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A Little ESG Background

According to Gartner, an analyst firm, environmental sustainability will become a top-five strategic priority for at least 25% of CEOs by 2025, which is a lot higher than the less-than-five percent it has been over the past ten years.

If you work in the wholesale trade/distribution industry, life is probably very interesting right now. Even at the best of times, wholesale distributors face immense complexity, juggling large numbers of product SKUs, and managing massive volumes of transactions with both suppliers and customers. Layered onto all this are the intricacies of pricing and rebate structures, and competitive pressures driving value chain disruption and digital transformation.

There are myriad business reasons to cultivate an inclusive culture, and here are a few examples:

Having missed Adaptive Live the past couple of years due to the global pandemic, it was very exciting to be back in person at Workday Rising 2022 last week in Orlando! Between in-person and virtual, there were roughly 19,000 attendees! If you couldn’t attend, I’d suggest blocking off your calendar for next year’s event to be hosted in San Francisco the week of September 25, 2023.  

Few are more affected by supply chain disruptions than the distributors who make up the Wholesale Trade industry. As intermediaries between manufacturers and final customers, distributors add value in myriad ways including repackaging, inventory management, and logistics which means their businesses are especially impacted by factors like uncertain delivery times, struggling suppliers, and inflation.

Every company plans. Historically, corporate financial planning has been a predictable, sometimes painful, process that brought managers together to make decisions about future company direction and priorities, while also providing a benchmark against which to measure performance.

The world of planning and analysis has been experiencing a fundamental shift in recent years. If you are unfamiliar with xP&A, short for eXtended Planning and Analysis, you may not be aware of this shift. So first, what exactly is xP&A? Directly quoting Gartner, “xP&A is the evolution of planning, combining financial and operational planning on a single composable platform. It ’extends‘ traditional FP&A solutions focused solely on finance into other enterprise planning domains such as workforce, sales, operations and marketing.”

Demand planning is a critical cross-functional process, which helps to align and forecast customer demand for a product or business. It aids to optimize inventory management, avoid supply chain disruptions, and minimize supply chain inefficiencies. It also helps to increase overall customer service level, customer satisfaction, efficiency, and profitability. Demand planning compliments sales and operation strategy by providing direction and forward-looking guidance. Demand planning, including demand sensing, should be a continuous process to support effective decision making at all levels.

As investors focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, they are increasingly asking companies to provide information about their performance in these areas. ESG reporting is becoming an expectation of investors and will soon be an SEC regulatory requirement. Many companies have started tracking their ESG performance, but it can be a challenge to do so effectively. In this blog post, we will discuss the data aspect of ESG reporting, along with a solution!