What Do You Know About Your Business That Your Competitors Don’t?
How understanding your impacts, dependencies and value chain can turn sustainability information into competitive advantage.
Two businesses may operate in the same market, purchase from similar suppliers, serve comparable customers and face similar economic conditions.
Yet one consistently identifies opportunities earlier, responds more effectively to disruption and makes better investment decisions.
What makes the difference?
Sometimes, it is not access to capital, technology or market information.
It is how well the business understands itself and the world in which it operates.
The information you may be overlooking
Most businesses already collect considerable information.
They monitor sales, costs, profitability, customer satisfaction, productivity and cash flow. These measures are essential, but they do not always reveal the full picture.
Consider what might remain outside traditional management reporting:
- How dependent is the business on particular suppliers, resources or infrastructure?
- What changes are taking place among its customers and their expectations?
- Where could environmental or social impacts affect future operating costs or market access?
- Which relationships are particularly important to business continuity?
- Where might changes across the value chain create new commercial opportunities?
These are not simply sustainability questions.
They are business questions with direct implications for competitiveness, resilience and long-term value creation.
A practical example: Two businesses, one supply chain
Imagine two food manufacturers sourcing agricultural products from the same region.
Both monitor prices, delivery performance and product quality.
The first business focuses primarily on historical supplier performance and purchasing costs.
The second looks further.
It examines the availability of water, changing agricultural conditions, the economic resilience of farming communities and the longer-term security of its supply.
Through discussions with suppliers and other stakeholders, it identifies the possibility that water scarcity could affect agricultural output.
Rather than simply waiting for prices or delivery performance to deteriorate, it explores alternative sourcing, supplier partnerships, water efficiency initiatives and product innovation.
These actions require investment and careful evaluation. They do not guarantee a better outcome.
But the second business has identified options that the first may not even be considering.
It has converted sustainability information into strategic intelligence.
The advantage is not that it can predict the future. It is that it is better prepared to make decisions about it.
Your value chain may hold the answers
A business does not operate in isolation.
Its ability to deliver value depends on relationships and activities that extend beyond its own premises.
Suppliers provide materials and services. Logistics partners connect businesses to markets. Employees contribute skills and expertise. Customers generate revenue. Communities and natural resources support operations in ways that may not be immediately visible.
Understanding these relationships creates opportunities to identify both vulnerabilities and sources of value.
For example:
| What a business discovers | Potential management response |
| A critical supplier faces increasing resource constraints | Diversify sourcing or support supplier resilience |
| Customers are placing greater importance on product traceability | Strengthen transparency and product information |
| Production processes generate valuable recoverable materials | Investigate circular business opportunities |
| Logistics partners face changing customer or regulatory requirements | Review delivery models and supplier capabilities |
| Employees possess underused skills | Invest in development and operational innovation |
The purpose is not to collect information about everything.
It is to identify what matters most and translate that knowledge into practical management action.
From materiality to better decisions
Materiality assessments provide a structured way to identify and prioritise significant sustainability matters.
Under the GRI Standards, material topics are determined by assessing an organisation’s most significant impacts on the economy, environment and people, including human rights.
IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards consider sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect an organisation’s financial prospects.
The European Sustainability Reporting Standards bring impact materiality and financial materiality together through double materiality.
These approaches have different reporting objectives, but each contributes important information to a fuller understanding of the organisation.
The opportunity for management is to connect these perspectives rather than consider them separately.
Going further with enhanced double materiality
At FBRH Consultants, our GRI Certified training introduces an enhanced double materiality approach designed to help participants move beyond reporting towards better business decisions.
The approach connects three important perspectives:
- Significant impacts
How does the business affect people, the environment and the economy across its activities and business relationships?
- Financial risks and opportunities
How could sustainability-related developments, dependencies and relationships influence costs, revenues, cash flows, access to finance or future business opportunities?
- Value chain priorities and management action
Where do the most important impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities arise, and what practical decisions should follow?
By bringing these perspectives together, businesses can develop a more useful picture of their operating environment.
The resulting enhanced materiality analysis helps management identify where attention, resources and action may deliver the greatest value.
