Redefining Business Relationships

In our sustainability consulting, we have traditionally worked with businesses seeking to redefine their business to meet the expectations of their customers and the market. These companies are embracing the eco awareness of their customers and making changes to internal and external processes to meet their stakeholder concerns. At Taiga Company, our professional consulting often poses the questions to clients: which type of customer would you ideally want and which type of customer are you actually attracting?

In previous posts, we have defined the importance in creating stakeholder engagement as a first of many steps in building trust and confidence with customers. In business sustainability strategies, stakeholder involvement is critical to success. The ability to meet consumer expectations can become a key differentiator from the competition. But in doing so, are businesses giving too much power to the customer? What if you could define the perfect customer to align with your business sustainability strategies; what would that relationship look like?

Consumer relationships are becoming increasingly important in the alignment of business sustainability expectations with stakeholders. According to Environmental Leader, all stakeholders want is to know that their concerns have been heard and, ideally, embraced in business actions.

From a supply chain perspective, leading companies often work with customers and suppliers from a holistic perspective to:

•    Discover & exploit sustainable business opportunities across organizations.
•    Develop a trusting working relationship.
•    Create and understanding of one another’s drivers, needs and issues.
•    Partner, innovate, collaborate, share best practices and business sustainability strategies.
•    Align metrics, share performance based rewards, audit and measure sustainable performance.
•    Integrate sustainability concepts into work processes and across resources.
•    Reduce costs, risks, and business impacts.

Maintaining an ongoing dialog with the customer and other key stakeholders is seen as a best practice. At Taiga Company we would like to build upon this concept with the practice of attracting and aligning with stakeholders that share aligned sustainability values. In our own sustainability consulting practice, we have developed a business model that rewards customers actively engaged in business and personal sustainability.