From vision to action – how Infobric is driving demand with sustainability

We met Marie and David at Infobric to see how they created a concrete business plan using sustainability as the driver. They have succeeded in concretizing the concept of sustainability and going from high-level words to action. Infobric’s business goal is to be the global market leader and SaaS provider within socially sustainable and resource-effective workplaces. In fulfilling their brand promise – “A world of Ease” they use sustainability as the key driver to unite the internal team as well as serving a need for the customer.

Creating awareness within the industry

The problems with crime in the construction industry have been known for a long time and even intensified in recent years. The construction industry is also strongly regulated in terms of the working environment as well as the climate impact. It is an industry that is severely vulnerable, and digitalization and sustainability is no longer just “nice to have”, it’s a necessity. It’s a matter of driving change towards safe, sustainable and resource-effective workplaces. And this was Infobric’s mission when starting an internal project to develop an action plan for creating a stronger competitive advantage from their sustainability position.

“We wanted to go from the high-level words to a concrete action plan. We wanted to turn our vision and mission into a powerful movement in our organization. This will help us internally in becoming one brand as well as creating awareness and demand in the market”

Marie Skeppstedt, Communications Manager at Infobric

Going from words to action

The construction industry is not at the forefront of digitalization. They have nearly started the journey but would benefit greatly from digitizing the processes and using actual data to tackle the challenges.

“We know that the construction industry has a long way to go when it comes to digitalization and sustainability. We know the stakeholder’s pains and gains and we wanted to turn this knowledge into actual sales opportunities. This was the starting point of our project”

David Skyborn, Chief Revenue Officer at Infobric

In order to move from words to action and make sustainability a tangible value driver, Infobric put together a task force with the mission to map stakeholders, look at the Global Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and get started with creating a solid action plan. The process looked like this:

1. Deciding on the Why. What do we want to achieve with this project? What is the purpose of creating an action plan?
2. Forming the task force. Gather a mixed group internally including sales, marketing and communication, product development as well as people from our newly acquired companies.
3. Ask for guidance. Infobric had great support from Anna Ryott, Principal Via Summa. She challenged them in thinking outside the box and helped the team becoming more precise with the plan.
4. Brainstorm and workshop. A number of workshops took place in order to get clarity on what they could and could not influence in the industry, the pains and gains of the customers, their main challenges as well as opportunities, the industry’s challenges and so on.
5. The UN 2030 Agenda. The next step was to identify the UN goals they actually could contribute to. You could argue that they can contribute to all of them, but by daring to choose they could turn the high-level goals into tangible pains for their customers. These pains made it easy for Infobric to package their message around three values: security, compliance and resource efficiency.
6. Know your audience. Finally, the task force looked at different stakeholders in the process. Who would be involved in the buying decision and what are their specific challenges? The outcome was a concrete plan for stakeholder engagement.

The next step is to use this action plan and create content on the website, package new messaging and services as well as creating pitch cards for the sales team to use.

Marie and David’s 3 best tips for creating business from sustainability

1. Put great emphasis on your target group analysis – you need to truly understand the customer. Make sure you know who really owns the sustainability issues. Map the Buying committee and see who influences who.
2. Know the regulations, existing as well as coming – study and analyze proposals for future legal requirements and regulations. This will help you to create a pitch that will stick.
3. Co-create with partners. Try to identify potential partners that you can co-create with. Look at leaders and influencers in the industry and map other organizations that work with the same agenda.
4. Dare to just do it! Every change starts with the courage to take action. Start by testing your idea internally and expand from that.