This is a series of stories on our own journey of creating a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Standard compliant report this year.
As many other companies in Europe, Gofore is preparing for the expanding sustainability reporting. This is the first story in a series, where we unveil our own CSRD journey in the hope of supporting others. What has the ride been like so far, Chief Sustainability Officer Kristiina Härkönen?
– One word: educational. The biggest changes are related to two things: what’s new is that the sustainability report must be audited, and its validity must match that of financial information’s. The other factor that steers the entire sustainability work is that everything throughout the value chain must now be considered and not just our own operations. Until now, us and probably a majority of companies have mainly focused on reporting their own operations, but corporate sustainability is now extended externally and also deepened internally.
How have we been preparing for this so far?
– I personally began looking into this in the spring of 2023. I familiarised myself with the standard and studied, and when the standard was accepted at the end of last summer, it became certain that this is now really happening and in a tight schedule.
The biggest single thing that helped us prepare for this last year was our double materiality assessment (DMA) that we began in the fall and that was completed in February this year. After that, we have conducted the so-called gap analysis, i.e. going over the data points that we base on the DMA. We made the stakeholder interviews of the assessment ourselves and learned a lot in the process.
What are we going to do next?
– At the moment, we have some 400 data points that are material to us. We have a working group that is about to go over all the data points and distribute responsibility for collecting data and other information. A big part of the project is also defining climate scenarios. This too is such a new issue that there aren’t really any case examples to look at.
What’s our working group like?
– In addition to myself, it consists of experts from our finance department, one agile coach that mainly works with customers and who has studied sustainability, two experts that focus on emission calculation, as well as our in-house legal and our head of procurement.
The shoemakers’ children sometimes go barefoot – How do our systems support this?
– In our financial reporting, we have used a system called Tagetik, where we have now purchased an ESG extension. What’s technically relevant is machine readability and audit trail accuracy. The systems are not really essential, the data collected with them is.
What do you find is the biggest challenge in preparing for CSRD-compliancy?
– I find the project meaningful; I think CSRD is important development that can already be seen as a competitive factor in our business.
However, companies were left with very little time to adapt to the political decision, so this is probably a reactive learning journey for almost everyone. I trust that good collaboration and going easy on those who make it happen will get us there.
In the heat of the project, it helps to remember that we are all in the same boat, doing this as the first people in the world.
Read the second part of the series: Finance team navigates the fog
