Planning for sustainability
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Planning is an important step in achieving smooth changes in business. Planning helps to achieve business goals consistently and purposefully. Comparison of planned and actually achieved business results enables to assess how much was achieved and what reasons prevented more from being achieved.
Companies can apply various methods and tools to plan and operationalize the transition to a more sustainable business. First step – impact evaluation on the environment. Impact evaluation of the business activities usually includes water risk assessment, carbon – footprint assessment, input – output analysis, life – cycle assessment. Next step – sustainable solutions planning for the main business management systems. Depending on the nature of the activity, four main management systems can be distinguished, in which managers can plan and successfully implement sustainable innovative solutions: environmental management, occupational health and safety management, sustainable supply chain management and energy management.
In sustainable future oriented business plans, it is also important not to forget circularity tools and eco – design principles, organizing material and energy flow. Consistent planning and development of the concept of sustainable tourism helps to realize various goals in tourism development.
Sustainable technology
Sustainable technology is an integral part of the circular economy. It is primarily focused on saving resources used in the production process. Sustainable technology effectively integrates into the production process, helping to minimize the negative impact of production on the environment.
If you don’t know where to start when choosing sustainable technologies suitable for your business, follow these three tips below:
- Identify critical pollution points in production and think about how to make them more environmentally friendly by implementing sustainable technologies. Evaluate the opportunities and risks of implementing sustainable technology in your business.
- Give your employees the opportunity to make suggestions on how to change production technologies, making them more sustainable. The employees are well-versed in their field of activity, are interested in innovations in their field and often have great ideas about what sustainable technologies can be implemented.
- Listen to your customers. You certainly have proactive customers who willingly share ideas, experiences and ideas, who are benevolent, creative and happy to talk about what improvements you could apply in your business operations.
Sustainable design
Sustainable design is an umbrella term that combines all operational sustainability solutions into a sustainable value proposition. Design solutions is a living and evolving toolkit that creates holistic solutions to improve the customer experience at the start, use and end of a company’s service. Through design solutions, the aim is to improve and discover new business models and processes that lead to a better user experience at every point of contact with the brand.
Service design is a methodology that allows you to consciously create the processes of purchasing and using a service or product.
For comparison, if graphic design solves the problems of the visual identity of brands, and with the help of product design the goods themselves are created, then service design aims to improve business processes that determine user emotions and experiences.
In other words, the discipline of service design seeks to improve and discover new business models and processes that lead to better user experience at every point of contact with the brand.
In the context of service design, design thinking becomes a means of communication with interest groups, the end user. Using his methods, the position and experience of the user is deepened, and the factors that cause them are explained. A unique element of the method is the involvement of customers in the creative and managerial processes of the company’s service provision.