Questions about the VSME

The VSME is a reporting standard that helps SME companies make their sustainability efforts transparent.

The name actually says it all: the last three letters of the abbreviation VSME, so SME, are an acronym for Small and Medium Enterprises.

For several reasons:

• Competitive advantage: Companies that actively work on sustainability and communicate transparently about it distinguish themselves from competitors. This can attract new customers and retain existing ones.

• Access to capital: Investments and loans are increasingly linked to sustainability criteria. Companies that can demonstrate sustainable operations have better access to financing.

• Cost savings: Sustainability measures can lead to more efficient processes and lower operational costs, for example through energy savings or waste reduction.

• Risk management: By identifying and managing sustainability risks, companies better prepare for future challenges, such as climate change or resource scarcity.

• Stakeholder trust: Transparency about sustainability performance strengthens the trust of customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders. This leads to a better reputation and stronger relationships.

• Innovation and growth: Reporting on sustainability can stimulate companies to innovate and develop new, sustainable products or services, which can open up new market opportunities.

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): Companies have a role in contributing to a sustainable society. By reporting on sustainability, they show their commitment to societal challenges.

• Regulations and compliance: More and more countries and regions, including the European Union, are setting legal requirements for sustainability reporting. Complying with these regulations helps companies avoid legal issues.

By using software specifically designed for the VSME, you make things much easier for yourself. The software ensures that you don’t need to know the ins and outs of the VSME guideline, but rather just need to know your own organization. Additionally, it assists with automation and planning to ensure that you can deliver a report each year that neatly compares with previous years.

The Green Otter offers several useful features for your sustainability report. Check out the page about our features to view them.

Yes! Our software is designed to make the VSME guideline as easy as possible. This guideline has been designed by the EU for small and medium organisations, so our software is too.

Extremely user-friendly! Our core values are: accessible, transparent, and effective. Therefore, user-friendliness has been super important to us during the design of the software. Feel free to try it out (for free). If you come across something that you don’t find user-friendly, we would love to hear about it!

We are transparent about this as well. Check the pricing page to see what our software costs.

Yes, definitely When you create an account, you can choose a free trial period of two weeks during the onboarding process to see if you like it. And if you do? Then you choose the license that suits you and only then will you need to enter your payment details.

Our data is stored and communicated in an encrypted format. We create a daily backup that we retain for a week. Our servers are located in Europe, specifically in Frankfurt.

The AI models behind Oliver (the AI assistant) are European. These models will never be trained on customer data without explicit permission.

Would you like to know more (technical) details? Please contact us; we would be happy to tell you more!

Yes, indeed, that is the specialty of our software. We have designed it so that it is very clear to you as a user which data you need to have and where you need to enter it. We then generate the VSME report for you.

Unfortunately, this is somewhat complicated. Technically, there are possibilities for it (we have an API), but we do not have standard integrations with other software packages. Are you interested in this? Let us know, we would love to think along with you!

As soon as the VSME is updated, we start working to translate the new version into our software as quickly as possible. The data structure of our software is designed in such a way that we can quickly adapt to new regulations.

P.S. The VSME is not a regulation; it is only a voluntary guideline.

Absolutely! Our software is designed to be very user-friendly, so you can do a lot on your own. However, we would be happy to show you and your colleagues how the software works. Feel free to schedule a demo with us, and we will show you everything.

De Green Otter is specifically designed for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with the VSME as a guideline. This makes it very user-friendly and easy to get started with. Many other sustainability reporting tools are designed for larger companies based on the CSRD and have been adapted later to also assist SMEs. The most important thing is: find a package that suits your organization and that you enjoy working with! The software is ultimately just a tool to help with sustainability, and that’s what it’s all about!

Our software is so simple and user-friendly that we can’t really talk about an implementation process. You can create an account today and get started right away! If you need help, you can request a demo and we will show you how the software works.

Of course, you also need to get the rest of the organization involved in collecting the data for your sustainability report. This might be more challenging and varies greatly from company to company.

The software does this automatically. The more data you enter for your sustainability report, the better the software understands your organization. This way, the Green Otter automatically knows what is and isn’t applicable to your organization and adapts accordingly.

If there are other, even more specific needs for the software, we would love to hear about them and we will think along with you.

After entering all your sustainability data, the Greeb Otter automatically generates the VSME report for you. You can still make some adjustments to match the corporate identity of your organization, and the rest happens automatically. The report is then available in our software, but you can also share it with others as a PDF file.

The software records all the data you enter and keeps track of it over multiple years. This allows us to create graphs that provide insights into your progress and performance. You set goals in the software and can immediately see if you are on track.

For technical support, you can contact us directly via email or live chat. The live chat is located at the bottom right of your screen, and you can reach us via email at info@groeneotter.nl. Also, see our contact page.