Measuring Corporate Social Responsibility
Overview
Recently, corporate accountability has been front and centre in the news media, and many companies have been faced with the difficult task of devising new ways to demonstrate not only their commitment to the bottom line, but how they get there.
Clearly, corporate social responsibility remains as relevant as ever.
Business Issue
Even if a company is willing to conduct an audit of its corporate social responsibility, it remains a challenge to know which code to adopt due to an abundance of benchmarks, guidelines, and codes in existence.
A leading Canadian non-profit organization sought to tackle this problem by developing a survey that aided companies in performing internal valuations of their CR practices. This was accomplished by integrating codes, guidelines and benchmarks from recognized sources and providing a unified approach for companies to manage their CR performance. The information collected provided management with a clearer understanding of how their CR practices compared to other companies, as well as with public perceptions.
Transforming the paper-based survey into a web-based application has given companies a viable solution for effectively collecting and comparing historical data.
Unfortunately, the survey was cumbersome, consisting of a vast array of questions with responses that were difficult to compare, analyze and understand. Marketlink was asked to explore ways to unlock the potential of the survey and to help make it easier for companies to conduct social responsibility audits.
Marketlink Approach
Marketlink performed an in-depth analysis of the client's objectives and the survey by using its M5 Knowledge Management Framework. Marketlink concluded that web-enabling the survey could offer advantages that a paper-based solution could not. The client was advised that this presented an excellent opportunity to increase the function of their survey while making it easier than ever to complete.
Marketlink Solution
A proof of concept prototype was quickly developed using Marketlink Foundation Framework components to compress development time and to benchmark the tool. The application was then made available to a select group of companies in order to solicit feedback on a number of aspects including the overall concept, usability, and areas for improvement.
Results
The feedback for the tool has been overwhelmingly positive. Transforming the paper-based survey into a web-based application has given companies a viable solution for effectively collecting and comparing historical data. Incremental improvements have been made to enhance the features of the tool, as an extensive business plan is being developed to transform the prototype into an enterprise solution for the client.