How ESG Fits into Xait's Values

In the first installment of this three-part blog series, we discussed ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), and why leading companies increasingly view ESG factors as business imperatives.

ESG is also known as sustainability in many cases. In a business context, sustainability is about the company’s business model, i.e., how its products and services contribute to sustainable development and growth.

In this article, we'll discuss how Xait addresses sustainability as a factor for ESG compliance. More specifically, in what way do our solutions and company values align with sustainability?  

We Contribute to Sustainable Growth

As an international company, we recognize our place in an interconnected world – and we know that every step we take to promote sustainability makes a difference. Our company, our employees, and our planet depend on sustainable growth. 

Having our values reflected in every aspect of the solutions we build, and in how we treat the people and environment we share, is part of being a trustworthy, sustainable thought leader. Our goal is to leave the world better than we found it, and to create powerful tools that enable others to do the same.

In order to be a leader in sustainable growth, we must continuously improve ourselves. We have started on our ESG journey. The process is ongoing, and we continue to improve and develop our strategy. 

Continuous improvement is embedded in everything we do, and to us, that is synonymous with sustainability. 

We Help Our Clients Accomplish More With Less Effort

Our company mission is to help clients win business by supporting their sales enablement efforts from quote to contract. That requires us to be trustworthy, efficient, forward-looking, and always one step ahead. 

Eirik Gudmundsen, Xait CEO, elaborates:

- Trust is the basis for our relationship with our clients. A trustworthy service provider treats employees, clients, and partners with respect, and acts with integrity.

In terms of the forward-thinking aspect of our values, we had already developed solutions for sustainable growth when the pandemic struck. In the wake of Covid-19, Xait's solutions enabled remote teams with the tools and systems necessary to keep business moving ahead during a time of global travel disruption. 

Our goal at Xait is to ensure that we provide a perfect balance between capability, experience, and vision that will allow our clients' efforts to be as effective as possible. 

- All this boils down to helping the client achieve more with less effort, continues Gudmundsen. – Which is, in turn, sustainable. 

We Maximize Clients' Use of Their Key Resources

Sustainable business practices rely on making the most of resources. Content and information are two of the most important resources our clients have. 

Any company today must engage in the creation of content. It touches nearly everything, including commercial operations, sales, reporting, communication and general business operations. The assembly of highly complex, high-stakes documents like proposals, contracts, or regulatory submissions is a challenge that is only made more difficult by the fact that many teams work at different locations or remotely.

As Gudmundsen explains:

- What Xait does is helping businesses get the most out of their company’s content and content management. With XaitPorter, for instance, we help them reuse already written, vetted content, and we help them optimize and adapt their content to win new business. 

The content-centric nature of XaitPorter enables worldwide, virtual team collaboration around a company’s content. Therefore, Xait contributes to the sustainability of our clients' practices by enabling them to travel less, use less paper, and consume fewer natural resources. 

 

We Help Companies Adopt Circular Economy Practices

Companies are striving toward a sustainable society by conserving resources in production as much as possible while maximizing value. A circular economy approach makes it possible for companies to switch from ‘take-make-dispose’ linear production models to those that allow products to be designed and produced for extended use, disassembly, reuse, and recycling from the outset.

Xait’s CPQ solution is a great tool to help organizations introduce new product and pricing strategies that enable the shift to a circular economy business model. 

We are working with several companies that are exploring and testing various pricing strategies to help drive and implement the key principles of a circular economy. Thus, we help our customers to extend the life of their products by increasing the usage of service contracts and the aftermarket. It is sometimes called ‘servitization’.

Read more: Why the Circular Economy Changes the Way You Go to Market

 

We Help Companies Adapt to The Green Shift

Innovation and technological development are key to the green shift, and businesses play a crucial role. The green shift aims to create a new economic dynamic, a "new economy," which is based on solutions that result in low greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Gudmundsen, quite a few of Xait’s recent clients are businesses working within renewables:

– We've helped oil and gas companies switch to renewable energy business models more quickly. Renewables are at the center of the transition to a less carbon-intensive and more sustainable energy system, so we’re proud to be a ‘cog in the wheel’ of the green shift. 

We Create an Inclusive and Diverse Work Environment

At Xait, we support each employee in shaping their own future as well as the future of the company, in an environment that values diversity. 

– We care about our employees' knowledge and skills, not their sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, age, or gender. That being said, gender is important to us, from a diversity and equality standpoint. In our organization as well as with our investors, gender diversity is a top priority. 

Despite national conversations about gender diversity in tech, women are still underrepresented and underpaid in the tech industry. Xait tries to change this reality, says Gudmundsen:

We actively recruit women in leadership roles and any other positions. We're especially looking for women to fill our developer jobs.

The CEO of Xait sees a clear value in actively recruiting women:

– Aside from the many benefits of hiring women, some analysts believe that the next economic revolution may be influenced by the role that women play in the business world and in markets. Women are great for business dynamics!

Conclusion

At Xait, we know that the long-term success of our company requires a business model that integrates sustainability and ethical business as natural parts of daily business operations. Because of this, sustainability is a key component of our culture, values, and core processes. 

With our products and services, we help our clients use resources more efficiently and achieve higher quality in less time. By doing so, we like to think we enable sustainable practices, both in business and in society at large. 

In conclusion, Eirik Gudmundsen says:

Our goal at Xait is to make the virtual footprint of our company's ideas, engagement, and solutions much larger than the physical footprint of our people

Our third and final installment of this three-part series will explore why Xait believes putting culture first is key to success.