Sustainability – Will your Company be open for business in 2030? Why companies must adapt now or disappear

London / Frankfurt, September 12, 2012 – Management and technology consultancy BearingPoint (www.bearingpoint.com) today released its landmark sustainability study - “Will your company pass the sustainability stress tests?”

Challenging conventional thinking, this work from the BearingPoint Institute draws 6 key lessons on how to embed sustainability into business planning and use it to drive real business growth in the long term. Based on interviews with leaders of 33 international organisations across the economy’s major sectors, the report shows that sustainability is no longer a bolt-on option, but a core element of doing business.

How to succeed in an uncertain future

Successfully navigating the new normal, where volatility and instability are enduring, long-term characteristics of the economy requires an immediate shift in business planning. For this reason BearingPoint has developed 11 practical ‘stress tests’ for three different industries FMCG, Financial Services and B2B Industry. The “Sustainability Stress Tests” assess an organisation’s ability to realistically respond to tomorrow’s economic, social and ecological conditions, and each company that participated in the study was questioned on their response to these stress tests, designed to assess how well their businesses will adapt to the world in 2030.

The findings reveal a fundamental shift in CEOs thinking, where they see sustainability as a major facet of their commercial differentiation and even more startling, essential for their medium-term survival. A sharp contrast to recent years where sustainability was a purely defensive play to address greater regulation or greenwash their public image.

Xavier Houot, Partner at BearingPoint, focusing on Sustainability Services, and author of the paper: 
“For most companies, viewing their business environment in 2030 has always been a highly optional task, and as a result business planning has remained focused on addressing short to medium term constraints and opportunities. These new tests provide business leaders with a powerful tool to view their mid to longer term business environment, and to answer the question ‘is my business model compatible with the world of 2030?’. From there they can begin to set milestones for triggering a transformation in their business which can be the difference between long term success or failure.”

“Just like banking stress tests, Sustainability Stress Tests assess the resilience and durability of a Company's economic activity for the years to come. Our paper demonstrates practical examples from a delivery company planning for a world with massive conventional energy shortages and tough emission regulations, to a global food company already planning its sustainability strategy around three core factors – nutrition, water and rural development.”

These tests underline tomorrow’s risks and opportunities for the organisations concerned, and are a reminder that long-term stability and success cannot be considered without factoring sustainability considerations into the current strategies and transformations of an organisation.

For more information and to order a copy of the BearingPoint Institute Report please visit: www.bearingpointinstitute.com 
The report is also available as an iPad app: http://itunes.apple.com/app/bearing-point-institute/id557267831

About BearingPoint

BearingPoint delivers business consulting with management and technology capabilities. As an independent firm with European roots and global reach BearingPoint serves leading companies and public sector organisations world-wide to align and optimise processes, IT and operating models with business strategy. Driven by a strong entrepreneurial mindset and desire to create long-term partnerships, BearingPoint’s consultants are committed to delivering excellence and value to their clients. The firm’s approach to working with clients is highly collaborative and designed to improve business performance, from strategy through to execution. BearingPoint currently employs 3,400 people in 15 countries.

For more information, please visit: www.bearingpoint.com