Building a modern data infrastructure

“Data is at the heart of carbon reporting. You need to be able to access it quickly and trust it completely to unlock strategic decisions.”

Parth Mehta, Director of Consulting, Mitie

In a recent survey, 52% of our respondents* said they expect legislation to become stricter in the next three years.

This trend, alongside increasingly stringent auditing requirements, means there’s a greater need for data that is both granular and timely, revealing which buildings or processes contribute to your emissions. And that data must be consistent, reliable and readily available to everyone who needs it. This is key to improving reporting accuracy and accelerating decision-making.

But the reality is often a little different. For many, working with data means juggling mountains of spreadsheets, trying to avoid, identify or resolve manual errors and, ultimately, having no single version of the truth.

*Source: Mitie-commissioned survey of 500 senior managers in large UK organisations who are involved in decision making or knowledgeable of ESG reporting.

If this sounds familiar, it’s time to modernise your data processes. But first, you must understand what “great” looks like.

The ideal here is to have a centralised repository of data that feeds all reporting and decarbonisation activities.

This will drive efficiency and trust throughout your reporting and remove the errors caused by data siloes and multi-spreadsheet management.

But these aren’t the only benefits of modernising your data infrastructure…

By centralising your data, you will enable the automated processes that accelerate reporting and decision-making. And, in the same breath, future-proof your organisation with a foundation that enables you to adapt quickly and easily to any upcoming requirements.

Ultimately, having data that is cleansed, stored in one place and easily accessible to those who need it, gives you the ability to understand exactly where you stand in your reduction efforts. And it allows you to provide more comprehensive analysis in a simple, fast and accurate way. All of this leads to smarter transformation of your built environment.

Data management checklist

1

Conduct a health check of your current data activities and look for opportunities to unite data and modernise infrastructure and activities

2

If you don’t have the capabilities in-house, consider looking for a data and decarbonisation partner that can help you centralise that data and apply the tools and strategies needed to explore it

3

Think about the initiatives you want that data to fuel. For example, what processes would you like to automate? What insights do you require, and how often?