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There are not a lot of mobile apps out there for small and medium businesses to rank their place on the environmental ladder. In fact, the tech world often has a cookie cutter approach to creating company sustainability measurements. Now Corporate Knight has come along with an aim to help measure sustainability efforts with a new mobile app called Ranker.

The Corporate Knight Ranker is an app that companies can use to assess and compare their own sustainability performance relative to the corporations that Corporate Knights tracks in its annual rankings, including the S&P 500.

The app taps into 4,000 companies across 24 different sectors, said Tyler Hamilton,editor and associate publisher at Corporate Knights Media . CK Ranker can also help a company create and expand sustainability goals in a way that hasn’t been done before, he said.   

Although Ranker is primarily for small and medium size businesses, larger corporations can take a test drive as well.

CK Ranker allows companies to  gauge their sustainability performance by privately entering 15 key indicators that includes energy consumption, water uses, and other sustainable items a company would like to measure.

"We basically walk the company through those steps by helping them input data that's set toward standard measurements, he said.

If a company doesn't have information on a particular indicator,  Ranker can enter a zero in that category.

"It will say where you will rank relative to your peers," said Hamilton.

Although a company can enter its numbers privately, Hamilton said Corporate Knight is encouraging participants to make their Ranker numbers public.

Hamilton and others said the new app is traveling a different path.

"There's nothing in the market that compares to this," he said. There's no app out there for small and medium businesses to compare key performance indicators with their peers."

"This (Ranker) is a great chance for companies to stick their foot in the sustainability water and begin to establish a baseline for the company," he said. "They can see where they are at and how they can make things better."

In addition, the versatile app allows companies to examine sustainability goals in a more holistic way. For example, the app can help to guide a company’s reporting approach when it comes to environmental, social and governance information.

"We're trying to encourage companies to go out there and kick the tires and give us feedback on how we can make it better," Hamilton said.

The first 1,000 downloads of the basic services are free. For a fee, businesses can sign up for a more expanded version of the app. Ranker works on most mobile devices including the IPad and IPhoneDavid Podmayersky, sustainability director at EarthColor a commercial printing operation,  said the new mobile app has been useful for his company.

"There are only a few tools out there to help a company my size by comparing apples to apples," he said. "I was very impressed with the methodology. They got an interface that really simple, which I liked.

And while, Podmayersky said Ranker still has a few kinks it needs to work out, overall the app was extremely helpful in setting environmental goals.

"This app has a bright future," he said.