Wish you could automate your sustainability management? Here’s how.

As we all know, one of the most common problems in understanding your company’s sustainability impact and how to change for the better is manual data entry. Having many file types, data owners, and data sources definitely doesn’t make the task any easier. It is time-consuming and leaves room for error, which opens the door to both low-quality data and infrequent reporting.

There are already several organizational challenges that you may face as a sustainability manager, so wouldn’t it be great if there was some way you could just upload all of your files into one place and have the data automatically extracted and entered into a system? And then to be able to collect and manage all your data, and have them visualized as charts and graphs, all on the same system? Well, you’re in luck - that’s exactly what we can do for you!

Here’s a quick run-through of how we can help remedy your data entry nightmares with a little automation magic at SustainLab.

Imagine this: you are a sustainability manager at a mid-sized manufacturing company, and you need to track your electricity usage across several different factories. This means several energy invoices coming in from each of the different factories each month. Instead of having to go through each invoice and then tediously key the numbers into a spreadsheet, why not let AI do the work for you?

More specifically, why not let SustainLab’s smart software do the work for you? Here’s how it would go:

Step 1: Upload your data

Firstly, upload your invoices in any file type to our system - yes, you read that right, any file type! Be it pdf, scanned images, or spreadsheets, our system is able to automatically extract the data you want from your uploaded invoices using our AI magic and move the extracted text onto our platform - all in just a few clicks!

Upload your invoice, or any other data file, and select which data you would like the system to extract.

Step 2: Review, refine, and map your data to KPIs

After the data is extracted from your invoice, it goes into a spreadsheet format in the system. With the extracted data on our system, you may review and refine your data, edit the columns and rows, and even add calculations - all while keeping the original files intact, particularly for transparency or traceability purposes.

An example of a calculation you could add: to better understand your greenhouse gas emissions using data from your factory electricity invoices, simply add a calculation which will transform your energy consumption into greenhouse gas emissions, using our emission factor database.

In this stage of the process you can also map particular data points to your key performance indicators (KPIs) - that is, to select the particular data you want to continuously measure and track on the platform.

Once your data is extracted from your uploaded invoices, the extracted data is presented in a spreadsheet format on the platform. Here, our software is able to provide you with suggested changes and refinements.

An example of a calculation you could add: to better understand your greenhouse gas emissions using data from your factory electricity invoices, simply add a calculation which will transform your energy consumption into greenhouse gas emissions, using our emission factor database.

In this stage of the process you can also map particular data points to your key performance indicators (KPIs) – that is, to select the particular data you want to continuously measure and track on the platform.

Step 3: Connect your data

Hooray! Your data is now connected to our system and to your defined KPIs. Now, when you upload new, similar invoices, your data gets automatically updated into the system, and streamlined into reports, data visualizations and dashboards.

Your uploaded invoices are automatically updated and streamlined into reports, data visualizations, and dashboards

Voila!

And that is how SustainLab’s data automation magic can take you from that long and tiring process of manually-handled yearly reports, to effortlessly producing frequent reports based on continual data uploads and instant data insights. And trust us, the frequent measuring and tracking and accompanying reports will help keep you and the rest of your organization on track with your overarching sustainability agenda.

Surely we’ve convinced you now that data automation is the key to making your data collection and management a lot more convenient, not to mention, actionable. Data automation =frequent tracking = accurate, data-driven insights = action!

Want to learn more about how our platform can help you understand your sustainability impact a lot better? Contact us today to find out how our platform can help you accelerate your sustainability journey or better still - book a free demo! Either way - let us help you get onboard the data automation train, for more frequent data insights, actionable change, a better business, and a better planet.

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