Most US public firms plan to invest in ESG reporting tools

Large US based public firms are moving from commitment to action when it comes to sustainability reporting with a new survey finding that 99% expect to invest in ESG reporting tools in the next 12 months.

Deloitte’s 2022 Sustainability Action Report interviewed 300 senior finance, accounting, sustainability and legal executives working at publicly owned companies with revenues greater than $500 million.

Sectors represented include consumer products, financial services, life sciences and health care, oil and gas and technology, media and telecommunications.

The survey also found that well over half (57%) of companies have already implemented a cross-functional working group tasked with driving strategic attention to ESG, with nearly all others (42%) planning to follow suit, compared to the earlier survey findings with only 21% having implemented such a working group.

Virtually all (99%) respondents said that they were somewhat or very likely to invest in more disclosure-focused technology and tools in the next 12 months.

In addition, 80% reported that their companies have new roles or responsibilities to prepare for increased disclosure requirements.

The move to implement sustainability reporting has gained momentum following the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposals on climate disclosure which were released in March, obliging public companies to report their carbon emission data.

However, the Deloitte study indicated that executives anticipate benefits from enhanced ESG reporting beyond just meeting regulatory requirements.

More than half of respondents expect tangible benefits including increased employee retention (52%) and improved ROI (52%), alongside intangible benefits such as stronger stakeholder trust (51%).

Other key benefits included elevated brand reputation (49%) and risk reduction.

In the same week that the report was published, CRM solutions provider Salesforce announced that it has launched an ESG data management and reporting solution.

It claims to enable users to integrate ESG data from disparate systems, allowing them to see environmental, social and governance data in one place, and streamlines and automates the reporting process to easily generate framework-specific reports.

The solution is centred around Salesforce’s greenhouse gas emissions data tracking, analysis and reporting solution, Net Zero Cloud, which initially launched in 2019 (as “Sustainability Cloud”), which claims to provide users with a 360-degree view of their environmental impact.

Professional services firm PwC, meanwhile has teamed up and leading enterprise application software company SAP to launch of a new co-innovation strategy aimed at providing solutions for key ESG business challenges, ranging from sustainability reporting and carbon measuring to supply chain decarbonization and net zero strategies.

TechInformed is publishing a deep dive into Green Tech early next year. For a general overview on the subject you can read the first part here.