Applications | Page 16 of 63 | Locus Technologies

Getting Started With ESG Is Less Daunting Than You Think

One of the most frequent questions we get asked when it comes to ESG is, “Where do I begin?”. For many companies, the process of getting started with a new ESG program is the most difficult step. With nearly 1,700 frequently evolving ESG reporting protocols available, it can be daunting just to determine where to begin. This uncertainty associated with ESG reporting can unfortunately paralyze any progress for several organizations. The good news is that ESG doesn’t have to be an ‘all or nothing’ effort. In fact, getting started is a simple and straightforward process.

Regardless of what ESG reporting program you choose (or eventually choose), there are many common elements that can form the basis of your organization’s ESG program. Although social and governance KPIs have been undergoing rapid evolution recently, environmental KPIs have been comparatively stable. Environmental KPIs tend to be quantitative with established calculation methodologies, whereas the definitions and determinations as to what is important regarding societal and governance factors and how to measure them are still being evaluated globally. Considering this, many companies elect to start their ESG reporting program using monitoring and collecting environmental data.

Additionally, almost all reporting programs include the concept of a baseline, or a time period against which future ESG metrics are compared. Developing the baseline requires a good understanding of your organization’s current ESG performance, which of course requires a good set of data. Universal data that is required for any ESG reporting program includes data on greenhouse gas, water quality and consumption, waste, and energy consumption. The bedrock of an ESG program starts with the collection, management, and reporting of these data. This information can also help to inform further decisions for your ESG program, including which framework is most appropriate for your organization.

As part of this effort, you should make sure you are collecting and calculating your ESG metrics with software that supports the required complexity of environmental data. Often the companies who suggest a turnkey solution to ESG reporting are not only lacking in social and governance data, but are woefully underprepared and unequipped to handle environmental data as well. With over 25 years of experience in creating software for environmental reporting, Locus Technologies is equipped to help organizations collect and report ESG data in a way that others aren’t.

Contact Us to Get Started Today

PFAS Drinking Water Regulations by State

Are stricter PFAS standards coming your way?

PFAS chemicals were first invented in the 1930s and have since been used in several applications from non-stick coatings to waterproof fabrics to firefighting foams. In recent years, PFAS studies and research funding have increased remarkably, but as of right now the EPA has yet to implement regulations on the chemicals. Many states have leapfrogged the EPA by implementing regulations on PFAS use, safe PFAS levels in drinking water, and by suing manufacturers of PFAS chemicals. This creates a complex set of regulatory requirements, depending on where you operate.

Updated August 30, 2021

Locus offers software solutions for PFAS management and tracking. Our EHS software features tools to manage multiple evolving regulatory standards, as well as sample planning, analysis, validation, and regulatory reporting—with mobile and GIS mapping functionality. Simplify tracking and management of PFAS chemicals while improving data quality and quality assurance. With future PFAS regulations being an inevitability, the time is right to adopt a software that can track and manage these and other chemicals.

Contact us to see Locus’ PFAS management solution

Combat Green Skepticism with Accurate ESG Data

Greenwashing, or the presenting of misinformation to create a sustainable image, is common among organizations. While many consumers may not be aware with the term greenwashing, they are aware of how common it is. In fact, consumers are so aware of this trend that they’re overwhelmingly skeptical of all organizations presenting themselves as sustainable. Four out of every five consumers have expressed skepticism of organizations claiming to be sustainable. So, how does your company express your sincere desire to take steps that are sustainable for the environment? With accurate and transparent data.

With 2/3 of consumers seeking out companies that emphasize sustainable practices, the temptation to greenwash is certainly enticing. Sometimes it comes in the form of making irrelevant claims, like saying a product is free of something that is banned (like CFCs). Other times it comes in the form of half-truths, like saying that a product is sustainably sourced, despite the manufacture of the product being unsustainable or harmful to the environment. Any way you look at it, the demand for sustainable products is so high, as is the temptation to greenwash. The truest, and least disputable way to combat greenwashing is by collecting and reporting your data accurately.

Sustainability is now a broad umbrella term that encompasses not only environmental practices, but social and corporate governance as well, better known as ESG. This broadness reflects a change in consumer attitudes from generation to generation, perceiving more than environmental practices as important while holding environmental practices to the microscope. In fact, over 75% of Gen X consumers say that they have to trust a brand before purchasing from them, and over 85% of Millennial and Gen Z consumers say they same. This trust encompasses everything from the use of organic ingredients to company wellness practices, and is reinforced with buying practices. To do environmental, social, and corporate governance right, organizations have taken a data-first approach.

With Locus Technologies, you can take concrete steps towards achievable ESG goals. By taking a fully-digital approach, your organization can make the transformation by maintaining full visibility of raw sustainability data, calculations, and other factors, and also keeping data easily accessible and traceable. Reports are fully traceable back to the source, and are indisputable, allowing for increased trust from consumers or anyone else who has a stake in this information. Given that 7/10 consumers are willing to pay a premium to sustainable-minded companies who are fully transparent with their efforts, this move can provide a significant return on investment in the short term.

The benefits of data centralization also go beyond combatting greenwashing. A fully-digital and streamlined process will improve your ability to handle the data appropriately, and will ease any auditing and reporting responsibilities moving forward, making the entire process cheaper and faster.

With brand loyalty and purchasing decisions being reliant on sustainable decisions, the move to accurate and transparent data management is key. By implementing Locus Technologies ESG software, your organization can employ cutting-edge solutions to combat greenwashing by promoting your sustainability goals and actions transparently and accurately.

Request an online demo of our ESG solutions

No-Code Application Development

Locus delivers capabilities that enterprises need to achieve true digital transformation in a unified low-code or no-code automation platform. Locus provides out-of-the-box tools and services to automate business processes, integrate with external applications, and provide a rich user experience.

