Constellation ShortList™ Sustainability Reporting

Organizations are establishing policies to address sustainability as part of their larger environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programs. Sustainability policies are emerging in response to international treaties and regulations as well as the concerns of the general public, customers, and business partners.

Sustainability commitments were previously mostly voluntary, but regulatory bodies such as the European Union and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and standards bodies such as the IFRS Foundation and its International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) have put forth comprehensive and fairly consistent sustainability standards. Sustainability reporting solutions address the need to efficiently gather emissions, waste and carbon footprint data and to analyze and report on that information comprehensively and consistently.

The name of this ShortList has been changed from “ESG Reporting” to “Sustainability Reporting” to reflect its focus solely on “E” environmental reporting rather than the “S” social or “G” governance aspects of ESG. Emex, IsoMetrix, Navex Global, and OneTrust have been removed from this list. The Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability and SAP Sustainability Control Tower have been added to this ShortList on the strength of their improving support for sustainability reporting.

Threshold Criteria

Constellation considers the following criteria for these solutions:

• Facilitates formal data-gathering and data-management processes and approvals for those involved in ESG-related reporting, including dedicated ESG teams, finance, corporate communications, human resources, facilities management, supply chain teams, marketing, and other operational units.
• Offers prebuilt integrations with popular data sources, including enterprise applications, databases, and operational control technologies.
• Automates, where possible, data-gathering, reporting, and disclosure processes to improve efficiency, ensure consistency, and minimize errors tied to manual data entry.
• Eases and/or automates the identification of financially material ESG issues and risks.
• Provides prebuilt workflows, report templates, and dashboards that can be customized.
• Facilitates reporting using multiple frameworks and standards and using consistent data to report to multiple stakeholders. Important frameworks include the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Task Force on Carbon-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), and the U.N. Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).
• Speeds and eases disclosure via support for familiar publishing tools (Word, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML) and extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) filing mandates.
• Ensures auditability of data and reports.