Kickstart Your Mandatory ESG Reporting with our Bulletproof Framework, No Matter the Size of Your Team

November 27, 2024

Does your organization need to meet its sustainability commitments? Are you looking to comply with mandatory reporting?

Without digitizing your ESG agenda, this won’t be possible. Companies that have already started agree that:

• The sooner you begin digitizing, the better. It takes 3-4 years for ESG data to provide business-relevant insights.
• Quality, relevant and centralized ESG data is essential. Without control over your data, you can’t digitize or successfully automate its management.
  Requirements for your data should include:
  • Automated data collection
  • Auditability
  • A single source of truth
  • Error control
  • High-quality data
• Trusted ESG data is essential. Each piece of ESG data should have an owner responsible for its accuracy. This ensures data quality, involves colleagues in the ESG process, and gains company-wide support. Over time, data owners will stop seeing ESG data collection as a bureaucratic burden and start thinking about and trusting the data.
• Make ESG your competitive advantage. Communicate this to management. Data-driven decisions are the key to informed business strategies.

Adastra’s Tips: How to Digitize ESG Data in Practice

Our scalable and resilient 6-step framework will help your organization digitize your ESG data.

STEP 1: Develop a Strategy for Collecting ESG Data

Establish your company’s ESG data strategy and identify sustainability requirements.

Conduct a basic ESG assessment.

• Start gathering information from the value chain, stakeholders, and business units.
• Perform a double materiality assessment.

Outcome: A comprehensive analysis of relevant sustainability aspects from an IT perspective, impacting business operations and financial performance.

STEP 2: Prepare an Implementation Roadmap for the ESG Agenda

• Map all ESG data points and advise which are relevant for mandatory reporting, including where and how to collect them.
• Conduct data due diligence.

Outcome: An implementation plan for each step of the ESG agenda.

STEP 3: Create an ESG Data Model for Digitization

• Develop a secure data model for digitizing and automating your ESG data collection.
• Use Adastra ESG Data Foundation – an auditable data lake where all ESG data flows from sources via API interfaces:
  • XLS
  • SAP
  • ERP
  • Invoices
  • Finance
  • Production systems
  • And more
• For data sources in paper form, provide manual entry solutions.
• Ensure basic data governance and cleaning to maintain quality and minimize errors.

Outcome: Data centralized in one place, clear dashboards for data visualization and reporting, preparation for advanced analytics, and integration of AI and ML into processes.

STEP 4: Implement Specialized ESG Software

• If you lack specialized ESG tools for preparing reports, we help with selection and implementation.
• Connect data points or the Adastra ESG Data Foundation data lake to specialized ESG software.

Outcome: Automatic generation of the basic structure of ESG reports according to applicable standards, and real-time ESG data.

STEP 5: Systematically Collect Data from Your Value Chain

• Categorize partners in your value chain based on their ability to share ESG data and the efficiency of data collection.
• Maximize process automation for data collection.

Outcome: Highly automated ESG data collection from your value chain.

STEP 6: Assist with Compliance Control

• Collaborate with consulting partners for audit support.
• Ensure independent verification of your approach to meeting ESG regulatory requirements and transparency of disclosed information.

Outcome: Control over compliance with legal regulations.