Corporate decision-makers: If ESG isn’t top of your mind, it should be. Beyond its environmental, social, and moral imperatives, ESG represents solid business opportunities. Developing new (international) ventures and offerings; cost-reduction via lowered emissions and circular processes; qualification for loans and subsidies; attractiveness to forward-thinking, driven talent.
On the flipside, firms that fail to rapidly evolve ESG policy risk fines, brand reputation damage, and stakeholder abandonment: Employees, clients, and investors are all increasingly focused on ESG.
In short, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals and sustainability certifications are now vital throughout the value chain, from your suppliers to your customers and investors. And with the right ESG software, firms can quantify, track, and report on ESG performance. Evolving from straightforward regulatory compliance to ESG leadership.
If you’re new to ESG, you’re far from alone. Many large companies are still struggling with data silos and a lack of ESG software, leading to lags in sustainability reporting and regulatory compliance:
What matters is getting started. As ESG performance requirements become increasingly demanding, it’s essential firms respond with agility. Central to this is investing in quality ESG software, to drive your business towards its ESG goals.
Rapid change in the ESG regulatory environment has cascaded through our customers at DXC. Over the last year, we’ve seen a 44% increase in customers for ESG data management and ESG reporting (emissions allocation, in particular). This reflects the reality that ESG software is essential to ensure any firm’s regulatory compliance, and to power businesses towards ESG goals.
So when you’re selecting ESG software, key features to consider include:
55% of companies still manage ESG data in spreadsheets. This fragments information, limits overviews, and causes calculation issues. So firms need vastly better ESG management software, to interconnect data sources and facilitate accuracy and granularity. For example, defining power usage down to device level, and disaggregating utility bill data to specify electrical power sources.
Sophisticated, thought-out data visibility and accessibility are key for ESG action, accountability, and progress to gain momentum throughout your firm.
Companies’ overall level of automation is still rated just 3.5/10. As the ESG regulatory landscape evolves — and you and your customers’ ESG performance needs increase — having the right ESG reporting tool will prime your company to efficiently respond, deliver, and adapt.
With automation, you’ll avoid quarterly/annual ESG administrative burdens (and frustrating lack of clarity). Instead, your ESG policies, controls, and processes will seamlessly auto-run in the background (and be set up to evolve as your company’s ESG stance does). Clear, intuitive workflows will enable your teams to arrive at complete external ESG reports, from reliable internal data.
Just because sustainability reporting and regulatory compliance requirements are accelerating, firms can’t necessarily hire additional staff to respond. All businesses are facing cost pressures; there’s also a scarcity of data analyst/scientist talent with ESG-specific expertise (although this is likely to increase rapidly).
This means that creating a strong foundation with leading ESG software is essential. It will save your company time and costs, both while you amass ESG-focused funds and talent and once you have them in-house. ESG data management and reporting automation also facilitate efficient, meaningful operational interpretation of your ESG reality: What actions are being taken? What’s your firm’s ESG goal state? And how do your ESG strategies connect to the corporate big picture?
ServiceNow ESG software enables collecting and communicating your ESG metrics more efficiently, cost-effectively, and transparently. And we walk our talk: The following examples illustrate how we, at DXC, use ServiceNow for our ESG framework — and how we can help you too, as well.
ServiceNow is the rich foundation of our ESG portal, which brings together all elements of our broad sustainability program on one page. It facilitates our team’s work, ensuring they can instantly locate ESG data, systems, and documentation.
The data views that ServiceNow ESG software offers drive data integrity. It’s designed to make it easier for us, and you, to run efficient data collection processes. Take data center reports on power consumption, for example. You’d auto-receive these, at the granularity level you need: Defining power type; coolant use; whether month-on-month relative consumption meets your firm’s emission-reduction goals.
With ServiceNow ESG management, your teams can easily, visually track the status of your ESG data collection — macro to micro. You can create a data structure that aligns with your ESG reporting process, working flexibly with your ESG data to monitor and visualize it as it comes in.
In addition, democratizing your ESG data processes with ServiceNow offers transparency to all relevant stakeholders. They can share their expertise — employees, suppliers, customers — for constant improvement, and to evolve sustainability leadership mindsets within your organization.
This hinges on data: Depth and detail are essential. But any firm’s wider ESG narrative is equally important; great sustainability reporting delivers thoughtful context alongside hard numbers. For optimized ESG performance reporting, quantitative and qualitative cannot live separately. ServiceNow allows you to store and work with these data elements holistically, ensuring they remain aligned.
ServiceNow’s ESG software also supports reporting consistency. Capabilities include indexing ESG data per disclosure, to support data re-use (for example, for both full GRI reporting and topical reports). Working from centralized, reliable ESG data sources reduces your teams’ risk of human error, alongside offering significant time and cost savings across your periodic ESG reporting.
Once you have your ESG data management foundation, ServiceNow gives you so many options. As an example, for clients where we manage a broad sustainability footprint, ServiceNow’s capabilities let us provide IT emissions data down to machine level, for a consolidated view per specific business area.
Working with the right ESG software, your data foundation won’t take years — or even months — to establish. At DXC, we completed our broad-scope ServiceNow ESG configuration in just 4 weeks. This helped streamline our SASB and GRI disclosures and prepare for pending regulations. We prioritized our most critical, visible data: 2 disclosures representing 80% of data. Now, we’re working towards a data-driven, results-based ESG program.
The right ESG software needs to be your top priority, and ServiceNow is the answer. Next, our team is on hand to help you make the most of the ServiceNow platform as you work towards your ESG goals.
For advice on your ESG framework, or a demo to experience what ServiceNow can do for your company, contact us here.
For further insights, read our whitepaper on starting the journey towards ESG enlightenment.