B Corp Month 2023: Three B2B tech companies explain how they “Go Beyond”

“The world is facing some of the biggest crises and challenges of our time. Our environment is in rapid decline. Social justice gaps are widening, not closing. By choosing to prioritise profit over people and the planet, most businesses are adding to the problem.”

​​☝️ So states the impactful opener on B Corp Month’s website. And, boy, does it make that fire in our belly to do better for our people and planet fiercer than ever.

Where it all started…

Let’s rewind a second – back in May 2022, Ticket Tailor officially became a certified B Corporation (or a ‘B Corp). For those who don’t know, a B Corp is a company that’s undergone rigorous assessment to ensure it meets high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on a range of factors that span from charitable giving to supply chain practices to employee benefits. In a nutshell, it means the company cares about a lot more than just making money, and that there’s crystal-clear evidence for this.

B Corp month 2023: We Go Beyond

Every year, the B Corp movement runs B Corp Month, providing a chance to raise awareness, and shine a spotlight on the businesses trailblazing new paths towards a fairer future for our people and planet. 

This year, the B Corp Month theme is ‘We Go Beyond’. And we want to be the voice for B2B companies, to show that the B Corp symbol isn’t just for consumer brands (think: Patagonia, Ben and Jerry’s, and Body Shop!). Given the global B2B market value is over 5 times larger than B2C, our sphere of influence could be much greater. 

So we’ve partnered up with some of our fellow B Corp certified B2B tech businesses to help demonstrate that, in fact, B2B companies can, and should, make an impact. In this blog, we hope to assure other businesses like ours that you definitely don’t need to be a consumer brand to join the B Corp movement. 
Here’s how we plan to Go Beyond… this month, next month, and always 🌍👇.

👋 Meet the companies

Ticket Tailor

Ticket Tailor is a white-labelled self-serve ticketing platform on a mission to empower a diverse range of event creators by making it easy and affordable to sell tickets. Ticket Tailor issues over one million tickets every month for events of all shapes and sizes – from the UK’s only floating puppet theatre to Beyonce-themed bottomless brunches and sell-out Santa’s grottos. Our flexible and fair pricing helps event budgets go further; in fact, users can save 73% on their ticketing vs the market leader. There are no contracts or tiers. Just the same great service and support for everyone. 

Cervest

Cervest is the climate intelligence (CI) company putting climate at the core of every decision. Through our pioneering EarthScan™ product, we provide personalised, dynamic, and science-backed climate intelligence on any asset, anywhere, anytime — giving enterprise and government decision-makers the most comprehensive view possible of climate risk at the asset level.

Twig

Twig is the fastest ever growing fintech in Europe. Our central mission is to empower consumers to value, unlock, and enjoy wealth they never knew they had. We have over one million users, and have raised more than $50million. In 2022, we were awarded with a Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Award, and we’ve recently launched Twig Business which has a service suite of offerings to help other businesses become more efficient and sustainable. This includes business banking, devices as a service, Twig Pay, and our non-profit initiative, For the Earth.

🌍 What it means to be a B Corp

🎤 Ticket Tailor says…

As the world’s biggest independent ticketing company, we have no investors and have grown sustainably, always within our means, since day one. This means we can grow on purpose and, importantly, with purpose, so that every event ticket sold with Ticket Tailor can have a positive impact. 

Growth for growth’s sake isn’t motivating…

While trying to articulate our growth mantra, our Founder, Jonny craved a business ideology that we could lean on as a team that was different from the status quo. He felt that growth for growth’s sake isn’t motivating, and can lead to decisions that compromise the ethics of what a company does.

That’s when we discovered the B Corp movement (a real light bulb moment!💡). We love this thought-out system, which is proven to work with countless organisations of all sizes, allowing them to balance the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit. Our Director of Operations, Emily, steered us through the certification process. We were already doing very well in some areas, but for others, it gave us the guidance and impetus to improve. And we were thrilled to announce our certification in May 2022.

🎤 Cervest says…

At Cervest, being a B Corp fits our goals. We believe that climate must be at the core of every decision, and we have the vision to democratise access to climate intelligence, driving a shared responsibility to protect the world’s critical assets. To us, the B Corp status signals a shift towards the greater accountability and transparency the climate tech sector needs to drive climate action at scale.

We hope to build a resilient world…

Our growing, remote-first team of impatient optimists want to climate-align actions on every built and natural asset. Together, we hope to build a resilient world where climate intelligence is at the core of all decisions. From the very beginning, we’ve worked to create an environment where company success and individual development thrive, underpinned by competitive benefits and support. We keep this culture at the core of every decision we make, we want to make a positive impact in everything we do.

🎤 Twig says…

Our B Corp certification means that we’re committed to using our business as a force for good. We prioritise social and environmental impact alongside financial success. As the highest-ranked banking service in the UK B Corp registry, we take pride in the fact that our sustainable and ethical practices are ingrained into our business model, and are not just an afterthought.