This may mean reducing a significant environmental impact, strengthening a supplier relationship, developing a new product, improving resource efficiency or addressing an emerging vulnerability.
It also helps explain why a particular issue is important, how it was identified and what the organisation intends to do about it.
Materiality becomes a tool for setting priorities, not simply a matrix included in a sustainability report.
Better decisions create value beyond the business
There is another important dimension.
Businesses that understand their significant impacts can make decisions that create value for more than shareholders alone.
Reducing waste may lower operating costs while reducing environmental harm.
Improving supplier practices may strengthen business continuity while supporting working conditions.
Investing in resource efficiency may improve profitability while helping conserve natural resources.
Not every sustainability improvement will produce an immediate financial return, and significant negative impacts still need to be addressed even when the commercial benefit is less obvious.
Nevertheless, understanding the connections between business performance and wider impacts makes it possible to identify opportunities for shared value.
This is where sustainability, resilience and responsible management reinforce one another.
Five questions every management team should ask
A useful starting point is to bring five questions to the next management meeting:
- What do we depend on that we do not directly control?
- What important changes are taking place across our value chain?
- Which of our impacts could influence our future performance, relationships or operating environment?
- Where could addressing a sustainability issue create new value for the business and its stakeholders?
- What should we do differently as a result of what we have learned?
The fifth question is particularly important.
Information becomes valuable when it influences decisions.
Your next competitive advantage may already be there
Competitive advantage does not always begin with a new technology, product or market.
Sometimes, it begins with seeing an existing business relationship, dependency or opportunity more clearly.
Sustainability reporting can provide a disciplined process for developing that understanding.
But the greatest value is realised when the information informs strategy, investment, procurement, operations and risk management.
A first-class sustainability report should therefore do more than present performance indicators.
It should help stakeholders understand what matters to the organisation, why it matters and how that understanding influences its decisions.
Your competitors may have access to much of the same information. The difference could be what you discover, and what you decide to do about it.
Turn sustainability information into better business decisions
FBRH Consultants’ GRI Certified training helps participants understand material impacts, apply enhanced double materiality, examine value chain risks and opportunities, and develop a practical step-by-step Plan of Action for preparing a first-class GRI sustainability report.
Discover our GRI Standards Professional Certification Pathway.
Simon Pitsillides
Simon Pitsillides is a board adviser specialising in sustainability governance, corporate reporting, strategy and stakeholder value creation. He supports boards and senior executives in strengthening governance, enhancing decision-making and integrating sustainability into long-term business strategy.
Simon is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (FCIM), a Fellow of the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professionals (FISEP), a Chartered Marketer, and holds an MBA in Marketing. He is also a GRI and ISEP Certified Trainer.
As Founder of FBRH Consultants and publisher of SustainCase, Simon combines strategic, commercial and governance expertise with extensive international experience in sustainability reporting, assurance readiness and value creation. He has worked with multinational organisations, financial institutions and public sector bodies across Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
Simon is recognised for helping boards move beyond compliance by using decision-useful sustainability information to strengthen strategy, manage risk, build stakeholder confidence and create long-term value for business, stakeholders and the planet.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-pitsillides
References
- Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) (2021) GRI 3: Material Topics 2021. Amsterdam: Global Reporting Initiative. Available at: https://www.globalreporting.org/publications/documents/english/gri-3-material-topics-2021/(Accessed: 26 October 2026).
- IFRS Foundation (2023) IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information. London: IFRS Foundation. Available at: https://www.ifrs.org/issued-standards/ifrs-sustainability-standards-navigator/ifrs-s1-general-requirements/(Accessed: 26 October 2026
- European Commission (2023) Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772: European Sustainability Reporting Standards. Available at: https://knowledgehub.efrag.org/eng/interactive/esrs-set-1/esrs-1-general-requirements/2023-07-31-da/38(Accessed: 26 October 2026).
- European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) (2024) EFRAG IG 1: Materiality Assessment Implementation Guidance. Brussels: EFRAG. Available at: https://www.efrag.org/sites/default/files/sites/webpublishing/SiteAssets/EFRAG%20IG%201%20Materiality%20Assessment%20May%202024.pdf(Accessed: 26 October 2026).