reporting hassle-free for them and the asset manager.

2. Auto-populate your ESG data to any LP or regulatory template

manage+ integrates a natural language processing (NLP)-driven tool that enables precise auto-population of the asset manager’s ESG data into any LP or regulatory template. 

This eases reporting; significantly streamlines data collection and reporting processes; and saves time and effort for your fund managers and regulatory compliance teams.

3. Easily manage and analyze your portfolio’s ESG performance in one place

Get a holistic overview of your portfolio’s ESG and sustainability performance across industries on one portfolio dashboard. This includes an overall ESG score that also breaks down to show how well each company performed on various ESG topics and indicators.

Once companies have submitted their assessments, myCSO will auto-generate a performance dashboard and reports analyzing their ESG performance.

This analysis helps you identify and target areas of weakness to work on and improve sustainable impact and value across your portfolio.

4. Benchmark and compare ESG performance and track KPIs

The dashboard shows how well each company performed on common indicators against its peers of the same or similar industry, region and size.

This enables asset managers to analyze and benchmark performance, track key performance indicators and extract insightful data that benefit you and your portfolio.

Want to learn more about manage+?

Book a demo and start managing your portfolio companies’ ESG with ease today.

Asset managers have an opportunity to strengthen their ESG propositions to improve performance, risk management, sustainability, and recruitment.

Asset managers have a major opportunity to better align their sustainable investment practices, products and reporting with investor expectations globally. That’s the verdict of two recent reports from credible sources.

The first is a 2023 Deloitte survey, which concluded that, in a highly competitive market, ESG investing offers asset managers a significant opportunity for organic growth. But they have to meet investors’ needs for transparency and well-defined causes.

The second is the latest Sustainable Signals survey from the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. This highlighted several areas where asset managers have an opportunity to meet growing sustainable investing interest and demand from asset owners; and better differentiate in a maturing market.

Our experience at Rimm is that there are significant gaps in ESG data at many companies, which impede their ability to provide the transparency investors need. There is an increasing focus for asset managers to manage their portfolios and drive disclosures in alignment with Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA) principles, Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and other reporting standards and frameworks.

If asset managers can bridge these gaps, they could boost growth opportunities significantly. Conversely, those who fail to meet these challenges risk losing valuable clients, and underperforming in the long run.

Let’s explore in more detail how and why asset managers need to strengthen their ESG propositions.

ESG improves long-term returns

The vast majority of asset managers believe ESG strategies will improve returns. And many say using ESG strategies has already yielded higher performance. We also know that the majority of investors say they would pay higher fees for this performance premium.

There is an increasing body of independent evidence to support these claims of outperformance.

For example, a 2023 study from MSCI showed that the ESG factor consistently posted positive or neutral performance across sectors and this effect gets clearer over longer periods.

Other studies have shown ESG-prioritized companies have higher returns, especially over longer periods, thanks to factors such as improved risk management and greater innovation. Some suggest that companies with strong ESG profiles are less vulnerable to disruption from regulatory or market changes, thus lowering costs of capital and buoying share prices.

By the way, some asset managers are currently finding investment returns hard to come by in the economic downturn. But with many companies driving new innovations in ESG, as highlighted in 2023 research by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, these dynamic firms could prove a valuable hunting ground for outperformance.

Demand keeps growing

Despite uncertain economics, demand for ESG and impact investing continues to grow. PwC predicts that between 2021 and 2026, global ESG investment will more than double to $33 trillion – much faster than the wider asset and wealth management market.

At Rimm, we know investors are increasing their attention on ESG areas such as data security and privacy, corporate governance and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Most asset managers already implement or plan to implement sustainable investing in response. But, in this competitive market, any asset managers with weaker ESG options risk losing clients to stronger competitors, and missing growth opportunities.

It’s a future-proofer

Integrating ESG factors can help asset managers manage long-term risks and ensure sustainability. A strong ESG proposition helps you identify firms that can benefit from long-term ESG trends. But it also enables you to screen out companies whose long-term performance may be damaged by ESG risks, thus future-proofing your portfolios.

Alternatively, if you engage actively with such companies, you can also encourage them to follow more ESG-related practices. This helps further reduce risk and support long-term performance.

Win the talent war

Sustainability and social responsibility are increasingly important for younger employees, and they are more likely to choose employers that reflect their values.

