Ted Dhillon
Co-Founder and CEO of FigBytes
Environmentally and socially conscious companies that have net-zero milestones to meet and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) goals to reach have a lot to contend with these days. This includes an assortment of legislative mandates, frameworks and standards to navigate — many of which don’t harmonize together cohesively. Fortunately, an organization is finally tackling this issue. FigBytes is the leading ESG Insight Platform that manages sustainability data, reporting, strategy, and stakeholder engagement for all your purpose-driven goals. We talked to Ted Dhillon, Co-Founder and CEO of FigBytes, about the FigBytes Insight Platform, the difference between climate accounting and climate action, and why carbon emissions are just the tip of the iceberg.
Can you tell us about FigBytes? What inspired you to start the company?
FigBytes was built to help organizations navigate the path to net zero while addressing the full scope of their ESG and sustainability challenges. During my time working with the United Nations on various humanitarian relief efforts around the world, I saw the impacts of climate change firsthand. That experience sparked my passion for sustainability. I’m also fascinated by how technology can play an instrumental role in solving complex problems like climate change, so I started FigBytes to bring my passion for sustainability together with technology.
Sustainability means more than just climate, though. Many other elements make up the sustainability challenge, for example, water issues, biodiversity loss, social impacts, and governance issues. FigBytes was built to handle all of these elements.
The path to net zero begins with the four pillars: strategy, data, reporting, and engagement.
What are the four pillars of the FigBytes Insight Platform?
Our platform visualizes the path that an organization would take to reach net zero and it encompasses four pillars: strategy, data, reporting, and engagement. It all starts with a strategy that integrates with your corporate ambitions and commitments. Next is connecting and capturing the relevant data from across an organization, calculating the impact (for example, carbon emissions), and then reporting those results against goals and milestones. Finally, the platform incorporates tools for engagement and sharing results with customers, employees, regulators and investors.
What are some of the common problems you’re helping businesses and governments solve on their path to net zero?
I certainly feel the pain that sustainability leaders face today. We’ve all heard ambitious goals of reaching net zero by a certain date. But there are real headwinds organizations and governments face on their way to achieving net zero. Misaligned or unrealistic climate-related goals abound. Data is almost always stored and managed in multiple systems, and collecting it manually can be costly and time-consuming. It can take months just to collect the data to simply know the carbon footprint of your organization. Changing regulations and mandatory reporting standards add to these challenges, not to mention the heightened expectations and stakeholder focus on an organization’s climate impacts and progress. We help sustainability leaders overcome these challenges by providing the tools and insights they need to easily navigate their organization’s path to net zero.
How are you helping sustainability leaders solve these challenges?
Sustainability leaders and the people tasked with making net zero a reality need better information to make decisions on how to shape their sustainability programs. They need reliable data that their stakeholders and investors can trust.
At FigBytes, we help organizations solve these problems first by helping them build an actionable path toward net zero. We make an organization’s emissions reduction strategy actionable with data. We make this data easily accessible through automation wherever it resides, and we ensure reporting is an ongoing but effortless process. And we make it easy for sustainability leaders to show their progress to a growing pool of stakeholders, ensuring full transparency. These solutions help sustainability leaders get more time back in their days to do the important work of reducing their carbon footprints instead of chasing after data. Using machine learning to turn that data into insights helps sustainability leaders model and predict the next best steps toward net zero. That’s how they can create a realistic path to net zero that goes beyond promises to focus on action and results.
With regards to ESG and sustainability, where should organizations focus now?
Organizations need to focus on incorporating systems and processes into their operations to make collecting and gathering their ESG and sustainability data easier. They should also ensure they are considering all aspects of ESG and sustainability, not just carbon accounting, when putting programs and policies in place. Considerations like how they will track, report, and manage their Scope 3 emissions, water footprint, waste management and more. They should also be thinking about how they can use this data to act on their sustainability goals and commitments.
What’s the difference between climate accounting and climate action?
Climate accounting is the standard starting point — knowing where an organization stands. Climate action is the next stage. It involves strategies and tools to achieve improvement on the baseline.
What’s the one thing businesses and governments can start doing now to get to net zero
Businesses and governments can start by gathering their data to assess their current emissions and use that data to set realistic milestones for reaching their net zero goals. You wouldn’t commit to running a marathon next month without knowing your current fitness state and that same principle applies to businesses and governments making net zero goals. Setting milestones supported by data allows organizations to commit to achievable and impactful action plans for reaching net zero.
