Embracing sustainability as part of a business strategy is imperative for organizations as it translates into a $1-trillion economic opportunity for Southeast Asia by 2030, making the demand from organizations to step up sustainability and social efforts to increase, with emphasis on driving human progress and making a better world to live in, according to Oracle’s No Planet B survey.
The study, which was conducted to over 11,000 business leaders (at 35%) and consumers (65%) across 15 countries, provides insights on how consumers and stakeholders’ views on sustainability have changed, and the role of people and machines in developing sustainability measures and decisions.
The study showed that 95% of people believe sustainability and social factors are more important than ever. This percentage has accelerated over the past two years which made 81% of APAC respondents to change their actions with impact on people’s lives and attitudes and how they make sustainability decisions.
Although a lot of respondents believe in the importance of sustainability, there are about 94% who believe society has not made enough progress on sustainability and social efforts as they are looking at a recent change that happened, focusing on short-term goals and ignoring long-term objectives. Likewise, about 75% of respondents are frustrated and fed up with the lack of progress by businesses on these initiatives. On the other hand, there are 93% of people who want to see more accountability from businesses when it comes to making progress on sustainability and social efforts.
“It is making sure that we take care of people today as sustainability essentially involves meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” said Jay Tuseth, vice president, Cloud Applications at Oracle ASEAN.
Believing on the role of technology and machines in making sustainability decisions, 89% of respondents disclosed businesses would make more progress towards sustainability and social goals with the help of Artificial Intelligence or AI. This group of people believes machine has the ability to look at information that can drive better decision making.
Comprising 66% of respondents, this group believes bots will succeed where humans have failed with corporate sustainability, which means that about two-third of people in APAC believe machine would make better decisions and can drive better outcomes.
Business leaders are aware that education, social and governance (ESG) initiatives are important as 92% of them believe sustainability and ESG programs are a critical part of success for their organizations, while 94% trust a bot over a human to drive sustainability and social efforts. They can address challenges they are facing as they believe bots are better at predicting future outcomes with the help of data. They also believe that humans are better at educating others on the information to be used in making good decisions.
Business leaders, which comprised 91%, believe organizations that use technology to help drive sustainable businesses will be the one to succeed in the long run. Tuseth said those who believe that leveraging technology as sustainability goals and initiatives can be more successful as they understand that technology enables processes, technology enables decision making, the ability to aggregate data and leveraging technology to understand it is driving good outcome for the society.
To make sure that we have a better world to live in and drive better and equal opportunity, 95% of people want to make progress on sustainability and social factors. The study also showed that consumers are ready to cut ties with businesses that don’t take action on sustainability and social initiatives. For these consumers, sustainability and social challenges are priorities and need to leverage technology in solving these issues.