From talking to clients, we know a strong ESG proposition can help asset managers get ahead in the talent war by attracting and retaining valuable staff. With talent shortages reaching critical levels in 2023, this is more important than ever. Conversely, a weak ESG strategy can create a social stigma and cause companies to lose key workers or face a restricted talent pool.

In conclusion, asset managers need to focus on strengthening their ESG proposition for multiple reasons, including the impact on investment returns; growing demand for sustainable investing; better risk management; ensuring long-term sustainability; and attracting and retaining talent. This shows why developing a strong ESG proposition is not just right, but smart – a great business decision that can benefit asset managers and their clients long-term.

manage+ can help you bridge data gaps and manage your portfolio companies’ ESG performance in alignment with major global standards, including ILPA, TCFD, SFDR and more. Book a demo to learn more today.

With the ever evolving ESG reporting and regulatory scene, it can be difficult to keep up with key developments. Let’s look at 5 up and coming standards that will impact your business.

Sustainability reporting is becoming an integral part of business operations. For many companies, this trend goes beyond brand positioning and making a positive impact, affecting their regulatory compliance, financial statements, and funding from investors. With more complex and comprehensive sustainability disclosure requirements being introduced, navigating the sustainability reporting scene can be daunting, but remains key.

Here’s an overview of some of the important new standards and frameworks to keep on your radar in 2023.

1. Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR)

The SFDR was proposed by the European Commission in 2019 and aims to promote sustainable finance and minimize greenwashing in the EU. The regulation requires financial market participants (FMPs) and financial advisers (FAs) to provide greater transparency around the sustainability of their investments and is divided into three levels of disclosure requirements: (Level 1) mandatory disclosure of sustainability policies by FMPs and FAs, (Level 2) detailed information on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) characteristics of investments and how these are incorporated into the investment decision-making process, and (Level 3) mandatory disclosure of the impact of investments on sustainability.

2. Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

The European Commission has developed the CSRD framework to strengthen and standardize sustainability reporting for businesses operating in the EU. With its goal of offering stakeholders a thorough and consistent system of sustainability reporting to make decisions that will promote sustainable growth, the CSRD expands reporting requirements to all major corporations and companies listed on EU regulated markets, replacing the current Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD). This initiative is estimated to affect over 50,000 European companies and over 10,000 foreign companies, which would bolster a new degree of confidence for sustainability reporting.

3. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD)

Proposed by the European Commission in February 2022, the CSDDD aims to hold businesses accountable for their impacts on the environment and society. With the overarching aim to make Europe climate neutral by 2050, the directive is currently in the feedback stage and is projected to impact approximately 13,000 EU and 4,000 non-EU companies once implemented in 2024. In order to comply with CSDDD, organizations must detect, prevent, mitigate, and account for any potential negative effects of their activities and supply chains on the environment, human rights and social issues. This has a ripple effect on SMEs that are involved in the supply chains of many of the affected larger companies as they may need to disclose information and minimize their own risks.

4. Sustainable Disclosure Regulation (SDR)

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has also come up with their own measures targeting investment firms and distributors of in-scope investment products to combat greenwashing in the investment scene. The SDR incorporates the TCFD recommendations and double materiality. Some of the requirements of the SDR include three sustainable investment labels for retail investors to navigate the complex sustainable investment scene and more in-depth sustainability disclosures at the product (consumer, more general) and entity (stakeholders, more granular) level. While this measure is still in the early stages of implementation, it will have a significant impact; the FCA estimates that the SDR will affect about 450 funds managing £10.6 trillion in assets.

5. Climate-Related Disclosure Rule

In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed a new rule in 2022 requiring registered domestic and foreign companies to disclose information on climate-related metrics by February 2024. Under the new regulations, companies will be required to provide information on the physical and transition climate risks and impacts, governance practices around risks and risk management, mitigation plans, Scope 1 and 2 emissions, Scope 3 emission if material or a target has been set, and climate-related financial metrics in a note to audited financial statements. Building on the TCFD framework, these regulations aim to help businesses disclose climate risks and opportunities and standardize information for investors.

With the increasingly stringent and comprehensive regulations set to take place, organizations need to keep up with mandatory requirements under the new frameworks and standards for sustainability reporting and disclosure to be ready for compliance. Awareness, followed by appropriate planning, is key to mitigating the potential negative effects on your business and society.

