00:00 We've invited Jennifer Bobbin, the founder of Yardstick, an effective tool to measure
00:05 impact to help you know more about your business and to find out what works and what doesn't
00:12 by using very simple analytical tools.
00:15 So ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to give a warm, warm round of applause to Ms.
00:19 Bobbin who's traveled all the way from the UK to be with us here this evening.
00:26 Hi, I've just got two more people joining me.
00:41 We're just bringing a couple of chairs up, so if you just bear with me a second.
00:50 Actually, I'll start and then they can bring in, yeah.
00:53 All right, so we're going to look at why measuring impacts.
00:58 Monitoring is the next step in sustainability.
01:00 It will take you to the next level.
01:02 It's about being transparent and being honest with your customers.
01:07 I'm going to start with a little bit of a story of my hotel here.
01:10 I have a sign in my room that says, "Bed sheets in hotels, if washed on a daily basis, use
01:18 up millions of gallons of water."
01:21 I'm then asked to put the sign on my bed if I don't want my sheets changed on a daily
01:26 basis.
01:27 I didn't find this sign until two days into my stay.
01:30 I do have a "No, my sheets weren't changed" because the room steward complained to me
01:34 for being too tidy and making my bed, so he had nothing to do.
01:38 But I do believe even though I was hanging my towels up every day, they were still changing
01:43 them on a daily basis.
01:45 Now if I had had a sign next to my bed that had actually told me how many liters per bed
01:51 night that hotel had saved last year from guests not changing their bed or by reusing
01:57 their towels, it would actually give me more confidence that the hotel was actually being
02:01 honest with me and they were actually honestly trying to save water rather than just putting
02:06 a bland statement out there.
02:09 We've got the UN Sustainable Goals.
02:17 This here, basically the UN Sustainable Goals, this next step on from the Millennium Development
02:23 Goals, they say they're based on accountability, monitoring and evaluation.
02:30 To reach these goals, every business, regardless of size, has to monitor their impacts.
02:36 Without actually monitoring, these goals won't be reached.
02:40 I think it's everybody's responsibility to monitor their impact.
02:49 What to measure?
02:51 A lot of businesses I've worked with, they're scared.
02:55 Data scares them.
02:56 Excel sheets scare them.
02:59 What I've said to everybody is forget impacts, forget what you've been told about indicators,
03:04 and actually just monitor what is special to you or what is easy.
03:10 Just pick a topic that is easy to monitor and start small on that.
03:15 Most people start on either operations or labor.
03:19 Operations is easy.
03:20 You get either your fuel meters, your electricity meter, or you've got your bills.
03:26 It's just a case of every month or week, day, wherever you want to do it, collecting that
03:31 data.
03:32 Labor is another easy one.
03:34 A lot of the data goes to the accountant, so you'll have that data already.
03:40 One thing you must do is you must make sure that your monitoring isn't extra.
03:43 It has to be into your daily working life.
03:46 Try to reuse data that's already out there.
03:48 You will find actually most of the data that you need to monitor sustainability is actually
03:53 already in the daily working.
04:00 With monitoring, data does appear everywhere.
04:03 Certifications, a lot of businesses want certifications.
04:06 It's the customer-facing side of sustainability.
04:11 Certification schemes are quite opaque, so it is quite difficult to find out what each
04:15 one requires.
04:16 From the ones that I've been able to research, there is always a level of data that is required.
04:21 Whether they want to know whether you're reducing your fuel consumption, water consumption,
04:26 they do usually ask you to do some form of regular monitoring.
04:30 If you decide to go down a reporting route, that obviously does have data.
04:36 It allows you to report on your data, so your data is there for publicly seen.
04:44 Then we go to the tools that are out there in the market to help you monitor.
04:49 Unfortunately, this area of the market is quite small.
04:54 A lot of the tools out there are really, really expensive and really, really complex.
05:00 There are a few free tools out there.
05:04 We've got a measurable, which is small.
05:07 We've got a freemium, and also Yardstick has a freemium.
05:11 Also Excel.
05:13 I think 45% of businesses still use Excel to monitor, which is found out in an Ernest
05:21 and Young survey a few years ago.
05:30 Tiger Mountain.
05:31 I've been working with Tiger Mountain since 2009, monitoring.
05:37 These are a few of the results, but I'm actually going to invite Ishwal now to give you a brief
05:43 introduction on how they introduce monitoring at the lodge.
05:46 Ishwal is the accountant.
05:48 Thank you, Jennifer.
05:52 Namaste.
05:53 I'm Ishwal Basnit from Tiger Mountain Private Limited in Pokhara, the most beautiful city
06:00 in Nepal.
06:01 Well, talking about the measurement, we are so excited about the concept of measuring
06:09 the impacts.
06:13 When we started the measurement, it was quite new to Nepal.
06:20 What we found is you don't need to be an IT expert for that.
06:25 You just need to have basic knowledge of the computer.
06:33 That's all.
06:34 It won't take ample time, valuable time, just about one and a half hour in a month.
06:47 You don't need to apply a higher person for it, separate person, extra person for it.
06:58 A responsible person will do it.
07:03 Then we started with monitoring our fuel consumption.
07:08 It was easier to compare with our fuel bills.
07:18 Next we started labor monitoring, as we could use that data provided to our accounts.
07:25 The next was monitoring charity, which involved more employees.
07:29 It was everyone's responsibility to monitor their own reactions.
07:37 Now we're just beginning to introduce supply chain in our monitoring.
07:44 I think the measuring is the key point, because you need to know and you need to quantify
07:49 your contribution and the impacts.
07:52 Thank you.
07:53 The next slide is Villageways.
08:01 I've asked Manisha to come and explain the benefits of monitoring impacts.
08:07 Good evening, everyone.
08:12 I think in the last two years when I had presented, I had given a small presentation about the
08:19 data collection work that we had started.
08:23 And we have observed that when we introduce any livelihood generation activity in a village
08:30 or a community, with the flow of income into the village, there are a couple of challenges
08:35 which you can see from time to time.
08:37 And what helps the most is when there is a very transparent system of income distribution
08:44 and recording.
08:45 And formally, we started documenting our evidences and our data from 2013.
08:53 But it was not reaching to any destination until and unless it was actually analyzed.
09:00 And I think once we introduced JustReport and they helped us with the analysis, they
09:04 gave us directions on how this could be collected in a simple system which could be managed
09:10 by the local community, so that it does not become a very difficult affair to collect
09:14 the data each year.
09:16 And we have seen that this has not only helped us as an organization, but it has also helped
09:22 the communities in a great deal because a lot of their internal conflicts which they
09:27 expected when the income dispersals from their own side to the other members of the team
09:31 was started, this helped them to remove these conflicts because all the data analysis that
09:38 we do are actually collected by the community at their level.
09:41 And it is when it is analyzed, the data is shared by the community.
09:45 For us, it's very easy to trace how the incomes are reaching each household level.
09:50 And so it's very easy for us to manage the equal distribution of the income.
09:56 And for any like minded organization or anyone else who would like to replicate, of course,
10:01 a data analysis does help to showcase what we've been doing.
10:05 So I think these are just few, there are many more benefits which I can explain, but because
10:09 of the limited time, I'm just being focused on these.
10:12 Thank you.
10:13 Thank you very much.
10:20 [Applause]
