The non-financial, ESG, sustainability, and CSR reporting landscape constantly evolves with many regulatory sustainability reporting frameworks and investor requests increasing. We now see more and more companies adding to their commitments and establishing long-term global sustainability reporting strategies. Thus, the ability to provide assurance for sustainability risk management and ensure that their company has access to reliable data to report to business stakeholders has become one of the main focal points.
Yet, deciding on a sustainability reporting software solution to support the ongoing management of sustainability and ESG data is often considered a process far more daunting than it really is. In this blog post, we break down how finding the right sustainability reporting software can support your company’s reporting and help you achieve your sustainability goals.
Data Accuracy and Reduced Risk of Errors
Most companies are looking for sustainability reporting software because they are too reliant on overworked error-prone spreadsheets. The right sustainability reporting software will be one that eliminates data risks and allows for accurate data collection, calculation and management. Plus, your software provider should regularly update emissions factors and methodologies. This will allow you to feel confident that you are using the right calculation method.
Spreadsheets are inherently more unstable compared to sustainability reporting software solutions. This means that there is a much higher likelihood of data corruption. This can pose a serious risk if you are reliant on Excel as your main data calculation tool, even if you do create regular backups. Software-as-a-Service platforms provide daily customer data backups and offsite storage in secure locations for longer retention.
Monitoring of ESG Performance Over Time
The monitoring of performance over time is essential to understand long-term risks and opportunities. With an increase in the setting of long-term goals and commitments, this is now more relevant than ever. To build and manage a long-term sustainability strategy, you need access to current and correct data for both now and in the future – not just a time-stamped data set.
Using a central sustainability reporting software platform to collect and manage ESG data enables you and your stakeholders to assess performance data on an ongoing basis, rather than in one moment in time. By sending questionnaires directly to suppliers or stakeholders through a software solution, deadlines, flags and notifications can be set. This means that users can be automatically alerted when it’s time to request updated information or address an expired document.
Improve Transparency and Accountability
The ability to access accurate and consistent sustainability and ESG data across an organization to enable responsible business decisions is now more important than ever. Sustainability reporting software enables users to customize questionnaires and data collection to ensure they are collecting the right data. Once collected, the sustainability reporting software will enable them to aggregate consistent, comparable and accurate ESG performance data from across the organization. It also enables users to run comparisons across locations, benchmark and view key information across various metrics and KPIs.
Save Time and Resources
Many companies are still using spreadsheets and emails. However, as data gets more complex, these processes become cumbersome, time-consuming and prone to error. Manual processes are a security risk as well as prone to error. They can also be extremely heavy on time and resources.
Through the use of sustainability reporting software, data collection, management and reporting can all be automated on a large scale. This allows users more time for analysis. Using software enables users to move their focus away from just data collection and on to in-depth reporting, analysis and informed decision-making.
Analytics and Reporting
Meeting the scope of internal and external reporting requirements, and reporting to different stakeholders, requires a wide range of analysis tools and reporting dashboards. The right sustainability reporting software will allow you to model, and apportion data. It will also allow you to compare data in a way that is relevant to your company and its stakeholders. Additionally, it should provide the option to group data into unlimited customizable sets.
Flexibility
As reporting requirements increase, so does the volume and scope of data that you need to manage. The sustainability reporting software you choose should be robust and flexible enough for your reporting both now. As well as in 5 years’ time, to enable you to achieve your long-term goals.
When selecting software, consider whether the solution will evolve with your reporting requirements and adapt to your changing organizational structure in years to come. Additionally, consider how often the software is updated and whether the updates are charged at an additional cost.
“At Royal Mail, our impact on the environment and society is very important to us. Our partnership… has enabled us to improve data accuracy and has increased confidence in our reporting to help us accurately report our achievement against our targets, both now and in the future.”
David Waterston, Carbon & Environment Programmes Manager at Royal Mail
Read the case study of how Royal Mail, UK’s pre-eminent delivery company, has implemented Cority’s (formerly Greenstone) Sustainability Performance Management software solution to collect, calculate, analyze and report on all consumption and emissions data associated with over 1,600 sites across the UK and its international arm, GLS.
Here at Cority, we partner with our clients to continually develop, innovate and fit with their evolving requirements both now and in the future. Would like to know more about how we invest in our software to guarantee usability, applicability and relevance? Talk to us to learn how we are be able to ensure that our clients get the answers they need from their data.