Want to know what to include in your sustainability report?

Read our previous post on ‘What to Include in Your Sustainability Report’

Rimm collaborates with RFI to lead the sustainability module at their Global Virtual Innovation Hub (GVI) FinTech Program for startups and SMEs.

In early February, Rimm was invited to facilitate the Sustainability Module in the Global Virtual Innovation Hub (GVI) FinTech Program organized by the Responsible Finance & Investment (RFI) Foundation in collaboration with HSBC. With participants from around the world, the 10-week program sought to develop FinTech SMEs and startups’ capacities in responsible finance and sustainability, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The session marked our third collaboration with RFI’s GVI FinTech program, ever since the first iteration in October 2021. Shaleen Shahrin (Sustainability Expert and Strategic Partnerships, Rimm) began with the orientation, where participants were briefed on what to expect from the program over the subsequent days.

“It was great to share Rimm’s sustainability insights with another cohort of RFI’s GVI FinTech program. It is important for FinTechs to understand what sustainability means for their organization, and how they can incorporate sustainability into their business strategy,” shares Shaleen.

We led an ‘Introduction to Sustainability’ session, which focused on the rising presence of sustainability and reporting in the world of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The interactive session shed light on some key trends driving ESG and sustainability engagement based on our ESG research. We covered various ESG frameworks, materiality and complementary strategies to enhance sustainability reporting, focusing on topics most relevant to the audience.

At Rimm, we believe in helping organizations implement sustainability right. Our program debunked some common myths around sustainability, challenges and solutions to reporting and the long-term risks of greenwashing. One of the topics covered was ‘ESG 2.0’, a new approach to ESG that steers away from minimalist ESG measures that merely satisfy internal and external requirements. It recognizes the importance of embedding ESG policies and frameworks into organizations’ operations and calls for impactful strategies to implement ESG right.

We also led a hands-on practical session, involving a demo of Rimm’s myCSO platform, to demonstrate the capabilities of myCSO in streamlining sustainability management and reporting for SMEs. We were happy to provide free trials of myCSO Essential for the program participants to explore and assess their own sustainability performance and potential for improvement. Rimm also conducted a carbon calculation exercise wherein program participants were able to calculate their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions intensities through our platform’s Carbon Calculator feature.

Our engagement with RFI’s GVI FinTech cohort concluded on a successful note as we received the opportunity to share our sustainability insights and capabilities with yet another group of SMEs. We hope to continue engaging with like-minded organizations and individuals in the future with our end goal to democratize sustainability for all.

Looking to automate and simplify sustainability reporting for your organization?

Speak with our team to learn more about our solutions!

There is a wide range of ESG ratings systems available with inconsistent results on ESG scores for different companies. Hear Ravi Chidambaram (CEO, Rimm) on navigating this challenge.

ESG ratings provided by firms like MSCI and Refinitiv have come under increasing scrutiny by corporations, regulators and investors. These companies have been criticized for using opaque, inconsistent methodologies in developing ratings, making it difficult for practitioners to compare ratings between providers or predict ESG-risk outcomes.

Another overlooked shortcoming amongst current major ratings providers is their “one size fits all” ratings system. In this model, virtually the same criteria are used to judge the ESG performance of a company from the United States or Europe with a similar company in the same industry in an emerging market. As the chart below shows, average ratings for emerging markets companies are often lower than companies from the West.

A recent academic paper by Professors Jeff Chen, Zenquan Li, Ting Mao and Aaron Yoon (“Global vs. Local ESG Ratings: Evidence From China”) demonstrates that local ESG ratings were much better than global ratings for predicting how ESG risks can materialize in Chinese companies. This was particularly the case in predicting social and governance risks in areas like corruption, legal violations and employment conditions. The authors conclude that the main reason for this is that local raters had a much better appreciation of the “contextual” nature of ESG risks in China.

ESG is a function of the local cultural, social, political and regulatory environment and varies greatly between countries and regions. For example, many Asian businesses are family-owned with multiple, related party transactions between different family entities. In Western corporate governance, this would normally be a red flag, but if managed responsibly, the risk posed by such related party deals may be benign. In a similar vein, a Nigerian or an Indonesian bank may be unfairly penalized for having greater lending exposure to fossil fuels than a Western bank though those countries derive the majority of their GDP from fossil fuels.

