ESG leaders across organizations are often looking for ways to optimize performance across their operations. When it comes to reporting, companies often experience pain points, including navigating the complexity of regulatory frameworks, using manual efforts for data collection, lack of audit trails, disparate sources for data consolidation, engaging external stakeholders and more.
Securing leadership buy-in is a crucial step in successfully adopting ESG software. This blog explores key strategies to gain executive support and approval for your investment.
The Role of ESG Software in Overcoming Reporting Challenges
One effective way to address these pain points is by investing in new technology and tools, which helps to streamline workflows and create additional efficiencies. This also further empowers employees to spend more time on tasks that support strategy execution and performance versus focusing on administrative work.
When looking to invest in software solutions, a critical step is to get leadership buy-in and approval for the budget, resources and change management process. This can be a time intensive process, depending on how many leaders need to be involved across departments. However, many executives are aware of how important sustainability is and the need for it to be deeply embedded in their strategies. According to a 2024 IBM study, 75% of executives agree that sustainability drives better business results. At the same time, 69% of executives believe that sustainability needs to be prioritized more within their organizations.
To speed up the process to get leadership buy-in, here are a few key tactics organizations can leverage:
Finding Internal Advocates – And an Executive Champion
Getting buy-in from fellow employees can help validate the need for a software solution, especially those end-users who do the day-to-day work for data collection and management and can speak to the pain points. Other useful contacts to loop in include those from the IT and finance departments to help identify any gaps & dependencies and technical requirements to speed up the process.
Finally, getting an executive champion will be helpful in unlocking doors to other executives within the business, helping generate interest, and pushing the case for a technology provider to the forefront.
Align With Business Objectives
When looking to get buy-in for any technology, especially with leadership, it is critical to showcase how making a significant investment in sustainability software can help with the bottom-line of the business. This includes identifying areas of opportunity for cost savings, ensuring compliance on a company-level, and getting a competitive edge in the industry for investing in sustainability efforts.
Connecting to broader business objectives and long-term strategic goals can be useful positioning for leadership as they will understand how sustainability supports with risk management, innovation and future-proofing a company.
Be Specific with Your Asks
When approaching leadership for budget to invest in technology, it is vital to have a clear definition of what the actual ask is. Consider questions such as:
- What key pain points will the software address?
- What are the must-have features for data management, reporting, and automation?
- How will this investment improve operational efficiency and compliance?
Creating a specific list can define what exactly you are looking for, what an ideal solution would look like, and what this would potentially cost. Doing this work upfront will make it easier for leadership to quickly understand the reasons for software investment.
Put It All Together in A Business Case
Leaders are often looking for a well-researched business case that outlines a rationale for purchasing software. After you have a group of internal advocates and outlined your specific asks and how it relates to business strategy, it can be helpful to compile all of this into a business case. Within the business case, you can look to include sections such as:
- Opportunity statement
- Project objectives
- Scope of the solution
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Risk assessments
Putting this together in one document can establish a direct connection between the requested software solution and a company’s key objectives, making it easier to get executive buy-in.
