Depending on who you talk to, two very different trends tug the sleeve of the humble sustainability report.

One is an ever-greater focus on communications and the need to engage the reader, and pulls reporters towards digital, multimedia, social media, real time, customisable reporting, enriched with storytelling, personal testimony, high design ambitions and big budgets.   Three or four years ago, this was being called ‘new model reporting’, by the reporting industry at least.  It was the future - and the implication was clear: anybody still clinging to their boring old pdf was a like a fat dad dancing at a school disco.

The other trend is very different.  It’s all about data and augurs a world in which reporting is increasingly automated and commodified.  A burgeoning army of tools and software are being used to capture data aligned with the needs of frameworks from CDP to GRI to DJSI that spit out reports that either consist purely of data points, or drop data into slots in the same text templates year in year out.   Readers, if there are any, are assumed to have the professional understanding and motivation to wade in for the information they need.  GRI now certify 13 such offerings.  A KPMG study in 2012 identified 17.   There are doubtless many more.

This second trend seems to be in the ascendant at the moment.  Comparable reporting frameworks and systematic means of populating them with credible data have much appeal, at least theoretically, to investors, managers and stakeholders.  Reduced costs and robust numbers are a big part of that.

These two futures may not seem mutually exclusive – surely the first one depends to some extent on the second?  Any output from a successful company should reflect positively on the brand; but there has to be data and it ought to be robust.  And of course many of today’s leading (and most expensive) reports attempt both.

But these trends spring from very different perspectives on the value in reporting – the first underpinned by what we know about human behaviour, the role of creativity, and the need to engage; the other by rationality and the sense that measurement, data, facts and a helping of ‘hypertransparency’ will win the day, or at least keep the stakeholders off your back.

As dedicated sustainability budgets get squeezed, lavishing resources on both is increasingly difficult, and it seems it’s easier to put a line through all that expensive design and diverse collateral than to row back from implementation of software and systems.  Particularly so if those systems are now closely integrated with whatever ERP suite is in place.   As a result, any wow factor is being squeezed out by ‘boring but true’ reports that do their job and little more.

It seems this commodified, automated future for reporting is the trend to watch at the moment.   The question is whether we should welcome it, and what to do about what’s being lost.   Put simply, if you are trying to keep the communications impact up in the face of declining budgets, what should you do?

Three rules spring to mind.  First: choose software that enables engagement.   Don’t forget that the point of all this data gathering and manipulation is ultimately to engage people – make them think, feel or do something -  particularly in an era when much sustainability action is still voluntary.   The user appeal of the front end your software puts on your data could make a huge difference to whether it is used.  This is part of a broader imperative, which is to make the reporting process itself drive engagement within the business.   Your software may take away the pain, but does it also take away the learning experience about sustainability?

Second, challenge the idea that creativity has to be expensive.  There is an army of talented designers out there hungry for work. If you can get the creative brief right, they can still do something amazing.  At Anthesis, we’re taking a very flexible approach to the creative element of reporting, bringing in partners, freelancers and in-house people in a way that’s highly scalable.

Lastly, don’t forget the reader.   Seems obvious, but it often happens, and as a result, report readers are still as rare as unicorns. It’s unpopular to point this out, but with no readers, where exactly is the value?   Readers are people, not stakeholders or organisations, and the first responsibility of the author is not to bore them, so good writing still matters.

Ben Tuxworth is Director at Anthesis Group, and has been working on and worrying about sustainability reports for about 20 years. To find out more or to discuss any of the issues in this blog please contact Ben (Ben.Tuxworth@anthesisgroup.com)