Amsterdam, April 11, 2023: Scaler appoints Tim Twisk as new Senior Sales Manager of EMEA
We're pleased to announce that Tim Twisk has joined our team as Senior Sales Manager of EMEA. He'll play an integral role in helping Scaler continue to grow as we fill an important gap in the ESG data solution market.
Luc van de Boom, Scaler's Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer said: “We’re really excited to have Tim join the team. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge and experience and is well respected within the industry. Together, we’ll continue to develop the best solution on the market for our clients and reach more managers to provide them with a tool that addresses their challenges, helps them embed ESG throughout their organizations, and which empowers the market to make and achieve ambitious goals.”
We sat down to discuss his new role and how he'll translate the knowledge and experience gained at SmartVatten into value for our real estate clients.
What excites you most about coming to work for Scaler?
Smartvatten is a great innovation in the market because it was designed to be scalable, work across countries and be platform agnostic. That means I had the opportunity to engage with most of the (ESG) data platforms on the market. From that experience, I saw that despite what is out there already there is still a need in the real estate market for a comprehensive solution. What I have seen and heard thus far is that Scaler fits the bill.
Going from water to broader ESG means I’m moving into a new and more competitive market with the potential to make a bigger impact. CSRD, SFDR and EU Taxonomy have piqued my interests with the new challenges they are posing for the industry. I’m looking forward to getting more involved in the regulatory aspect of ESG and helping companies solves these challenges in a way that adds to their business rather than just consuming more valuable resources. And this role provides me with a new opportunity to grow professionally and continue to learn and develop.
And lastly, I’m excited to be joining an organization that is in a start-up phase. I’ve gotten a lot of great energy from the founders and the team in terms of the product they are developing and the impact they want to make. Scaler has already made a splash in the market, working with a number of high profile clients and dominating the Dutch market mostly thanks to the enthusiasm of the team. I’m looking forward to the future and what we can achieve together as I bring my sales and business experience to the table.
What was your role at Smartvatten and what impact did your work have on ESG in the sector?
At Smartvatten I was working as the Global Key Account manager with our pan-European clients, ensuring the success of our partnerships across stakeholders in multiple countries. SmartVatten is hardware enabled SaaS used to detect leaks and other inefficiencies in water use in real time for commercial properties. Most European real estate managers have properties across Europe, and what SmartVatten did really well was to provide a scalable solution that could be used across entire portfolios.
Although energy and GHG emissions are in the limelight in terms of ESG, water is a hugely important issue. In most of Europe, we don't experience it as much of a problem yet, but as climate change continues to make weather more volatile, I think water scarcity will become more apparent, even in Europe. And being able to work with different property managers and align with a number of different stakeholders across a value chain in several countries— like what Smartvatten did— will become a necessary model for all ESG-solutions.
Coming from a hardware perspective, what lessons can you translate from Smartvatten to Scaler?
Because Smartvatten is a physical solution that needs to be installed across properties, it not only needs approval from a strategic and ESG perspective, but it's a product that facility managers and maintenance crews need to become familiar with and work with. For the most part, ESG strategy is still the realm of a Head of Sustainability or team, or perhaps a CFO because of regulation. However, if we truly want to embed sustainability throughout an entire organization, everyone from the C-suite to the maintenance crews needs to understand how it integrates with their work. Part of my focus was ensuring that people who literally and figuratively speak different languages were able to get the most out of our ESG product.
As the real estate market begins to realize that an effective ESG data platform is integral to their success, it will be important that we develop the Scaler platform to truly fit this need and that we engage with and educate a variety of stakeholders properly.
Coming from the commercial side of being a solution provider, what is your perspective on the business case for ESG in real estate?
One of the advantages of working with a solution just focused on water is that it could be easily translated into operational ROI. Clients didn't need to dip into their budget for sustainable investment because it made operational sense to install Smartvatten meters. Even though there is intrinsic value in ESG and a broader advantage to aligning with the Paris Agreement because of climate change, it is key that we are focusing on more tangible returns on investment for our clients. Saving energy and water is important, but we have to enable our clients to translate this into financial incentives. So we need to work on aligning our tools with costs. I’m really excited about Scaler’s roadmap tool because it’s not only one of the best in the market for allowing users to dynamically plan for net zero, but it allows them to factor in capex and opex as well.
It’s also essential that ESG makes sense from a day to day operational perspective. One way to do this it to maximize the resources that are expended on monitoring and reporting. This space is getting more complex with new regulations like SFDR and expanded reporting requirements like CSRD coming into play. The burden of reporting will only increase if the proper tools and processes are not put in place, and the risks for non-compliance or waiting too long to comply will get more severe.
