ERM and Workiva partner to aid climate and sustainability disclosure demand

Sustainability consultancy ERM and cloud platform Workiva have announced a new partnership to help clients with their ESG disclosures. The alliance will advise businesses and provide cloud-based technology solutions to shape their sustainability reporting.

Kushal Mashru, head of strategic partnerships at ERM, said, “At ERM, we are continuing to expand our ecosystem of partners to cover every area of the sustainability value chain, to help our clients meet their evolving goals. We look forward to collaborating with Workiva to provide businesses with an end-to-end solution that will help them to effectively navigate the sustainability disclosure landscape.”

Workiva works to help companies with the transparent reporting of their climate data - building and delivering a cloud platform for assured, integrated disclosures to meet stakeholder demands for action, transparency, and disclosure of financial and non-financial data. This includes an industry-first, which offers the only unified SaaS platform that brings customers’ financial reporting, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) together in a controlled, secure, audit-ready platform.

ERM is the world’s largest pureplay sustainability consultancy, and by partnering with Workiva, it hopes to boost its offering to clients for assured integrated reporting. With Workiva, ERM will help businesses and provide cloud-based technology solutions to collect and manage ESG data and disclosures in real time to develop their sustainability reporting.

At the same time, the move will also boost Workiva’s offering. The firm’s platform combines data integrity and collaboration with control, providing a centralised hub for ESG data that can be mapped to reporting frameworks. According to a relief from the firms, such capabilities, when combined with ERM's sustainability strategy and disclosure, climate change, and EHS depth and credibility, will offer companies an end-to-end solution for data management and reporting that enables them to meet rapidly evolving sustainability reporting regulations while driving sustainability performance.

"The expansion of new global ESG regulations, such as the climate disclosure rules introduced by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), are driving the convergence of non-financial and financial reporting. Workiva is the only platform in the industry bringing Financial Reporting, ESG, and GRC together in one secure, controlled, audit-ready environment for true assured integrated reporting," said Paul Volpe, Senior Vice President of Growth at Workiva. “Together with ERM, our mutual clients will be able to streamline their ESG reporting, operationalize their sustainability strategies, and collaborate in real-time, all of which are required to help customers address regulatory requirements but more importantly drive their business goals."

With the global journey to net zero encountering major headwinds, it is widely understood that properly monitoring and reporting emissions data will be crucial to its success. Most organisations also know this – with 85% of organisations recognising the value of emissions data to this end. But studies suggest that as many as half are still not using data adequately to that end, while 48% are not “well positioned enough” to use data to drive further decision making.