Because “highly accurate estimates” won’t survive an audit, an investor, or a CFO.
In short, sustainability is becoming a normalized business function. But, sustainability teams have been running off of spreadsheets, once-a-year reporting, and ad hoc workflows, leaving big questions about data quality on the table.
The phrases data quality and data confidence are a bit vague, so here are five ways to achieve data confidence from the user perspective.
1. Corporate Reporting
Reporting is a basic function for sustainability teams, but what they often forget is that regulators often publish reported data, making it available to investors too. And investors use AI.
Data confidence is achieved when the numbers line up, and investor AI can’t find the error or contradiction. Publish reports from a master unified data set and use AI tools to check your data before investors do.
2. Audits
Audit requirements by lenders, insurance and regulators are expanding. The sustainability audit checklist is very similar to the financial audit checklist, going beyond simple accuracy tests.
Data confidence is achieved when your processes are streamlined, automated and documented, with an annual audit-readiness calendar. Auditors will be checking your methods, supporting technology and specific data samples.
3. Climate Risk
Lenders, insurance companies and investors are facing increasing costs of climate change, and are looking for the data signals on where it might happen, how much it might cost and what is being done to mitigate that risk. This is exactly what the Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) team does.
Data confidence is achieved when the GRC team can immediately use your data. They want to integrate with financial data to estimate costs by scenario and do instant comparison to other factors. Slice and dice your data first, so you’re not embarrassed in front of peers.
4. Financial Decisions
Every year companies go through the annual planning cycle, making forecasts, planning strategic investments, and allocating budgets. Specialized software tools for financial planning and analytics are used.
Data confidence is achieved when sustainability data forms a sensible forecast (no oddities!), is sufficiently accurate and granular to be used in capital budgeting analysis, and is on time for the annual planning cycle. Reduce CFO stress by fitting into normal financial planning.
5. Business Impact
It is not enough to support corporate functions, sustainability teams are now being asked to deliver business wins. This includes cost savings from efficient data preparation, ROI from reduced energy and water expense, and ROI from reduced audit expense.
Data confidence is achieved when ROI metrics can be tracked over time to document business impact. This will include hours saved, accuracy improvements, cost reductions and more. There’s nothing fancy going on, it’s all about quantifying the importance of the sustainability team.
GLYNT.AI helps sustainability and finance teams build the data foundation that passes every one of these five tests, delivering audit-ready, finance-grade sustainability data at 99.5% accuracy.
