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How to Build a Business Case for Sustainability: Four Tips on Getting Buy-In from Finance By David Bent, Forum for the Future Head of Business Strategies www.forumforthefuture.org

How can you persuade your finance department to invest

in finding your company's business case for

sustainability? It's not easy, but it can be done.

Sustainability professionals often find themselves caught

in a vicious circle: They need resources to investigate the

business case and the accountants won't release

resources without a business case.

In a previous post I gave Six Lessons on Finding the

Business Case for Sustainability Initiatives. This blog sets

out how to take your finance managers step-by-step to

the point where they understand the financial rewards in

sustainability and are willing to support big projects,

based on our experience at Forum for the Future helping

companies escape from this trap.

1. View the business case as part of a wider change

program. That means knowing who are the internal

stakeholders you need to influence, especially in the

finance function. Is there someone who could be a

champion, or at least a curious friend, among the

accountants?

Also, it is a good idea to have a core message that

frames the search for your business case, for instance:

"Sustainability is an opportunity as well as a risk to be

managed."

2. Go to the finance department with a safe pilot. Unless

someone in your C-suite has an epiphany, you will need

to start with a small and safe pilot. Identify something --

an initiative, project, decision or process -- where the

business case can be investigated without requiring too

much resource. Whatever you investigate must also be

relatively unimportant, so you don't trigger defense

routines. I'll return to the technical part of the pilot in my

next blog.

3. Use the pilot to build credibility and awareness.

Wherever possible get the finance department

themselves to investigate the business case. They will

find their own results the most credible. You can use the

pilot to learn how to speak their accounting language

better, and to help them them understand sustainability

too.

In our experience, rather paradoxically, it is not vital that

there is a great business case for whatever you

investigate. More important is demonstrating, first, that

you are searching for how sustainability can create

profits, and, second, that there probably is a business

case for the company, even if not with what was piloted.

4. Keep creating a "permission and results" cycle.

Hopefully, by this stage you have some credibility and

interest from the finance function. You can use that to

address larger and more important areas. How can you

bring sustainability into capital expenditure decisions? Do

sustainability-related risks get valued correctly in the risk

register? Do people in strategy planning understand the

size of sustainability-related opportunities?

Throughout the process, continue to build permission to

investigate more of the business case, and use the

results to get the next round of permission. Along the way

you will want to build the capacity of individuals to

understand and act on sustainability.

Of course, in an ideal world you would start with the big

and important items listed at stage four, not least

because they often have a more compelling business

case. But in practice, you need support from the finance

department, and you can only get that permission by

starting small.

There is one final piece in the puzzle: How do you

actually investigate the business case for a sustainability-

E-TIPS

OHS, Environment & Sustainability

© informa PLC IIR Executive Development

ACN. 002 541 013 ABN 87 002 541 013 Level 6, 120 Sussex Street, Sydney NSW 2000

T 02 9080 4000 | F 02 9299 3109 | edinfo@iir.com.au | www.iired.com.au

your one-partner solution for building skills and knowledge

related initiative, project, decision or process? That will

be the subject of my next post.

This blog was first published on GreenBiz.com. This is the second of three blogs looking at the business case for sustainability. The other blogs are: Six Key Lessons on Mapping Out a Business Case for Sustainability and Investigating the business case for sustainability: seven steps that could make you millions. To obtain these articles, please email e-tips@iir.com.au David Bent is Head of Business Strategies with independent sustainability experts Forum for the Future www.forumforthefuture.org