Benefit from IT — Part 1
I just came back from the BCorp Summit 2018 in Amsterdam, where a lot of people asked me how we — in mondora — are able to create positive impact with software. Now I’ll try to explain how it is possible, and also how we do it.
I’ll start by defining two different types of benefit: the project related and the company related. The first one relates to what you do with your customers, the second is about what you do in your processes. They are not completely unrelated but for this post’s purpose it’s handy to have such categorisation.
Let’s see how to create project related benefit:
* the project has a direct benefit as a purpose
* the project has a benefit as a side effect (e.g. allows the customer to save paper)
* the customer is a BCorp, so enforcing his business is about creating a kind of circular benefit
* the customer is not a BCorp but has proven benefit virtues
* the project has benefit by design, so it was also engineered to create benefit
In all these cases the approach we try to implement is to sign an interdependence agreement, in order to establish what the benefits of the project are and what discount is needed to “convince” the customer.
There are also some cases in which the customer and the project arecnot benefit enablers, but it’s possible to create an interdependence agreement for a discount, not strictly related to the project itself. For example: every 1000 new users in the user-base, the customer plants a tree and gains 10% discount.
Even in the worst scenario, where neither the project nor the customer, nor the contract are benefit enablers, the revenues from the project allow you to create some company benefit. Let’s see how this works.
The company related benefit, widely covered in the BIA, can be summarised in:
* support employee volunteering, with money or flexibility or free time or pats on the shoulder (wedo!)
* charity (wedo!)
* worker benefits like smart working (wedo!), self management (wedo!), caring (wedo!), trust (wehave!), teaching (wedo!): always remember that your employees are the first that have to feel like being in a benefit company
* environmental benefits from the process, like furniture and office stationery choices, good commuting habits (did I said smart working? we also give 20 cent for every km cycled while commuting to the office using cycle2work), disposal policies and general office management policies (e.g. no PET, BCorp coffee, fresh local food, etc…)
* social benefits like hiring farmers (wedo!), helping schools and local realities, helping biodiversity and cultural traditions (wedo! Hirebitto!)
* being wise in every supplier, customer and business decision.
Outside of these two categories, the benefit that you can create being a BCorp in IT is really about sharing: your methods, your results, your achievements, and ideas. By sharing you can inspire and promote a benefit driven culture.
Last but not least, it’s important to work on what the negative impact of your business can be, to be able to reduce it. I’ll write soon about this.
In mondora we are really curious about how you do it! Share it with us, so we can include it in part 2.
#Bthechange
This can be related to:
How to approach software development as a force for good
Using Software as a Force for Good
A New Level of Interdependence
My first six months in mondora
About trust
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