Innovation

Sustainability is a permanent change to the business operating environment. Companies are frequently talking about sustainability but concrete data and indexes are missing. Sustainability resources in companies are still quite limited. Infine spent five years developing its sustainability management software(SAI) which helps companies to get a real-time overview of their sustainability on each product and then implement it into day-to-day business.

Unlike other services that usually focus on single elements of sustainability, Infine’s SAI takes into account social, economic and environmental sustainability as well as climate change mitigation – in a total of nine different sustainability dimensions. The results of the analysis are then expressed with a six-step traffic-light sustainability classification, specifying for each individual product its actual sustainability features, sustainability issues and relevant missing data. The model is inline with EU taxonomy and can be integrated with the existing software system such as PIM(Product Information management) or ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning) of its user companies to allow seamless use.

With this innovation, companies can manage sustainability in an automatic and informed way with reduced risk and management cost. They can also benefit from margins and increased sales when they brand their products sustainably.

Inspiration

Prior to the founding of Infine, Tiina has comprehensive experience in both NGO(non-governmental organization) sector and private business: she has been the chair for World Vision Foundation for five years, and during this five years she successfully upgraded the organization from a low-profile regional NGO to one of the largest in Finland, specializing in inclusive innovation programmes that closely cooperates with business, academia, and governmental organizations; She also had previous experience in building a business from 0 to 1. This professional background enables her to maintain a system thinking and sustainability has been a recurring keyword in her life. She believes business changes our world as it’s the fastest way to scale up an innovation, and together we make the difference.

In her frequent interactions with government, academia, and business, Tiina had the instinct to observe the big gap in sustainability development. On one hand, regulations and control on sustainability are increasingly tightening and companies are becoming more aware of the need to understand sustainability; on the other hand, there is still very little data or indexes on sustainability for companies to rely on. Tiina had the idea of utilizing the know-how from academia and combined with smart-tech, to generate a reliable and easy tool for companies to manage sustainability in their daily business.

Overall impact

Infine’s aim is to make product sustainability management efficient to offer companies impactful ways to manage product categories and purchases, and gain fact-based insights to communications, marketing and reporting.

As its first step, Infine built the sustainability data model for groceries and household goods to make product sustainability understandable, comparable and easy to use in business. By the third quarter of 2023, Infine has already achieved the ability to automatically evaluate thousands of products.

Now its data model for automated sustainability evaluation is ready for groceries and wood, paper and ceramic -based fast-moving consumer goods(FMCG). 170 customers including big FMCG brands like R-kioski (Reitan Convenience) and Néstle are already using Infine’s SAI to manage their sustainability.

Business benefit

Infine estimates that the food category alone has a European market value of US$ 2,024.00bn in 2023, and about 80% of companies in consumer markets need sustainability data support.

Infine now has 10 employees and a panel of committed experts and entrepreneurial partners. Based on its proven concept and experience in building a sustainability data model, Infine is ready to expand its evaluation capacity and speed up its evaluations to meet the expanding demand. It expects a positive cash flow and a turn-over goal of 10 million in 2024.

Social and environmental benefit

Infine’s SAI is a disruptive innovation in product sustainability as it enables companies not only to manage sustainability in a thorough and easy way but also at a much lower price than a traditional management consultancy service. This enables even small and middle-size enterprises to be able to start conscious sustainability management at an early stage and a responsible production becomes more viable.

Infine also tries to make an impact on social awareness of sustainability and consumption habits by visualizing sustainability on the product level directly to consumers through a curation website(https://www.ostavastuullisesti.fi/) launched in November 2020, with collective efforts from the academia. As Infine founder and CEO Tiina Saukko put it, “consumers usually don’t know how to buy sustainably, therefore work from the corporate/academia side is needed to present relevant information to consumers in a simple form so as to enable behavior change and change in consumption patterns.” All the products on the website are annually evaluated and consumers can easily get a view of the sustainability at the product level and make their everyday purchasing decisions more sustainable. This contributes to more responsible consumption patterns.

Infine’s understanding of sustainability is largely attributed to its close partnership with academia and NGOs in sustainability development. This strategic partnership allows academic expertise quickly being disseminated to practical usage.

In conclusion, Infine is directly contributing to SDG no. 12 for making a positive impact on responsible production (SAI helping companies automate sustainability management and build sustainability consciously) and responsible consumption (its curation efforts targeting the consumer side through the curation website). Infine is also contributing to SDG no. 17 for its strategic partnership with both academia and NGOs to promote fast dissemination of the know-how of sustainability frontline and regulations like the EU taxonomy. Indirectly, Infine contributes to other SDGs such as good health and well-being (SDG 3), economic growth (SDG 8) and industry innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9) by accelerating its user companies to build sustainability with its innovative SAI.

Interview

Tiina Saukko, CEO