Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Socialsuite
Interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting is soaring – and one tech firm aims to make it accessible for all. Social Suite, an ESG and impact reporting software adopted by more than 165 organisations globally, is at the forefront of this movement.
Speaking to 10-Minute IT Jam, Brad Garry, CEO of Social Suite, explained how the software is helping smaller and mid-sized enterprises overcome the complexities of ESG reporting, an area once reserved for large corporations with ample resources.
"For those organisations that are unfamiliar with Social Suite, we're working with 165 organisations, predominantly in Australia and North America. Essentially, what we're doing is helping those organisations get started and mature with their environmental, social, and corporate governance reporting," he said.
Garry said that while large companies can afford bespoke solutions, consultants, and dedicated in-house ESG teams, smaller businesses face an uphill battle. "It's complex, it's expensive for those organisations, and what we're doing is creating a technology solution to really make it affordable and accessible…to get started and then also mature with their ESG disclosures, reporting, and that data collection piece," he explained.
A rapidly intensifying market
Over the past five years – and particularly in the last two – Garry said the adoption of ESG and impact reporting has been "far more pronounced," driven by three main forces: capital, customers and compliance.
From a capital perspective, Garry said, "There's trillions of dollars that are flowing into ESG from investors, largely the big institutional capital. What they're looking for is the same way that companies are disclosing their financial information, they're hoping companies will also disclose non-financial data." Investors are interested in identifying "the inherent risks that these companies may have and making investment decisions along that," he added.
But investment isn't the only driver. Tenders and procurement processes now increasingly require demonstrable ESG credentials. "Large organisations, and particularly government, are asking for companies to substantiate their environmental, social, governance credentials as they respond to RFPs. Companies adopting it will certainly be in a better position to win those tenders when they're able to provide detailed information," Garry said.
He argued that it's not enough for organisations to cite "ad hoc" green initiatives; what's required is comprehensive and verifiable ESG reporting.
Compliance pressures ramping up
The third key trend is the introduction of new regulation. "We're seeing a lot of legislation coming to the market in Europe," Garry said, noting that even if an organisation is headquartered in Australia or North America, doing business in Europe may soon require strict ESG compliance. "But we're also seeing in Australia and North America that there is pending legislation as well, so that means the companies now need to start to prepare themselves and to get in a position where they can start to respond."
Social Suite's technology aims to take the pain out of these shifting requirements. "We see our platform as an enabler for all organisations, so they can prepare that information and then review it before it's publicly released," Garry said.
Artificial intelligence brings new efficiency
Innovation, Garry explained, is coming from many directions. "Unsurprisingly, AI is an area that we're starting to see some really interesting innovation around, and that's largely due to organisations wanting to remove some of the complexity out of ESG reporting."
He described how Social Suite is leveraging AI to handle both qualitative and quantitative data, then overlay it with regulatory frameworks. "Organisations can prepare their ESG disclosures much more efficiently. It removes a lot of the time… but it definitely allows organisations to get a lot more efficiency in the ESG reporting and disclosures," he said.
While AI will not entirely replace the human element – some oversight will always be necessary before public release – it promises a significant boost in productivity for users.
Next on the product roadmap
Social Suite's product development team, Garry said, remains focused on simplicity and affordability. "What we're looking to do is remove complexity and continue to make it really affordable for organisations to report their ESG disclosures," he added.
A significant challenge is the growing universe of reporting frameworks. "With more than 300 different ESG reporting frameworks, being able to collect data and respond can be quite overwhelming for organisations," he said. The company's solution is to allow organisations to "input data once and then map out to multiple frameworks," consolidating information into a central repository and reducing reliance on inflexible spreadsheets.
Garry also pointed out the importance of stakeholder engagement features, such as automated materiality assessments. "We're able to go out and engage stakeholders and create quite comprehensive risk and opportunity materiality assessments for organisations. That's definitely one of the areas that really focused on as the next versions of the Social Suite platform gets released," he said.
Looking ahead
As regulation tightens, investor scrutiny increases, and stakeholders pay closer attention to sustainability, Garry expects ESG reporting to become an integral business function – not a nice-to-have.
"Data accuracy is absolutely crucial. In the same way that organisations don't do their financials in spreadsheets, nor should their ESG data be done in spreadsheets," he said.
For businesses ready to tackle the challenge, Garry's message is clear: "We see that as an enabler for organisations…It has been great to find out more about Social Suite and how we support our customers," he said. "Thanks for the opportunity."
