Environmental Management has become as a new dimension in business management. Firstly, the public is much more well informed and active, making the “license to operate” a permanent challenge for business. Secondly, mitigating environmental impacts from operations has become compulsory and therefore represents a significant part on operational expenditures. Thirdly, there is growing evidence for the economic impact for better environmental management, explained by:

1. Reduced financing costs, since lower environmental risks imply less financial risks emerging from environmental liabilities.
2. Higher potential prices for good and services perceived as environmentally friendly, thus allowing access to market niches with higher disposition to pay.
3. Potential costs reduction by efficiency gains.
4. Improvements on the environmental decision-making process

In spite of Environmental Management growing relevance, we have observed four common obstacles on its normal practice:

1. It is often not fully integrated in to business vision and strategy.
2. Internal visibility is poor and responsibilities are frequently assigned to staff personnel (instead of line of command managers).
3. Internal visibility is poor and responsibilities are frequently assigned to staff personnel (instead of line of command managers).
4. Poor organisational learning capabilities are frequent, since very often no reliable and comprehensive data exists.

Under the described framework, it is relevant to ask if your management teams have the right tools to provide adequate environmental management, as in accounting, information quality and opportunity is highly correlated with management performance.

As in medicine, early diagnosis and trend monitoring improve outcomes. Does your current environmental management system provide management teams with such capabilities?