As the year winds down, it’s time to reflect on our accomplishments and growth. Well, our businesses should do the same. In this day and age, embracing sustainability is no longer just a buzzword – it's a vital component of a company’s blueprint for success. 

The ESG framework isn’t just about portraying a rosy image of your organisation, it is also the compass to guide you through the ever-changing business landscape and steer your ship in the right direction. The stakes are high. Neglecting ESG-related issues could lead to steep remediation costs and an uncertain, unsustainable future. But don’t worry, there are tools to help you navigate this ESG terrain successfully. 

What is ESG Management? 

Let’s start with the basics: What exactly is ESG? It breaks down into three key components, Environment, Society, and Governance. 

The “E” in ESG stands for Environment and it deals with your company’s impact on the planet. It measures things like your energy consumption and waste generation, in order to identify your position on common environmental concerns such as carbon emissions and climate change. 

Moving on to the “S”, which stands for Society. This aspect focuses on the relationships your organisation has with its people, the local community, and other business institutions. It's all about issues such as labour relations, diversity and inclusion – the vital elements of social responsibility. 

Lastly, we have the “G” for Governance, which revolves around the processes your company undertakes to govern itself. This is to ensure compliance with the law and make responsible decisions. 

Given the vast array of issues that fall under the ESG umbrella and the intricate connections between them, defining a solid ESG strategy demands not only a talented team but also a robust tool to keep everything organised and promote collaboration. 

ServiceNow, a leading IT Service Management (ITSM) and workflow automation platform, plays a pivotal role in helping organizations elevate their sustainability standards, particularly when it comes to reducing carbon footprint in the realm of IT operations. In this article, we’ll look into details of how organisations can harness their platforms’ readily available capabilities to tackle critical ESG management tasks effectively.

ServiceNow ESG Management

With heightened ESG consciousness among businesses, ServiceNow has made a significant move by introducing the ESG Workspace app, available on the App Store. It has been meticulously crafted for planning, managing, and reporting ESG impacts and is essentially your one-stop solution for transforming the once manual, scattered, and error-prone ESG management processes into an automated and easily auditable experience.

What sets it apart from all the other tools? The ESG Workspace boasts a streamlined user interface that simplifies both documentation and visualisation of critical topics in an interactive manner. This facilitates key tasks like resource prioritisation, decision-making, and crafting compelling narratives. What’s more, it seamlessly connects and syncs with the core ServiceNow platform and its diverse product suites, so that it can become your ESG Command Centre where you can track your sustainability impacts and chart-out forward-looking roadmaps.

• Executive Dashboard 

Within the Workspace, the Executive Dashboard paints a comprehensive picture of your ESG performance, showcasing everything from the material topics and goals set up by your team to the related disclosure information. Your team will also have the flexibility to configure personalised dashboards to cater to specific business needs.  

These dashboards provide a straightforward visual presentation of individual metrics and trends, offering a holistic view of the entire ESG scenario with context. The feature is ideal for communicating your ESG efforts to the broader team, making it easier to illustrate progress and impact. 

• Data Collection 

Data Collection is a significant chunk of the ESG management process, often being the most time-intensive part. Relying on manual methods, such as digging up information from email communications and spreadsheets, is a recipe for errors and inefficiencies. 

In contrast, ServiceNow’s solution streamlines the process by seamlessly connecting to your core platform’s database and automatically importing data that you’ve defined. You can also integrate the app with your financial and procurement system for accumulating supply chain data, which can be used for sustainability and responsibility reporting.  

For instances where manual data entry remains necessary, the tool presents an intuitive spreadsheet-style interface, minimising the transition time needed from your old system. It is significantly more user-friendly for contributors and approvers to navigate and review information though, as tasks are presented in a role-specific format. 

• Status Checks 

By centralising your data in one location, the dedicated ESG workspace empowers you to effortlessly monitor your goals and progress, by offering a single, reliable source of truth. The setup allows you to establish goals of varying complexity, with optional subgoals and targets. These are then presented on your dashboard as a clear graph of hierarchy, supplying your team and the wider organisation with valuable information and context. 

• Automated Disclosures 

Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of ESG guidelines and regulations, whether internal or external, can be a complex task when it comes to creating disclosures and reports that adhere to these constantly shifting standards. That’s where ServiceNow’s ESG workspace shines, as it comes equipped with an ESG reporting framework that includes SASB, TCFD, and CSRD to automatically generate up-to-date reports. The flexibility further extends to accommodating ad-hoc disclosure requirements for individual customers, investors, or any other stakeholders. 

For extra convenience, integration with Microsoft Office is an option. It speeds up the drafting process by automatically pulling the latest data points from the platform whenever they undergo modifications, ensuring that the documents stay aligned with the most current information, all with minimal effort on your part. 

If you’re seeking to level up your ESG efforts and can benefit from a streamlined interface for data collection, progress tracking, and automated reporting, ServiceNow’s ESG workspace deserves your consideration. If you’re already a ServiceNow user, be sure to explore the App Store for additional insights. And if you’re curious about what ServiceNow can bring to the table, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. As an Elite ServiceNow partner with years of experience, we come from the client side and have a deep understanding of how to work our magic to add substantial value to your business.