Enabling better decisions by providing investors, companies, and governments with high-quality information on how companies are managing their response to climate change and mitigating the risks from natural resource constraints has never been more important.

Stakeholders today want more than the philanthropic mission–vision statements of a company. They want real statistics, real facts, and most important of all, real results in terms of corporate social responsibility. In other words, they need accurate “big data” inclusive of a company’s environmental sustainability information.

Determining what “big data,” or information, is most important and where to find it is the first step. Whether for reporting or other purposes, success requires identifying your own needs, as well as your critical stakeholders and their priority needs, then addressing areas of overlap.

This article was written by Dr. Chet Chaffee, Director of Sustainability at FirstCarbon Solutions, and published in EM Magazine. Click to read the full article: Corporate Sustainability Using ‘Big Data’ to Look at the Big Picture.