ESG and Sustainability to remain top priority areas for businesses in 2023: Kaushik Mitra, Senior Director, Cloud ERP, Oracle India

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Kaushik Mitra, Senior Director – Cloud ERP at Oracle India,

1. In 2022, we saw that the concept of sustainable supply chains has gained prominence. Now as we move to the next year, do you think it is going to remain a topmost priority area for the businesses or some transitions can be seen?

The last year has witnessed a huge uptake in businesses undertaking initiatives that serve the ESG and the role of sustainability. Especially in the post phase of the pandemic, businesses have started to focus and invest heavily in advanced technologies to adjust their supply chain framework to create environment-friendly operational capabilities and also meet the changing expectations of consumers, employees, and other stakeholders. A similar trend is expected in the coming year as well.

With the increasing expectations of stakeholders and customers in terms of sustainability, business leaders will be keen to make conscious ESG investments and leverage modern technologies into their operational framework to implement sustainable supply chains. According to EY Supply Chain Sustainability 2022 report, eight in 10 supply chain executives are increasing their efforts toward sustainable supply chain operations. They are also looking to reduce risks, increase innovation and generate a stronger return on investment for their sustainable supply chain initiatives. In the coming year, ESG will remain the central focus area for businesses, and we’ll expect inclination towards the adoption of cloud based solutions to keep on growing to support businesses with their sustainability goals.

2. Employee engagement is an important aspect of maintaining digital supply chains and the ESG mandate, how will business leaders deal with that?

To engrain a culture of sustainability in the organization, it is important to work closely with employees and future decision-makers. ESG is become an integral part of their operational framework and it is imperative to engage employees in an effective manner to encapsulate ESG framework within the organization and indulge everyone in the planning process.

Businesses can arrange honest discussion with employees, customers and partners and educate them about the implications of ESG and why sustainability is an important element. Furthermore, ESG coaches, sponsors, and champions can also be recruited to effectively work with employees and align their support with the business objectives of the firm. It is important for companies to emphasize the role of ESG in the corporate culture and within employees to further strengthen their commitments by communicating it internally and externally across the organization and industry. The inclusion of employees and implementing their collated ideas is a great way to shape the culture of the organization in terms of sustainability and to strengthen the overall ESG strategies of the organisation. In a nutshell, a strong commitment towards sustainability and an effective communication is the key to driving the engagement of employees as well as customers and other stakeholders to the organizational ESG objectives.

3. In the coming years, how should businesses actually embrace technology and implement sustainable supply chains? Can you support this with some current examples?

Today, consumers are more knowledgeable and aware than ever before. ESG initiatives mean more than just complying with the mandates but effectively strategizing to build a sustainable business. A recent No Planet B survey indicates that in India 97% of people believe sustainability and social factors are more important than ever, whereas 85% of people would withdraw their relationship with a brand that does not take social initiatives and sustainability seriously. A sustainable supply chain takes any company closer to achieve its sustainability goals and a growing number of businesses are leveraging technology while embarking on this journey. Deep technologies like Cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Analytics etc. are enabling businesses to streamline their logistics operations and bring all the data to one platform, simplifying the processes and enhancing the visibility of the businesses. In 2023 as well, businesses are expected to adopt more such cloud-based solutions.

Oracle Supply Chain Management (SCM) is widely adopted by businesses across sectors to administer and simplify their supply chain and logistics system and which also supports them to respond quickly to changing demand, supply, and market conditions. Safexpress, India’s leading logistics and supply chain organization, is another company that is focused on reducing their carbon footprint through ‘Go Green’ initiatives and driving long-term growth. They have adopted the Oracle WMS platform and are harnessing cloud capabilities to achieve agility and sustainability through increased accuracy and overall supply chain efficiency.

4. While data plays a significant role in how technology supports organizations in optimizing their supply chains, how can data management actually help them in operationalizing sustainability?

With increased importance of data in the core processing, data management becomes vital to derive the right insights from the chunk of data and use insights to drive growth and sustainability of supply chain management in place. Technology-enabled tools and processes like data analysis, data optimization, and data management is effectively delivering crucial information assisting organizations to raise transparency and visibility across their supply chain framework.

By integrating all the operational processes from manufacturing to delivery at a single cloud platform, these solutions can optimize the tracking of the vast processes and streamline the operations for organizations and responsible managers. The Cloud solutions helps organizations to flag off and analyze the roadblocks to achieve sustainability in terms of its supply chain framework, building a strong and ethical framework in the process. In the coming months as well, technology will continue to play a decisive role in the transformation of ESG practices.

5. What kind of solutions Oracle is offering to support businesses on this front?

Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management offers an integrated suite of services for businesses to digitize their supply chain management, plan demand, supply, order fulfillment, and production intelligently across the supply chain. With the help of embedded technologies like AI/ML and Analytics and Cloud-based solutions are assisting organizations to build their supply chain smart and ethically so that can respond with agility to changing market conditions and logistics roadblocks. Under the suite of Oracle Fusion Supply Chain Management, Oracle offers product including Oracle Supply Chain Planning, Oracle Fusion Cloud Inventory Management, Oracle Fusion Cloud Maintenance and Oracle Order Management among many others to support enterprises with their supply chain requirements.

Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is another cloud-based solution, providing a major boost to productivity while managing the resources in a better way and automating manual processes. These solutions and embedded services provide a customized and curated solution to businesses to digitize their processes and provide valuable insights to plan their ESG and sustainability strategies. To recap, moving into the mid- to late 2020s, customers want technologies that will help them manage costs, grow revenue, and they want choice in how that technology is deployed. Needless to say, they will prioritize cloud providers that facilitate, rather than hinder, how they want to run their cloud workloads, and Oracle is committed to provide that support to its customers.

6. How do you think particularly specialised solutions can assist businesses across industries in creating dynamic supply chains and overall meeting their ESG goals?

The specialized solutions are helpful for businesses in addressing the specific needs of the organization with a customized set of technologies embedded solutions. Since, the operational area and business framework of businesses are different, specific and industry-specific solutions effectively manage the challenges. At the recently concluded Oracle CloudWorld, we have introduced an industry-specific SCM solution for the healthcare sector to combat the logistics challenges.

Customized SCM solutions are capable to tackle the existing specific logistics challenges of industries and to streamline and build a sustainable supply chain that is environment-friendly and in line with the ESG goals of the organization. Building dynamic and digitized SCM solutions can help organizations gather all data in one place, reduce costs and avoid manual processes saving resources in the process and driving the ESG framework with better data-driven insights and operational capabilities. Overall, to meet the needs of today’s logistics organizations, companies must embrace a digital-first approach, which includes migrating to the cloud and implementing various automation systems for procurement, warehousing, and transportation, among other things. This will allow them to meet the transparency and security criteria that are necessary for success in this industry.