In today’s digital business context, the use of IT has a significant impact on the organisation’s environmental footprint, particularly in industries with a high degree of service delivery such as financial services, public sector and the technology industry itself. The consumption of energy by the technology industry makes it a huge offender for emissions while UK & Ireland fail to make their emissions targets. The amount of energy consumed during an ongoing cost of energy crisis also emphasises the need of making IT greener - and leveraging IT to reduce the climate impact of organisations and their eco-systems.

During the last six months we have seen a substantial shift in client focus to address their ESG status, particularly in respect of carbon emissions. Much of this change is driven by demand from larger business customers. More and more, tenders, requests for quotes and renewal of contracts are accompanied by increasingly comprehensive and onerous ESG information demands about standards, business policies, environmental declarations, staff training, supplier preparations and so on. This has created challenges for most organisations and especially SMEs who generally don’t have anyone with responsibility for ESG nor the skills, systems, data or processes in place to meet these requirements.

To succeed with innovation initiatives and transformations, companies often rely on support and partnership with consultancies. This external support normally provides advice, competence and extra capacity to realise the strategic goals, and to do so faster and at lower risk. Choosing the right partner or partner constellations often makes the difference between success and failure and can cost companies millions and millions if not making the right choice. It can also cost decision makers their jobs when strategic goals are not met. So what are the Top 5 mistakes when choosing the right partner?

We at Centigo would like to wish you a Happy Christmas and New Year! And we look forward to valuable and fun co-work in the new year.

Centigo and the British-Swedish Chamber of Commerce co-hosted an event last week about “Post COP26 – What happens next?”. We were very pleased to be joined by HM Ambassador to Sweden Ms Judith Gough as guest speaker as well as sustainability directors, CEOs, specialists, and members of the chamber.

What were our Top 3 take-aways with a British-Swedish business perspective?

COP26, the UN's Climate Conference hosted by the UK in Glasgow, will have a tremendous impact on the road forward for our planet and future. We are very pleased to be joined by HM Ambassador to Sweden Ms Judith Gough CMG, who will share the UK's view on the key take-aways of the COP26 talks and present the most important next steps.

As we cautiously emerge from beneath the shadow of COVID-19 and return to the workplace our thoughts begin to embrace the many uncertainties that confront us. More especially, how best to quickly restart our organisations in an environment where the rules are yet still mostly undefined, but likely to be very different than before and the expectations of our customers may well have changed substantially. What this pandemic has taught us is that we need to configure our organisations differently. They need to be much more agile, differentiated and yet at the same time inherently more robust. And, we need to accelerate our restart process to claim first-mover advantage in a marketplace that will very likely be much smaller, more selective, more aggressive, and very much more competitive than before. All this speaks of an organisational model that has an inherently flatter structure, distributed leadership, wider spans of individual control, devolved authorities and accountabilities, higher levels of visibility, rapid decision-making capabilities and needs to leverage its key differentiators in the eyes of its customers. Intuitively, this means the business can be continually tuned to operate at maximum effectiveness as a closely knit entity without the historical stove-pipe behaviours, tribes and process encumbrances that have existed before. It also requires a closely aligned, properly integrated people, process and technology infrastructure to help support, enable and drive it. Only through achieving this will the customer experience become truly enhanced!

No tariffs and no quotas - that’s what everyone said when the UK and EU announced the new Trade and Cooperation Agreement in December 2020 – and it is true, up to a point. UK originating goods are tariff free when entering the EU. EU originating goods are tariff fee when entering the UK. But determining the origin of goods is not always straightforward, and no proof is required until 1^st January 2022. What unpleasant surprises are waiting to emerge in the New Year?

On 1^st January 2021 the EU introduced a series of controls on imports of animal products from Great Britain. It is no exaggeration to say that this created chaos, and seven months on, UK food exporters are still struggling to recover. The UK, meanwhile, delayed the introduction of similar controls for most animal products arriving from the EU, but this will soon change. On 1^st October 2021 all products of animal origin entering Great Britain from the EU will require certification and registration. On 1^st January 2022 a further requirement for inspection of arrivals will be introduced. Both of these requirements are likely to dent, or even reverse, the anaemic recovery in food imports from the EU to the UK. What should or can be done to prepare for these critical changes?