Introduction
After you ingest your organization's raw sustainability data into the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data model by using the Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, you can augment the standardized data further by using the ESG metrics capability and the Social and governance insights capability.
The two capabilities together can help organizations handle the complex regulatory landscape and meet the recent expectations of ESG performance and transparency from partners, investors, and customers. For example, Sustainability data solutions in Fabric supports the May 2024 guidelines of the European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The ESG metrics capability helps organizations compute the quantitative key performance indicators (KPIs) that this disclosure standard and others require. The Social and governance insights capability helps organizations compute other data aggregates for areas, such as data privacy, service disruption, board of directors, environmental, health, safety incidents, and more.
This module focuses on the ESG metrics capability that uses the standardized ESG data in the Sustainability data solutions lakehouse. To use this capability, you need to extract the raw data from your internal systems, transform and load it into the ESG data model, and then transform it so that it's now in the processed lakehouse (also known as the silver lakehouse in the medallion architecture).
Then, you can deploy the ESG metrics capability to the same Fabric workspace. This capability allows you to select KPIs that you want to compute from a prebuilt library of KPI and metric definitions that align with disclosure regulations, such as the CSRD. These prebuilt computations use the semantic model and the Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) query language. This approach provides a framework for you to extend and customize for your specific requirements. As part of computing the KPIs, the system creates multidimensional aggregate tables that provide a single view into ESG topics, such as emissions, water usage, water generation, and more.
After the system generates the metric output, users can access computed KPI data for downstream consumption. As part of the capability, it includes prebuilt Microsoft Power BI dashboards. Organizations can also support audit functions for the computed data by connecting the data to Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager by using the prebuilt connectors. After the system connects the data, you can pull the data into prebuilt CSRD templates for audit assessments. Users can also perform other analysis by using the created aggregate tables to support the generating of KPIs.
The following diagram illustrates the life cycle of the data. The data flows from the ESG standardized data model, the system uses it to compute KPIs, and then the data is available for downstream applications.
After you ingest your organization's raw sustainability data into the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data model by using Sustainability data solutions in Microsoft Fabric, you can use the ingestion and transformation capabilities of Fabric to transform your data.