It reflects our dedication to initiate and drive positive change…

Being a B Corp isn’t just a badge of honour, it also provides a framework for our sustainability efforts, ensuring that we continuously measure and improve our impact. It reflects our dedication to initiate and drive positive change, both through our products and through our company culture. And it means that we’re not only creating innovative impact-related solutions, but doing so in a way that aligns with our values of sustainability and social responsibility. By putting purpose at the core of our business strategy, we’re able to attract like-minded customers, partners and employees who share our commitment to creating a better world.

🌊 Making waves – how we go beyond

🎤 Ticket Tailor says…

At our absolute core, we go beyond by being the only independent ticketing company to have certified as a B Corp. We support thousands of event organisers to run events all around the world through our feature-rich, simple platform, with affordable pricing and excellent customer care. (In 2021 our average response time was 1 minute 29 seconds!). 

But our ‘going beyond’ goes much further than this.  We’re proud to donate 1p (1.3c) to climate causes for every ticket sold on our platform, which came to a whopping £131,592.90 in 2022. All proceeds were split between our three charity partners: Ocean Conservation Trust, Rainforest Foundation UK, and Cumbria Wildlife Trust, as well as relief support to  Hackney Night Shelter (who were forced to move premises at Christmas) as well as DEC’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal and Pakistan Floods Appeal.

We’re carbon neutral, too, having chosen to offset our entire history of trading emissions – and we’re actively working towards net zero. 

As for the team, we have a number of policies to support wellbeing – from our flexible, hybrid working to our development and wellness budgets, as well as initiatives to foster a culture that’s relaxed yet focussed, and is driven by feedback. We’re also proud to pay our international contractors the living wage of the highest cost of living city among the team (Vancouver, Canada). And, finally, we have a generous profit share scheme for our team. Meaning their hard work is always rewarded at the end of the year, with no bias to role types – recognising everyone’s input equally. 

Oh, and you could call this the cherry on the cake – we offer charities and B Corps 20% off for life! And are running a special B Corp month offer, giving B Corp free usage of Ticket Tailor this month (see the B Hive ‘Asks and Offers’ for more info)

🎤 Cervest says…

We’ve been incredibly busy working on projects that align with our B Corp values. One way we’re going beyond, for example, is by using Hofy for our IT provision, which offers a more sustainable, resource-efficient circular economy model. We also use Fair HQ and Lattice to encourage a continuous feedback culture. On top of this, we’re making improvements to our maternity and paternity leave policies, committing us to pay our employees above what is required by law. This list does go on – and we're delighted that our efforts went towards our B Impact Score of 102.1, which is 22.1 points higher than what's needed to qualify for B Corp Certification!

🎤 Twig says…

We go beyond through our commitment to sustainability, which is about so much more than just reducing waste and carbon emissions. Through our innovative For the Earth program, we aim to promote circularity and sustainability by enabling businesses and customers to take action. And with Twig Pay, customers can trade in their old devices for cash, after which we ensure that they’re recycled or reused instead of ending up in landfills. 

Our sustainability initiatives not only benefit the environment but also drive customer loyalty and attract investors who value purpose-driven companies. Another way we’ve gone beyond is through formalising our impact commitment through launching our For the Earth brand as a non-profit initiative. Our focus truly lies on impact reduction and regeneration rather than on economic gains.

🔮 What’s next? 

🎤 Ticket Tailor says…

2023 is set to be a big year for us, with our focus on increasing platform usage, particularly in the tours and attractions industry. We have a number of really big, exciting features in the pipeline to help serve our customers even better – from launching Membership in Q1, to a brand new referral scheme. And internally we’re kicking off work on our DE&I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) strategy.

Although it may feel like we only recently certified as a B Corp, in 2023 we’re starting the process of going back over our assessment to establish clear goals for our recertification. In particular, we hope to improve in areas such as governance and DE&I. We’re also planning more volunteering for our team, donating time to our charity partners. Lastly, we hope to inspire other SaaS businesses, particularly in the events and ticketing industry, to join the movement.

🎤 Cervest says…

Looking ahead to next year, we intend to keep pushing ourselves to make an even bigger impact as we build the climate intelligence sector. From managing our Scope 3 emissions through TravelPerk’s sustainability product, Greenperk, to forming a fully-fledged Sustainability Committee.

🎤 Twig says…

The Twig app is currently live in 14 countries and counting! Our aim for 2023 is to grow our B2B side of the business, where we want to help as many companies as possible reach their sustainable potential while also unlocking financial benefits and offerings. We’ve recently launched a female founders benefits package, too, through which we strive to support women leaders by shining a spotlight on them within our app (in front of 2 million downloads!), as well as extra support with our products. 

Wrap up

Phew! And that’s a wrap. A final word from us here Ticket Tailor: we think everything Twig and Cervest are doing is well and truly inspiring, and we couldn’t be prouder to walk alongside them in our joint B Corp vision. Here’s to going beyond – now, and long into the future! 💫 

Make sure you’re following us on socials @tickettailor for more news throughout B Corp month - including our brand new 2022 Impact Report!