COMPANIES TOLD TO THINK OUT OF THE BOX

       It is great time for the business community to apply corporate sustainability in their business plans at this time of economic downturn, Donald Fisher, executive director and CEO of Mid-South Quality/Productivity Centre, based in Memphis, Tennessee, said yesterday.
       "Corporate sustainability will give them strategic direction to win back the business. It helps you focus the way you do business and improve your competitiveness globally," he said.
       By implementing a corporate sustainability plan, businesses need to think out of the box and be creative. The plan also allows enterprises to develop their strategic direction and plan for the organisation to cope with the new world economy.
       Corporate sustainability for an organisation is the practice of measuring, disclosing and being accountable to internal and external shareholders for organisational performance to wards the goal of sustainable development.
       Sustainability reporting is a broad term considered synonymous with others used to describe reporting on economic, environmental and social impacts. A corporate sustainability report should provide a balanced and reasonable representation of the organisation's sustainability performance-including both positive and negative contributions and results.
       Corporate sustainability reporting can be used by any organisation for benchmarking and assessing its sustainability performance against notable global organisations with respect to laws, norms, codes, performance standards and voluntary initiatives.
       Fisher said corporate sustain-ability is gathering a lot of interest globally. Many businesses around the world have already merged their corporate sustainability plan into their annual report.
       Corporate sustainability has to be a aligned with the way they do business, he said.
       "Corporate sustainability is the trend of the future. It is not only helping companies to increase sales and reduce operating costs, but also to enhance their brand reputation and market value. It helps increase profit margins by operating better," ha said.
       To cope with the trend of global station, entrepreneurs need to apply a corporate sustainability plan by addressing the "triple bottom line," which includes paying close attention to their economic (financial factors), environmental (risk/requirement factors) and social (human factors) issues.
       SMEs would clearly benefit by developing corporate sustainability plans for their organisations. They will strategically benefit when they self-assess their organisation internally and identify critical economic, environmental and social issues.
       Their key bottom-line economic, environmental and social benefits and impacts will be realised when they use their findings to identify and develop short-and longer term strategic plans and directions for their enterprise that will provide both the data and information bedded to map out a strategic vision and plan that addresses both short-and longer-term directions that will ensure ongoing corporate sustain-ability withing their operations.
       "The corporate sustain-ability/social responbitity global initiative is much more than a fad. Corporate sustainability is of utmost importance for the survival of organisations and future generations worldwide.
       "Organisations' product/service offerings and vendor networks are globally interconnected and are being recognised by such groups as the World Economic Forum, which holds an annual global conference in Davos, Switzerland and recognises the Global Most Sustainable Corporations in the world," he added.