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August 19th, 2011 by Patrick Quinlan - CEO (2010-2011)
Patrick Quinlan recaps Wednesday’s panel “Sustainability Reporting: Measuring the Benefits of Going Green” at the American Accounting Association’s Annual Meeting and offers some guidance for companies interested in implementing sustainability reporting.
We had a blast and learned a lot at our panel last week. Thanks to the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Accounting Association, I knew the sustainability topic was becoming more popular and our experience during this event proved insightful. Our discussion didn’t just touch the surface of corporate sustainability; people asked real questions and got real answers from experts. Here are a few thoughts I’d like to share. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: American Accounting Association, corporate responsibility, Corporate Sustainability
Posted in Sustainability, XBRL | 1 Comment »
August 15th, 2011 by Kris Brands - Assistant Professor of Accounting in the College for Professional Studies, Regis University
Guest blogger Kris Brands, Assistant Professor of Accounting in the College for Professional Studies at Regis University, discusses Rivet Software’s participation at the American Accounting Association’s Annual Meeting
The American Accounting Association (AAA) held its annual meeting last week in Denver. The meeting was attended by almost three thousand accounting professors and accounting professionals with an interest in accounting academics. The conference serves as a premier forum to share information and ideas for accounting higher education. Rivet and I participated in two programs that were very well received. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: American Accounting Association, corporate responsibility, Corporate Sustainability, CrossView
Posted in Sustainability, Usability, XBRL | 1 Comment »
August 8th, 2011 by Patrick Quinlan - CEO (2010-2011)
Patrick Quinlan to moderate panel on corporate sustainability during American Accounting Association Annual Meeting on August 10, 2011.
While the sustainability movement gains new followers every day, its voluntary global adoption will always be tied to its impact on a company’s financial bottom line. One of the chief benefits of sustainability reporting is how it can be used to integrate financial and non-financial data to deliver a more holistic view of the business.
When this view includes corporate financial performance, as well as corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) behavior, it provides a confidence boost for savvy investors. Also, it shows company shareholders that the organization has a sustainable, long-term business focus. Accurate information allows stakeholders to see the entire scope of the company’s financial and non-financial data. Thereby, changing the way companies view corporate responsibility and its impact on their bottom line.
I will be moderating a panel at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Accounting Association in Denver on August 10, 2011 at 4pm on this key topic. The panel will consist of top sustainability leaders who will discuss integrated sustainability and financial reporting more in depth, and your questions and comments are welcome.
Panelists include: Kris Brands (Regis University), Liv Watson (XBRL International), Raef Lawson (IMA), Shannon Diederich (Sigler Communications) and Lara Hussain (Texas Instruments).
See you there!
Patrick
Tags: corporate responsibility, Corporate Sustainability
Posted in Sustainability, XBRL | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2011 by Patrick Quinlan - CEO (2010-2011)
Patrick Quinlan discusses how XBRL plays a key role in helping your company save money, find new sources of revenue, and improve your brand image.
Both public and private companies are starting to take an active interest in how sustainability reporting can help them better connect and communicate with their stakeholders. How often do you think of how your company’s actions affect your city, industry, or even the world? An A.T. Analysis found that companies who were actively committed to corporate sustainability practices during the financial crisis achieved above-average performance during the same period. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: corporate responsibility, Sustainability
Posted in Sustainability, XBRL | No Comments »
June 24th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Using XBRL for sustainability reporting just got a shot in the arm via the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI’s) newly announced collaboration with Deloitte in the Netherlands to resurrect the moribund GRI XBRL taxonomy. Hopefully the current taxonomy will be revised and updated to reflect the new demands of so-called ‘integrated reporting’ that expects financial and sustainability (or other non-financial) data to be connected to deliver a more holistic perspective of an organization that encompasses both business performance and behavior.
Posted in Communication, Sustainability, Taxonomies, Transparency, XBRL | No Comments »
June 7th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
As one of the unofficial sustainability evangelists here at Rivet, I thought you might like to review 7 Sustainability Trends that Every CFO Needs to Know – courtesy of GreenBiz.com – and think about this:
Because of the large number of functional areas that report to the CFO, sustainability offers the CFO an opportunity to drive sustainability into the organization for cost savings and competitive differentiation. Your organization needs your leadership in this area.
Posted in Actions & Impact, Sustainability | No Comments »
May 25th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
The Global Reporting Initiative has announced that it is working on the next generation of its guidelines for ESG/sustainability/integrated reporting. There seems to be some hope for the rather dormant GRI XBRL taxonomy contained in this statement:
In line with our mission to mainstream ESG reporting, a key aim of the G4 Guidelines is to harmonize Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and sustainability reporting practices around the world. In order to be fit for mainstreaming, the G4 Guidelines will need to be “standard ready”; robust enough to support higher levels of assurance and help companies to produce reports that are trusted by markets and stakeholders.
Note that term ‘standard ready’. It’s impossible to be ‘standard ready’ in today’s world of online information communication without the use of a data standard – like XBRL. So let’s hope that the GRI walks the talk.
Tags: GRI
Posted in Sustainability, Transparency, XBRL | No Comments »
May 23rd, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
It’s official. Sustainability reporting works. Or at least according to Harvard Business School it does. HBS have been researching the efficasiousness of the CSR report (always wanted to use that ‘e’ word outside of a Turkish steam bath) and found…
the first real evidence that mandatory CSR reporting works, and could give policymakers and companies themselves added impetus to increase transparency around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance.
Now all we need is a mandatory CSR XBRL taxonomy so we can easily combine financial and CSR data into a single holistic report.
Tags: HBS
Posted in Sustainability, XBRL | No Comments »
May 17th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Fumiko Satoh of IBM Research in Tokyo has recently published a paper that advocates an XBRL Taxonomy for Estimating the Effects of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Corporate Financial Positions. As the abstract suggests:
…disclosing the emissions data by using XBRL will be very beneficial for the analysis of the financial positions and emissions results of these companies. Interested third parties will want to combine the XBRL reports of the financial data and the emissions data. This will allow them to easily evaluate the companies from both the financial and environmental perspectives.
Luckily I don’t have to worry about the carbon impact of my blog postings. Though it might be a different matter if the focus of emissions disclosure was methane.
Tags: CSR
Posted in Actions & Impact, Analytics, Sustainability, XBRL | No Comments »
May 13th, 2011 by Stewart McKie - Executive Advisor
Nike just won best sustainability report in the Ceres-ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) North American Awards for Sustainability Reporting.
But as Paul Baier at GreenBiz points out (with a few spelling errors):
When reading traditional annual reports, financial analysis (sic) quickly skim pass (sic) the glossy pictures, platitudes, CEO letter and other marketing fluff and head straight to the financial numbers and footnotes.
Savvy CSR report readers do the same. The value is in the numbers.
So it’s also good to hear that the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) are working even closer together to maintain an explanatory mapping between each other’s sustainability and emissions indicators. That way the text and the numbers in GRI Index reports are more easily compared with those in CDP emissions reports.
Of course what would be even better is if those numbers could be standardized by referencing a single XBRL sustainability taxonomy. Then ‘scope 1′ emissions in a GRI report would always mean the same as ‘scope 1′ emissions in a CDP report – no matter what actual stakeholder report the number ended up in.
Tags: CSR
Posted in Communication, Sustainability, Transparency | No Comments »
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