The investment community is becoming increasingly aware of ESG risks and opportunities. However, assessing ESG materiality in isolation is challenging, and the entire business must comprehensively understand its ESG performance. And to do so, it is vital to track the core indicators across all departments within the organization and adapt ESG reporting for transparency as an integral part of a business.
ESG reporting is not just about submitting a copy of values to external stakeholders but standardizing a process internally and ensuring that there are suitable systems to support effective decision-making, governance, and strategy alignment.
ESG reporting presents a holistic view of all aspects of business operations – from financial performance to environmental impact and helps measure the company's performance that comes from multiple sources (e.g., financial statements, production process reports, employee health and safety etc.)
Consistency of data and methodology is an essential need of an excellent report which brings complexity to ESG management. All the departments and verticals must agree on SOPs of critical terms or concepts to ensure consistency across the organization.
Updapt ESG has inbuilt IP of 750+ ESG KPI to understand or measure a company's ESG performance across 19 themes, help identify areas of improvement, and present it in the format of ESG reporting requirements from several regulators, including SEBI. The themes are further broken down into human rights, climate change, environmental impact, governance, supply chain management, social responsibility, and more.
Governance and strategy alignment is one of the other essential aspects of ESG reporting, which includes gathering ESG data from internal systems, such as risk management, finance, and accounting, to provide ESG Data analytics. In this way, an organization can use internal data to improve business decisions by giving managers more information about what's happening in their organization—and how they can best act on it.
Global Standards such as GRI, SASB, TCFD etc., play a crucial role in requiring ESG or sustainable reports to address different audiences at once on the company's operational impact.
Given the global changes, companies must integrate ESG policies and active sustainability practices within internal systems to ensure comprehensive and consistent reporting.
And such a type of integration requires a Digital ESG SaaS Platform, and one like Updapt www.updaptcsr.com which can help the company establish ESG management and consistency in ESG reporting, including Data Tracking, Analytical, and other processes, like expectations of Investors, Rating Agencies, Customers, Board, and Regulators.