Word of the CEO
When reading the newspapers, more and more pages seem to be filled with climate related news. Some good, but mostly bad, and all of them have a clear underlying message: We need to take action, and in doing so, we need to work together. Problem is that although many organizations want to improve their sustainability performance, they remain unsure of where and how to start. They lack accurate insights and data to identify where they can make the most impact. The reasons for this are many – little time, difficult collaboration with stakeholders, and budget constraints among many more. Combining this with increasingly strict reporting regulations and high demands for transparency from their stakeholders, this, for us, is a clear call for approaching this issue in a transformative way.
Since we believe that the first step of improving your impact lays in understanding what exactly it is, we look towards technology and automation to bring these insights to the surface. Before starting Terra Reporting, I worked for over 20 years in the field of Customer Relationship Management and Customer Engagement. Through what I learned and realized in those years, I see much value in applying this approach to the field of ESG reporting. As a result of this experience, we believe that the most efficient way to report sustainability impacts and performance is by deploying a framework approach that manages the end-to-end reporting process, and not adding a tool that solves a specific reporting issue but is not extendible or modular. This way, organizations can spend their time and effort into projects that actually create positive impact, instead of spending it all on the laborious ESG data collection, management and reporting. Because to steer our society away from a climate crisis, we’ll need every minute and action we can take.
Every day it comes down to our purpose helping businesses make informed decisions, drive positive change, and create long-term value for all stakeholders. Our ideal vision of the future is full transparency and collaboration across entire supply chains. We envisage a future where organizations, irrespective of their size or industry, embrace transparency, accountability, and ethical practices, thereby contributing to a healthier planet and inclusive societies. We aim to realize this with our mission to simplify and streamline the ESG reporting process. We do this by providing innovative software, data analytics, and expert guidance to help businesses measure, manage, and communicate their ESG performance efficiently and at scale.
To dive into this adventure, I gathered a group of people around me with the capabilities and knowledge needed for this challenge. Firstly, part of our team has some many years of experience in technology scale-ups, corporates, and enterprises. Of course, another part is well-versed in the sustainability field and has solved many ESG challenges for various organizations. This results in a very diverse team in terms of skills, background, age, passions, and fields of knowledge. What they all have in common, though, is a bold entrepreneurial spirit and a drive to rethink how things are done.
While developing our ESG reporting solutions, we recently also took the opportunity to rethink our name and identity. We chose to continue our journey as Terra Reporting – reporting about the Earth – and moving on from our previous name greenredfish. Terra Reporting lies closer to our mission and is more unique in the markets we wish to pursue. Our new logo builds upon our story. The many different lines don’t say much if seen just by themselves, but bringing them together in the right way tells you a whole different story. This is our analogy for our approach to data and reporting. Separate numbers or a few data points here and there don’t do much, unless you bring them together in a holistic way, with the right context. Then they show you exactly what you need to know to take the next step in your sustainability journey.
In short, connecting stakeholders, data, technology, and knowledge is how we see to tackle the challenges in our society. We hope to connect all of those dots soon to create a better tomorrow.
Best regards,
Wim Geukens, CEO of Terra Reporting