Katarina Stanoevska

Network participation is a crucial factor in order to reap the benefits of a system like OEPI which is based on user-generated content. Therefore, motives for organizations to join the network and contribute content have to be identified in order to develop incentives that can make the network viral. This chapter identifies the organizational and individual motives, develops incentives based on these, and finally presents the basic concept of how network participation can be stimulated.

Business networks initiatives in the sustainability domain, despite all their advantages, face resistance during their implementation. In fact, the success stories are rare. In the case of environmental product compliance in the automotive industry, the approach of exchanging sustainability data using a network-based Information System has shown its potential with the International Material Data System (IMDS). Nevertheless, such Sustainability Business Networks (SBNs) are not used to their full extend and have not reached a high market penetration in any other industries. Therefore this research analyses the reasons for market adoption of SBNs, and extracts the critical success factors in the application area of product compliance. A ranking of the success factors is established leveraging the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Finally recommendations are given for a potential market introduction of a SBN like OEPI.

This chapter identifies the impact that the OEPI system could have in the four use cases described within the book. To establish the base for further improvements, the challenges common to all use cases are summarized. Availability of data, lack of comparability of data, inflexibility, lack of process integration, and high costs are the main challenges occurring in all use cases. Then, potential benefits and risks are described. Furthermore, these results have been evaluated. The results suggest that the OEPI system has the potential to improve the state of the art in exchanging EPIs in the supply chain by providing a many-to-many solution incorporating data from various data sources. Furthermore, standardization effects, increased speed of data collection, and additional benchmarking and analysis capabilities can be provided, that were not available before or only at high costs. On the other hand, reaching a critical mass of participants, data accuracy and data comparability are challenges that might hinder a widespread adoption of the OEPI system or similar solutions.

Measuring and reporting EPIs is the first step towards increasing the operational environmental performance. Following the principle “do good and talk about it”, companies need to communicate what they have done in order to claim the profits for their efforts. Most companies do report their environmental performance in an annual sustainability report; however, the processes are too slow and costly to enable companies to react to current incidents that might for example threaten their reputation. Furthermore, accurate reporting would require data from outside the company’s borders where most of the creation of net value takes place. This chapter describes the state of the art in environmental reporting, extracts the shortcomings and derives the functional requirements necessary for the fulfillment of this use case in OEPI.