Product Spotlight: Goal Tracking

Instantly have a high-level view of your sustainability team’s most important KPIs, visualize your journey towards net zero emissions, and determine the success of your sustainability efforts with WatchWire Goal Tracking. WatchWire’s sustainability module can track client goals/targets with respect to energy, water, carbon, and waste diversion, and measures performance versus the stated goal. Sustainability goals are an essential part of a robust strategy for change and improving organizational commitment towards more efficient energy use, reduced carbon footprints, and waste minimization efforts, among other metrics. Where goals are concerned, particularly the more poignant science-based targets & sustainability goals, corporations can’t change what they can’t measure, and being able to show definitively that a decision can result in lower carbon emissions or reduced energy use is immensely powerful.

From mature sustainability veterans and progressive thought leaders to companies just starting out on their sustainability journey, WatchWire has the tools to help. The integrated energy and sustainability functionality of WatchWire coupled with our automatic ingestion of utility invoices and emissions data will allow you to more accurately track and assess long-term goals. 

How it works 

Module: Sustainability

When you add a new goal you will be presented with a menu to designate the following criteria: 

• Name goal
• Type of Goal: Intensity or Absolute
• KPI & commodities (can select all) 
• Metric (Carbon, usage, etc.)
• Change type (decrease or increase) 
• Baseline & Goal

Example Goal: Reduce usage by 50% by 2030 with a baseline of 2019

Components of goal tracking:

• Graph Visualization: target line, actual performance to date, and the projected performance based on the current progress (current year through target year)
• Full support for all commodities and new metrics
• Integration of goals with multiple properties/nodes. A summary table will designate the metrics of individual facilities and whether you are on or off track for each one. 
• Monthly or yearly basis
• Absolute goal types and Intensity goal types (relative to another metric, such as ft2 or FTE)
• KPI – Our system can define custom KPIs per client (ft2, widgets produced, etc.)

Use Cases

Sustainability Managers and Analysts, Energy Managers and Procurement teams, and persons at the C-suite level will all find the Goal Tracking functionality to be particularly useful when it comes to tracking their company’s emissions or other metrics performance over time and identifying areas for improvement. 

Sustainability managers may use goal tracking to implement changes in corporate strategy to make the work environment and practices more eco-friendly and may also have an easier time communicating these changes to human resources managers, colleagues, vendors, press, and other relevant parties through the clear graphic visualizations goal tracking provides. 

C suite executives can use goal tracking to ensure an organization’s strategies and operations are aligned with its policies and plans, as well as to communicate those long-term goals and plans to colleagues, board members, and stakeholders in a straightforward manner. 

Additionally, sustainability employees may be faced with looming regulatory mandates on GHG emissions reporting, and quasi-mandated investor expectations to report sustainability metrics and provide clearer evidence of progress towards publicly stated goals. Because WatchWire automatically captures and audits comprehensive utility and emissions data, the platform is known for high data accuracy and data coverage. This, combined with the clear visuals and evidence of tracking over time that the goal-tracking module provides will be crucial going forward when companies are asked to provide data-driven proof that they are working towards their goals so that they can eliminate greenwashing accusations. Increased scrutiny on goals, especially when it comes to emissions, along with demands for investor-grade data quality and auditable data will soon be the new norm. 

Importance

When it comes to sustainability and net zero goals, corporations can’t change what they can’t measure, and where many companies fall short is in collecting data. A failure to meet and maintain appropriate sustainability goals may be due to greenwashing, but in most cases, it may be attributed to the fact that many companies lack access to quality data to make the right sourcing and sustainability decisions. AI, cloud-based tools are equipping sustainability decision-makers with more accurate and efficient data tracking. Data often drives action, particularly when it comes to sustainability efforts. Being able to show definitively that a decision can result in lower carbon emissions or reduced energy use is immensely powerful.

This feature is important for clients that value clear visualization and rolled-up summaries of their progress on sustainability goals and metrics. Customized goal-tracking data based on real-time, audited utility and emissions data points streamlines sustainability and energy operationalization efficiency within your organization.

The Sustainability Module: 

Goal Tracking is only a small piece of the overall functionality available to our users within the Sustainability section of WatchWire. WatchWire’s Sustainability Module helps streamline, automate, and standardize your sustainability reporting process. The platform stores and analyzes all energy, water, waste, and emissions data, providing a single source of truth for your organization. With multiple integrations to LEED Arc, GRESB, and more, standardizing your sustainability reporting process is made easy.

More Sustainability Module Features: 

• Building Performance Benchmarking
• Integration with Energy Star Portfolio Manager’s API
• GRESB Premier Data Provider
• Carbon Accounting
• LEED Arc Integration 
• Renewable Energy Credit Tracking

About WatchWire

Check out our comprehensive guide to understanding sustainability goal tracking here:

WatchWire is a market-leading sustainability and energy data management platform that uses cloud-based software to collect, automize, and analyze utility, energy, and sustainability data metrics. WatchWire streamlines, automates, and standardizes your sustainability reporting process by integrating directly and/or providing reporting exports to ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, LEED Arc, GRESB, CDP, SASB, GRI, and more. The platform provides customizable dashboards, which allow asset managers, sustainability managers, engineers, and more to monitor individual key performance indicators (KPIs) and create custom views for specific use cases. WatchWire provides:

• Automatic collection of energy, utility, sustainability, and emissions data through real-time metering. The data is then fully audited and organized in one place
• GHG emissions tracking
• Goal tracking (e.g., Net Zero, SBTi, waste diversion)
• Carbon offset view of power purchases from the grid vs. on-site renewables generated vs. off-site RECs.
• Opportunities to implement projects (track EEMs) and monitor distributed energy resource production (e.g. on-site solar)

To discover more about WatchWire and its capabilities, you can visit our website, blog, or resource library, request a demo, or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter to keep up-to-date on the latest energy and sustainability insights, news, and resources.