A Global Focus on Sustainability is Reshaping Corporate Agendas
It has become increasingly clear that sustainable development is now one of the driving forces of our time. By taking a quick look at news headlines, we see this reoccurring theme amplified by modern social movements and the continued impacts of global crises, including climate-related disasters and resource scarcity. The world is directing its political, societal, and economic focus toward data-driven sustainability. In addition, its Triple Bottom Line philosophy calls for a balanced promotion of people, planet, and profit-focused objectives and initiatives. Taken together, this leaves corporations wondering: How do we manage to preserve planetary boundaries and thus a livable future within these natural limits?
Economic growth and stability for corporations still depends on traditional levers, such as employee retention, revenue, and profitability. However, new drivers now affect these factors, including globalization, demographic shifts, climate change, resource scarcity, and consumer expectations.
Global Movements Addressing Climate Change and ESG Issues
The 2030 Agenda (Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs)
A set of goals put forth by the United Nations serving as “the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all people and the world.” The goals are intended to be achieved by the year 2030, reinforcing the urgency of sustainability initiatives.
The Paris Climate Agreement
An international treaty on climate change that has decarbonization at the top of its agenda. The agreement requires nations to take powerful actions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, driving corporate decarbonization strategies worldwide.
Nations are responding by formulating their own regulations and action plans. For example, Germany’s Climate Change Act was revised to include more aggressive timelines after it was deemed insufficient by the Federal Constitutional Court. Similarly, in 2025, companies face new regulatory developments such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) in the EU and enhanced SEC climate disclosure rules in the U.S., both of which reinforce sustainability as a core corporate responsibility.
Other regulatory developments are also shaping corporate agendas and pushing data-driven sustainability to become one of the central management tasks. Examples include Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, which enforces corporate responsibility across the value chain, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which expands reporting requirements for companies operating in the EU, and ESG-driven financial regulations such as the EU Taxonomy for sustainable investments.
The Need for Integrated Data-Driven Sustainability
For governments and businesses, these regulations and agreements amount to complex systems to measure, baselines to compare, and the need for a regular and proven methodology to measure their progress against these goals. To meet these challenges, companies need a new way of tracking the performance and progress of sustainability initiatives: An integrated digitization.
Corporate Data-Driven Sustainability 2.0 and Future-Proofing
Many companies now recognize the importance of sustainability for their business success and understand it’s about future-proofing their business for growth and success in an increasingly changing time.
Some trends driving the focus on future-proofing include:
- Increasing pressure from investment firms, boards, and shareholders for businesses to not only report but take action on sustainability data.
- Transparency demands on supply chains, business processes, and DE&I initiatives driven by consumers.
- Regulations with financial consequences.
- A competitive labor market forcing businesses to re-evaluate their attractiveness to a new generational perspective.
Beyond Spreadsheets: The Next-Gen of Sustainability Reporting
It is clear that the increasing formalization of sustainability and ESG management within businesses – especially through reporting along recognized standards, such as GRI, CDP, TCFD, and the EU Taxonomy– has spurred a focus on a data-first approach over the qualitative narratives, which too easily cross the line into greenwashing. The amount and depth of data in the form of non-financial indicators and KPIs, with which sustainability can be managed, is increasing. As a result, spreadsheets are increasingly reaching their limits, which simultaneously impacts data quality.
To combat this issue and establish next-gen reporting practices, the following program attributes are necessary for effectively managing sustainability:
1. Digitization
- Reliable systems to capture and integrate ESG data across business units.
- AI-driven analytics to enhance reporting and compliance efforts.
2. Collaboration
- Engaging relevant stakeholders in sustainability planning and execution.
- Supplier engagement to ensure transparency and accountability across the value chain.
3. Building a digital workforce
- Increased demand for data experts who can analyze and interpret ESG trends.
To meet these requirements and advance data-driven sustainability and ESG programs into the core of business operations – in essence, to give them a seat at the table – software solutions are key. The more complex and extensive sustainability becomes in the corporate context, the more important software solutions become. Experience shows that spreadsheets reach their limits with increasing complexity, they become error-prone due to incorrect cell references, and data input is not always reliably traceable.
In addition, data is often entered into different spreadsheets for various purposes. Thus numerous files and data sources often exist, which makes it difficult to ensure comparability of data. This often leads to additional time and efforts as different sources have to be maintained. With software, you can build appropriate structures that leverage these synergies and interactions in data entry and evaluation.
Sustainability Software in Practice
As a corporate sustainability manager, using professional software solutions, such as Cority’s Sustainability Cloud, provides a central platform in which all relevant information and data are documented. This can be completed comprehensively and with transparency by different stakeholders in a reliable manner, using pre-structured data entries and automated workflows to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Additional validation and plausibility checks increase data quality, for example in the case of a more complex corporate structure, where data needs to be aggregated to a corporate level.
Through integrated sustainability standards, required data can be mapped to avoid double effort. If two different standards request a KPI at once, companies only need to collect the data once. Once they complete this step they can integrate them into the separate reports. Furthermore, intuitive dashboards support the evaluation and steering of sustainability topics, as well as the visualization for reporting. In the case of an audit, data entries and comments are documented in the software by means of creating a history that can be traced at any time.
How Cority Can Enable Corporate Data-Driven Sustainability
Cority’s Sustainability Cloud can adapt to the demands of corporate sustainability, without compromising data quality. Automated workflows, interfaces to other systems, as well as the implementation and linking of complex structures, are not only cost and time-efficient but also accelerate sustainability performance within the company. Simultaneously, stakeholders are empowered with information through collaborative work within the software to ensure sustainability standards are being met.
Moreover, Cority provides strategic advisory services that support global companies with creating, implementing, and tracking progress towards their sustainability strategies. With a proven track record of supporting over 600 companies on their sustainability journey, Cority’s comprehensive approach equips businesses with the tools and expertise needed to navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape and capitalize on emerging opportunities.