No-Code EHS Application Development

Locus offers low-code app building, rich multi-experience capabilities, business process orchestration, automated decision making, and easy integration with other databases. Locus makes it easy to modify existing seeded apps or build entirely new apps in a few clicks and provides easy ways to write business logic to solve challenging EHS or ESG problems. We let you blend “off the shelf” apps and unique requirements with exceptional ease.

Who is a User-Developer?

If you know how to layout slides, if you can draw a flow chart, build a spreadsheet using formulae, sorting, with tables and charts, then you are a User Developer. We empower domain experts to build applications within the Locus Platform using the platform’s drag and drop functionality.

What is No-Code Development Platform Software?

No-code development platforms provide drag-and-drop tools that enable end-users with proper access privileges to develop software quickly without coding. Locus Platform provides WYSIWYG editors and drag-and-drop components to rapidly assemble and design EHS, ESG, or any other application applications. Both developers and non-developers can use these tools to practice rapid application development with customized workflows and functionality. Locus Platform provides tools for enterprise-sized businesses that need to quickly design business processes and workflow applications at a large scale, such as ESG reporting or EHS compliance management. The software tools provide templates for workflow, element libraries, and interface customization to create fully functioning applications without any coding.

With Locus, your organization can:

Drag-and-drop entities to assemble applications.
Allow non-developers and non-technical users to build applications.
Build ESG, EHS, or any other apps fast using visual tools that empower IT and business lines alike.
Leverage no-code integration to connect and act upon data across databases, cloud services, and legacy systems without data migration or use APIs to tie in data.
Deliver enterprise-grade security, scalability, and reliability to support mission-critical business apps.
Easily build complex workflows to suit your organizations needs.

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Environmental Reports Tailored to Your Needs

Companies across a wide array of industries utilize Locus Environmental Information Management (EIM) software. Some examples include petroleum companies with over 6,000 sites, fracking companies with 3,000 plus sites, leading chemical corporations, engineering firms, private and public water utilities, DOE facilities, Native American tribes, aerospace companies, representatives of the electronics industry, and more. There is not a single report that these companies share in common, and as such, our approach to reporting recognizes our customers’ diversity.

Instead of focusing on canned reports, we provide users with the tools to build their own custom reports—enabling them to design exactly what they need, either independently or along with our stellar support team. To make the transition to Locus EIM as easy as possible, we ask our customers about their top reporting priorities. Then, we build reports to match their specifications during the implementation process to be up and running from day one. Not only does this facilitate the transition to our system, but it also gives our customers examples of how to build their custom reports.

Grid Reports

Before we delve into EIM’s formatted reports module, keep in mind that many of our customers’ reporting needs are met by EIM’s grids. For example, here is a sample grid populated with analytical results that match some previously chosen selection criteria:

One-click and this becomes an Excel spreadsheet (or any of a range of file formats) to which you can add a title, edit the column headers as needed, and if required, engage in further formatting.

Formatted Reports

Let’s now move on to EIM’s formatted reports module. Templates provide EIM with instructions concerning report layouts, content, and formatting. They do not address which records stored in EIM are to appear in the report. Template creation requires more in-depth knowledge of EIM and needs to be done only once for any given report format. Running a report is a more straightforward task. The same report can be re-run any number of times using different selection criteria. For example, it is not uncommon for a customer to print a monthly, quarterly, or even annual report using the same template. All that changes from one reporting period to the next is the selected sampling or measurement date range. Upon saving your entries, the report is ready to be used by others, unless designated as private.

To run a formatted report in EIM, all you need to know is what filters should be chosen to display only the relevant set of data. Aside from date ranges, what are examples of selection criteria available to you when executing a formatted report? For example, you can select individual locations or named location groups; individual or named groups of parameters; one or more sample types, sample purposes, samples, sampling programs, sampling events, or sample delivery groups; a range of sample depths; only filtered or unfiltered samples; only leached or not leached analyses; one or more EDDs; and one or more work order numbers to name a few.

Expert SQL Query Reports

The expert query tool allows the user to retrieve records from many EIM data tables with a flexible interface, where join and column definitions are customized. The expert query output can be scheduled as an attachment to an email or run as needed, private or public, or saved on the dashboard for ultimate access by all user levels.

The EIM Expert Query Tool (EQT) lets users create their database queries using a drag-and-drop table interface. Users can also directly write T-SQL language requests to pull data from EIM. This powerful tool empowers the super users to take full advantage of the data managed in EIM and creates “custom reports” without the need for a developer.

Additional Reports

Additional reports include DMR reports (formatted and NetDMR); Self-monitoring; Regulatory formatted exports (various EPA regions); Consumer Confidence Reports; Data Validation (in association with the Data Validation Module); Coliform reports (Water configuration); custom DMR reports and custom MSGP reports; and a wide range of metric reports for usage statistics, records, sites, and management reports including holding table metrics, SDG turnaround times, reporting tool metrics, and LocusDocs metrics.

Contact us for a demo of Locus EIM

Emerging Technology and the Environmental Industry

Locus Founder and CEO, Neno Duplan recently sat down with Grant Ferrier of the Environmental Business International to discuss a myriad of topics relating to technology in the environmental industry such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Multi-tenancy, IoT, and much more.

Water Quality in the Cloud with Neno Duplan

Locus Technologies founder and CEO Neno Duplan provides a wealth of experience on water quality in the cloud. Neno began cloud-based data work before any of us knew what the cloud even was. He does a great job explaining the steps needed to undertake and the significant benefits of a cloud-based digital transformation, and much more!