EXPECTATIONS by customers and investors on environmental and social consciousness are the main driver for local business organizations’ efforts to be socially and environmentally responsible, a study by a US-listed service provider said.
In its “ASEAN Digital Transformation Study 2022,” Kyndryl said customers drive organizations to be responsible more than regulations do. It noted that this is especially true in countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand.
“Organizations in the Philippines are responding most to customer expectations around environmental and social responsibility from organizations — including their high preference for eco-friendly products,” said Kyndryl, which designs, builds, manages, and modernizes information systems.
The study shows that 40% of the Philippine organizations that participated have their sustainability efforts driven by consumer and investor expectations.
This makes the Philippines the top among the five countries covered by the study to have consumer and investor expectations as the main driver. It was then followed by Indonesia with 31% and Thailand with 30%.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s sustainability efforts were mainly driven by compliance, while Malaysia was the most successful in accessing sustainability-related funding.
The study also found that environmental, social and governance awareness is growing within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with some industries leading the way.
Kyndryl said that “organizations are still lacking a holistic strategy and are grappling with how to integrate their data to set science-based targets, all while navigating external challenges such as stricter regulations.”
Kyndryl said that although organizations from the five countries are aware of their environmental and social responsibilities, challenges such as operational costs, data availability and lack of dedicated resources hinder them from achieving their sustainability goals.
According to the study, over eight out of 10 organizations in the Philippines aim to become sustainable. However, only 22% of them have built a strategic sustainability roadmap.
“I strongly believe that the success of sustainability lies in how well an organization can integrate its people, processes and technology to achieve a common goal,” Kyndryl Philippines Managing Director Wilson Go said.
“To achieve this goal, we need to put people at the center and embed sustainability principles at all levels of the organization culture,” he added.
The study had 500 C-suite leaders as participants, 100 of whom came from the Philippines. It is a collaborative study of the information technology infrastructure services provider Kyndryl and the technology research and advisory firm Ecosystm.
“While sustainability is an integral part of many businesses in ASEAN, there is a lot more that needs to be done to build sustainability competencies and fully understand what data organizations have access to and identify the data gaps to support corporate sustainability goals,” Ecosystm Chief Executive Officer Ullrich Loeffler said.
Kyndryl said its more than 90,000 employees serve over 4,000 customers in more than 100 countries around the world. — Justine Irish D. Tabile