At Rimm, we see a clear demand from our clients in emerging markets for a more localized and contextualized ESG rating model. These companies want a more nuanced rating to better understand performance in the context of the local environment to set more realistic sustainability goals and targets. Local ESG ratings can also drive domestic, green capital markets growth as local investors are better able to price risk and opportunity within a local framework. We have already started developing a local ESG rating system for Indonesia and expect to trial it there soon.

Want to learn more about Rimm’s sustainability and ESG solutions?

Speak with our team to learn more about our ESG solutions.

The incorporation of technology is taking the corporate world by storm. Let’s find out how it is influencing the ESG scene.

As environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are becoming increasingly important considerations for investors and companies alike, the intersection of digitalization and ESG has become a hot topic in the business world.

The shifting demands of consumers and investors for greater transparency and accountability has led to a growing number of regulations and frameworks – such as the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) developed by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) – being adopted and mainstreamed over the years. The regulatory push is coming from all angles and levels, including from the international, regional, commercial and industry-specific spheres.

As many of these regulations are or will become mandatory and have penalties for noncompliance, digitalization is a necessary step in automating, accelerating and scaling processes around emissions reductions, data management and auditing to keep up with the ever evolving regulatory requirements.

We are seeing an increased prominence of a technological race between regulations and ESG efforts, where digitalization is becoming an indispensable enabler for companies to be ESG compliant.

Technology can help to boost the efficiency of ESG reporting through aiding organizations in collecting, analyzing and benchmarking complex data on materially relevant ESG metrics. This is particularly pertinent in certain industries, such as agriculture, energy, transportation, buildings and real estate.

The problem faced during the process of generating ESG performance analyses and sustainability reports is often related to data collection, data management and the amount of work that needs to be invested into the process. With recent regulatory developments requiring Scope 3 emissions reporting, which encompasses supply chain emissions and has historically been the most challenging to measure of the three scopes, this task would be immensely time-consuming to accomplish manually on an annual basis, especially for larger companies. Digital tools not only enable tracking and analysis of data on a larger scale, but also helps to combat greenwashing through better accounting and verification.

What does this mean for SMEs?

Currently, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up 90% of businesses and 50% of the workforce globally, harnessing great potential for positive impact. While it may seem that SMEs are still exempt from many of the regulatory requirements, these changes for multinational corporations (MNCs) have resounding ripple effects. As scope 3 emissions reporting becomes compulsory, companies are pressured to streamline their supply chains, which often comprise SMEs. What we would observe is a trickle-down effect whereby ESG regulations for MNCs would indirectly influence SMEs to adopt better ESG practices.

As digitalization increases the transparency of MNCs’ supply chains, SMEs would be placed under greater scrutiny for their ESG practices. Greenwashing allegations are expected to continue to increase with greater public attention on sustainability and greater pressure to comply with stricter regulations.

Through stakeholder interaction and engagement, MNCs would work with their suppliers to ensure compliance. This could include setting emissions reduction targets, selecting suppliers based on their ESG performance, and implementing sustainable procurement practices.

With available data on companies’ ESG performance, technology also provides predictive capabilities on companies’ performance trends, such as in energy production or consumption. This enables companies to identify risks, opportunities, and areas in which they can improve their operational efficiency.

How can Rimm help?

Rimm offers ESG performance analytics and automated reporting services that provide insight and capacity to help organizations understand and improve their sustainability. Whether big or small, businesses looking to optimize their operational efficiency and financial performance should leverage technology to stay ahead of regulatory requirements and climate risks.

To browse through Rimm’s catalog of sustainability and ESG solutions, click here or contact us for a free demo!

Rimm’s global team from Singapore, UK, Japan and Portugal gathered in Singapore for one week of strategy and team bonding sessions. Read on to find out about the experience!

Recently, our international teams from the UK, Portugal and Japan flew to Singapore for a productive week of bonding and strategizing for 2023. It was our first time bringing everyone together from our global offices, and we also had the chance to celebrate International Women’s Day with all the amazing women on our team.

To kick-off the week, we ran numerous strategy sessions with everyone to align our vision and goals for the year. Each department came together to discuss their goals, refine strategies and approaches, and share their plans with the rest of the team.

