Single point of Visibility, Quality and Control for ESG Data
Challenge
As companies are increasingly incorporating ESG metrics in their corporate analytics, the lack of a centralized ESG data definition, collection, reporting, and improvement (“orchestration”) platform is creating issues with completeness, quality and timeliness. ESG Analytics are now being demanded by customers, investors and regulators, this is creating a compliance exposure particularly with respect to the need for “reasonable assurance.”
pulsESG™ Feature
pulsESG™ is the “Single point of Visibility, Quality and Control for ESG Data.”
Challenge : Varying Standards
Multiple standards addressing E, S and G metrics such as SASB, GRI, TCFD, CDP amongst others, complicate requirements within the enterprise.
pulsESG™ Feature :Extensible
pulsESG™ can be customized by the end users or partners to define their own framework from a collection of existing standards, industry frameworks, or their own metrics. This allows them to stay current with evolving stakeholder requirements.
Challenge : Industry Initiatives
Customer and industry initiatives such as Zara’s Join Life collection, Walmart’s PojectGiganton™, and extended producer responsibility (EPR) frameworks are creating additional burden on organizations.
pulsESG™ Feature : Standards Based Analytics
Standards based analytics for SASB, GRI, various standards and Custom Metrics are provided, including historical comparison of attribute values and audit controls.
Challenge : Multi Division/Portfolio Analytics
Private Equity (PE) firms or Limited Partners (LP) would like to collect ESG data from multiple portfolio companies, or a holding company wants to do the same from divisions. These portfolio companies and divisions in turn may have other stakeholders (such as other investors, customers, different regulators, ratings agencies, or auditors) who would like to receive verifiable and auditable ESG data as well. We refer to this in technical terms “the many-to-many problem.”
pulsESG™ Feature : Comprehensive, Flexible Cross-Enterprise Data Collection Workflow
pulsESG™ automates comprehensive ESG data collection from stakeholders within an organization, and also across divisions or portfolio firms of an investment firm. This eliminates the need for manual spreadsheets and tedious tracking mechanisms over phone or email.
Challenge : Integration & Aggregation
In the words of a Chief Marketing Officer for a building materials firm – “ESG is accelerating and moving fast; Tracing and aggregation is sorely needed; Our efforts are disjointed and fragmented; ESG needs to be a behavior across the organization; We have a council driving it.”
pulsESG™ Feature : ESG System of Record
Where there is not an existing system to capture a metric, pulsESG™ can become the system of record until such a system is in place, or on a longer-term basis.
pulsESG™ Feature : Automated Integration with ERP, HR and other Data Sources
Where there is an existing system of record, the integration is automated ideally via APIs (if the system provides it) or file extracts in the worst case. For spreadsheet(s) based manual processes, ingest the data from them or drive the orchestration to minimize the manual processes. pulsESG™ provides standard integration packs to those systems. A similar approach will be taken for sharing the output of the system (for example with Directors Desk and MSCI) with appropriate workflow controls.
Challenge : Manual Processes
Aggregation of data with manual data entry into spreadsheets is time consuming and inefficient.
pulsESG™ Feature : Comprehensive, Flexible Cross-Enterprise Data Collection Workflow
pulsESG™ automates a comprehensive ESG data collection from stakeholders within an organization, and also across divisions or portfolio firms of an investment firm. This eliminates the need for manual spreadsheets and tedious tracking mechanisms over phone or email.
pulsESG™ Feature : ESG System of Record
Where there is not an existing system to capture a metric, pulsESG™ can become the system of record until such a system is in place, or on a longer-term basis.
Challenge : Data Quality & Auditability
In the absence of guidance and automation, data is inherently inaccurate and leads to inaccurate and inefficient decisions in the value chain.
pulsESG™ Feature : Data Quality and Source to Target Auditability
Rules based controls of data ingest quality. Duplicate data detection, rules for data change approval, conflict approval with responsible parties. Data validation rules are applied at point of data entry, so bad data doesn’t get into the system.
pulsESG™ Feature : Reasonable Assurance of Data
Auditors have access to the pulsESG™ system to be able to view the provenance of each attribute including the date/time stamp and system/human that made the change.
