A Smarter Data-Driven Approach to ESG Reporting in Power BI

Globally, many organizations have started paying more attention to tracking their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) impact due to its increasing importance among customers, investors, and other stakeholders. This rising interest in ESG is supported by statistics as well.

According to a report on consumer and employee ESG expectations by PwC, 83% of consumers think organizations should work on implementing ESG best practices. The same report shows that 86% of employees prefer working for organizations that care for environmental and social issues as they do.

With ESG and sustainability reporting, businesses aim to make information about a business’s operations and its impact in the three areas publicly available. It also highlights what strategies it has developed for sustaining and improving its initiatives in the future.

So how can compliance professionals implement an ESG reporting framework that consolidates, validates, and analyzes complex data points from multiple sources and transform them into shareable reports with stakeholders?

Streamline ESG Reporting Framework with the Acterys Power BI Platform

Many organizations are still struggling to manage ESG reporting. That’s primarily because they use spreadsheets and siloed specialized solutions, leading to manual data collection, consolidation, validation, and reporting processes.

To measure ESG parameters effectively, you need to build a robust reporting framework that shows exactly how your organization satisfies the ESG concerns of its stakeholders. However, merging data and metrics for three distinctively different areas (environment, social, and governance) requires a complete CPM platform that can simplify and automate time-consuming, repeatable processes.

Let’s dive into how Acterys helps build a sustainable ESG Reporting framework.

Collect and Combine Data from Multiple Systems and Business Functions

Companies already collect petabytes of data from multiple sources, and each functional department, like HR, legal, procurement, operations, etc., generates specific data within their own environments. All of the data needs to be consolidated into a single source of truth to understand and measure the true ESG impact.

Acterys provides a smarter and faster approach to data integration where all your ESG data can either be centrally stored in a prebuilt data warehouse (Azure SQL) or can directly be consumed from their own data warehouse in Power BI. Once consolidated, it automatically creates a data model that can be tailored as per your reporting requirements using Acterys Modeller.

With an easy-to-use interface, the web app enables you to map data from multiple sources, add new fields within the model, and create cubes to build the structure of your ESG reports in a matter of minutes. All of this is possible with simple click and point operations, allowing you to customize your data models without relying on IT.

Automate ESG Reporting Formatting Styles and Grouping for Standardization

Since all your ESG data is sourced from different systems, it comes in multiple styles, formats, and units. This means you need to build a standardized reporting structure that can produce meaningful reports and dashboards for everyone to understand and analyze. Consider this:

• Energy consumption, water usage, waste management, and toxic emissions are measured in different units
• Employee health and safety data residing in HRM systems are formatted in a unique way
• Working with multiple suppliers means you get reports in different styles and formats
• Ensuring compliance with the reporting standards set by Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), and other regulatory bodies

These are just a few examples where standardization is critical for acceptable and accurate reporting. But at the same time, it is a laborious and time-intensive activity. This is where Acterys model-driven styles make this process fast and seamless for ESG and compliance professionals.

Formatting and Styles of Key Metrics

As you consolidate and model your ESG data from multiple systems and databases, Acterys intelligently captures formatting styles from those sources and transforms key metrics and units into a predefined format. In other words, it allows you to control formatting centrally from within your data model and even customize it.

Propagating Changes as They Occur

As you define formatting rules through Acterys, you’ll see that all the changes flow through Power BI reports and dashboards, saving your team enormous time and effort of manually adjusting units, styles, and formats in every report, table, or even row. You also have the ability to handle complex conversion calculations automatically, which are necessary for measuring ESG metrics.

Grouping Metrics for Holistic Reporting

After automating the formatting and styling work, you can sort metrics from under the three key ESG parameters and group them as per their respective area. Grouping allows you to categorically organize all the relevant metrics within each area, making it easier to structure your data for speedy reporting and analysis within Power BI or Excel.

Distributing Reports to All Stakeholders

Now that you have a flexible ESG reporting framework in place, the next is to make it available to concerned parties, including business leaders, investors, business partners, and others. With Acterys, you get a wide range of options to distribute ESG reports and get full flexibility to make them available exactly as and when users need them.

• Power BI Dashboards: You can make it available as a Power BI dashboard with all the interactive features, allowing the stakeholders to quickly drill down into details and visualize results in intuitive graphs and charts. Since Acterys Reporting Visuals power these dashboards, you can present reports with the most recent data to ensure accuracy.
• Excel Spreadsheets: You can make the reports available as an Excel spreadsheet and get the ability to add to or modify the existing data. Since Acterys Excel-in connects the spreadsheet to the same central server as Power BI, you can have all your data within a single workbook without any hassle.
• Mobile Devices: You can make ESG reports available on mobile devices too, thanks to the mobile apps available for Power BI and Excel. This makes accessibility extremely easy for everyone, whether it is the CEO, a business partner, an analyst, or an investor, allowing them to see and analyze the reports at any time.
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Lastly, you can automate the distribution of Power BI dashboards and reports as PDFs via email to any number of recipients using Acterys Power BI Sync.

Analyze and Plan for the Future

Going one step further into the process, businesses can utilize Acterys’ planning and analytics capabilities to analyze and forecast the changes in ESG parameters and calculate their impact. This allows you to set realistic goals and facilitate your ESG planning process accordingly, helping you create a strategic roadmap to achieve all the objectives. With Acterys Power Visuals, you virtually can perform any type of ESG planning activity, whether it is variance analysis, forecasting, what-if scenario modeling, workforce planning, and more.

 If you want to build a sustainable ESG reporting framework, it is always better to utilize a single, comprehensive toolset that covers all the requirements. Let Acterys be your partner to help you build your ESG profile, track key metrics, and improve your ratings to attract potential investors and keep key stakeholders informed and happy with accurate reporting.

Start your 14-day free trial today or book a meeting with our solution experts to get a consultation for your ESG reporting needs.