“The strategy sessions were a fantastic way to collaborate and share ideas! It was super informative and insightful to understand the goals and agenda for each team for the next year,” says Riya Sharma, Partnerships Manager in Rimm’s London office.

As we are currently in a very important stage in our growth, aligning our strategies is crucial in improving transparency and coordination across teams on our various projects and timelines. With 2023 poised to be a very critical year for us as a company, our time together helped to clarify our goals and how we plan to achieve them.

Apart from our strategy sessions, we also had the opportunity to visit a local permaculture farm to learn about sustainable farming practices. As we toured the farm, we explored how they set up self-sustaining irrigation systems and closed ecological systems. Towards the end, we got to relax with food and drinks made from natural ingredients found in the farm.

“It was inspiring to see how the volunteer community builds the organic farm using their expertise and trial and error of natural methods,” shares Wei Ti Goh, our data scientist from the Singapore office.

“Overall it was a great experience. I’ve gotten to know how badly we treat the soil, something we depend on to grow the food we need to survive, and how small and simple sustainable practices can be applied to restoring it,” says Fábio Duarte, our Head of Development based in Portugal.

On our third day, Rimm explored the city on an amazing race around Singapore, centered around Singapore’s areas of heritage and culture.

“The amazing race was a fun and exciting way to explore Singapore! Having never visited before, I really enjoyed getting to know the local areas and understand the heritage behind the different sites. Lots of lessons learnt and lots of team bonding!” says Riya.

We rounded off our strategy and bonding week with a delightful dinner at Barbary Coast, where we looked back on an eventful time together and had one last meal before our overseas colleagues had to catch their flights back home.

It was sad to say goodbye, but I think most of us at Rimm will agree that we had a wonderful time walking the talk and living our brand ethos, ‘Real Impact Matters Most’ (Rimm), as a team. We look forward to our next reunion!

We are currently hiring!

As Rimm continues to grow, we are looking to expand our team. If you are interested to join our team or know anyone who might be suitable, please head over to our LinkedIn Jobs Page.

With the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tools, hear our expert speakers on how automation is shaping the sustainability space and providing solutions to challenges.

On March 16, Rimm held our first hybrid event of the year, “The Rise of Automation in Sustainability”. The event centered around a panel discussion, focusing on how automation can be used by companies to promote sustainability and the associated benefits and challenges. We were honored to have Ravi Chidambaram (Rimm, CEO), Vincent Caldeira (Red Hat, CTO), and Steven Newman (Menicon, CTO) on our panel to share their expertise with Dr. Darian McBain (OCSO, CEO) as our distinguished moderator.

With a multitude of regulations and frameworks increasingly mandating sustainability reporting, it may seem daunting for small businesses to embark on their sustainability journey. Automation enables easy access to sustainability for all companies, including those that may lack the necessary resources and manpower to implement more sustainable practices.

“Reporting to us is really just the starting point. You could get green loans, sustainability certifications, and be supply chain compliant… There are so many use cases around sustainability, and the idea is to go way beyond reporting.” – Ravi Chidambaram

Here’s a brief summary of what our panelists had to share.

Key takeaways:

• Automation can aid companies in their necessary transition toward sustainability by demystifying and simplifying adoption, helping them overcome logistical and financial hurdles to beat the rising cost of compliance and stay competitive.
• By starting with sustainability disclosure, companies can get a clearer idea of issues that are material to them, allowing them to identify areas for improvement to implement effective strategies.
• Beyond reporting, automation can be used for data scraping, benchmarking and auditing, all of which contribute to data verification and combating greenwashing.
• Although we are still in the early days of automation and sustainability reporting, automation can help to boost the credibility of self-reported data.
• Some ESG data might be inaccurate due to the lack of verification and lack of standardization between taxonomies.
• Automation and sustainability can also bring together ESG reporting companies to capitalize on each other’s strengths to come up with better and more holistic solutions for all companies.
• Sustainability and automation will continue to grow as a key topic area as businesses continue to realize its importance and as taxonomies become more standardized.

“The idea is if we can have this combination of data management and customization, we can create many positive outcomes for clients around sustainability adoption.” – Ravi Chidambaram

Our team at Rimm Sustainability would like to thank everyone who attended the event. We hope to see you at our next one!

Want to learn more about how you can automate your sustainability analytics and reporting processes?

Watch “The Rise Of Automation In Sustainability” on demand.