Are your investors and stakeholders constantly asking for improvised and better ESG management and reporting?

Do they critically analyze the business’ performances and decision-making processes through the ESG reports?

If yes, then your business and the decision-makers are on the right path.

ESG management and reporting are crucial to help you proactively manage your ESG goals, risks, and opportunities. This simple data collection with progress monitoring and report generation allows organizations to measure their contributions towards sustainability and many other things accurately.

But with so many ESG guidelines and framework options, how do you get precise data to generate the most detailed report?

Let us discuss this further.

Data for ESG Management and Reporting

Your organization collects data in abundance. But we hope you know that data needs to be organized and segregated. High-quality data produces the best results and meets the requirements for analysis. This data generates efficient and consistent reports.

For accurate ESG management and reporting, data must meet all the critical dimensions of data quality. These dimensions are;

Completeness:- This implies whether or not the required data for analysis is present.

Accuracy:- This dimension defines the reality of the data.

Validity:- The data should comply with the defined guidelines and standards.

Uniqueness:- Managing duplicate data is chaotic. Hence data should be checked for being unique.

Consistency:- Everyone with access to the data must see the same data values throughout the system.

Timelines:- Maximum data profitability can be gained when data is available whenever expected and required.

The above data norms are pre-defined, but some more measures can be added per the organization’s rules and regulations. Critical data assessment is necessary, no matter how many dimensions are used to qualify for high-quality data. 

Remember, critical data assessment is essential for detailed and accurate ESG reporting. An immaculate ESG report communicates to stakeholders, customers, and the audience that your efforts towards the ESG goals are sincere and honest. Therefore, put in every effort to make it a consistent one!

Once we separate the high-quality data from the low ones, the filtered data should be presented in a basic framework for ESG reporting. Let us know more about this framework.

Key Areas to be Covered in an ESG Report

Investors evaluate the companies based on their ESG ratings and then decide where they want to invest their funds. But investors get apprehensive as each organization uses a different approach to showcase its ESG scores. These different methodologies and processes confuse the investors and further delay future processes.

Therefore, the use of machine language and artificial intelligence is recommended to solve this challenge. But before diving into that, let us discuss the key areas to be covered and presented in an ESG report.

Environmental Areas

In this section, the KPIs are calculated through four major areas: 

• Climate change
• Natural resources
• Pollution and waste
• Environment opportunity

These sections have subsets based on carbon emissions, water stress, and more. (See image for reference)

Social Areas

Human capital, product liability, stakeholder opposition, and social opportunity determine the organizations’ strengths and weaknesses in the social arena. These major sections are further divided into labor management, product safety, quality, and so on. (Refer to image for further info.)

Governance Areas

The main sections, corporate governance and corporate behavior, are the pillars of this area. From board diversity to ethics and tax coverage, every detail of governance needs to be included here. The decisions and the impact of the board of directors, managers, stakeholders, and everyone involved in corporate governance are strictly put down in this part of the report.

The ESG report, including all the above factors, is essential to determine the business strategies and how they affect humans and their planet.

ESG Management Through Software

Did you know that an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation in January 2020 announced that it plans to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain by 2040? The company also spread its agricultural practices to 345,000 acres.

Another example is the GPU company NVIDIA Corporation, which is fighting climate change uniquely and innovatively. It says it’s building a digital version of our planet on which it’ll apply its AI and Omniverse technologies to predict weather changes and their effects over several decades.

These giant enterprises use AI and machine learning to utilize their data and give the best possible outcomes. They have a digital system to make the best use of their available data while saving time and resources. 

• A software solution for ESG management and report generation can proactively manage ESG goals in a standardized framework. 
• It helps to leverage performance while critically analyzing risk and opportunity management.
• The software helps make informed decisions, generate business value and give a competitive advantage.
• The ESG management software ensures permits, standards, regulations, guidance documents, and more compliance to generate clean reports based on international standards.

A Software Solution

Custom Building a Software Solution to assist your ESG Efforts with the following features:-

An Executive Dashboard:- This allows you to access all your data from one place. Take quick decisions and see how your business plans are affecting the ESG stats at a glance.

Collective Data:- All your data is available in one place. From carbon emissions to water stress, access to information is just a click away.

Real-time Checks:- Check the status of your data in real-time. You have hands-on information about the impact and progress of your actions toward your ESG goals.

Automated Report Generation:- Save time and resources by producing error-free reports based on the data collected. These reports are generated in compliance with the standard rules and regulations of SASB, TCFD, CSRD, and others.

The software is a source of truth to validate, check, monitor, and simplify ESG data. It not only supports ESG reporting but also contributes towards a sustainable future!

Why is Being Responsible Important?

Sustainability is still a flexible subject, But it does need to be paid attention to.

ESG reports communicate the businesses’ happenings with the customers, investors, and everyone inside and outside the business world. Therefore, the reports must be structured and measured to ensure the passing of transparent and consistent information.

ESG reporting is essential not only because it could be made mandatory from 2023 but also to attract the right stakeholders for your businesses. A non-consistent ESG report might cause investors to lose interest in you. Therefore, buckle up, folks. It is time to invest more in Environment, Social, and Governance data and reporting.