Introduction

  • 5 minutes

External ESG Reporting in Microsoft for Sustainability empowers organizations to collaboratively develop voluntary and regulatory disclosure reports in accordance with various standards and frameworks. The inclusion of approval and audit workflows helps customers facilitate report revision, data review, and collaboration across their teams. When you use these capabilities, External ESG Reporting simplifies the reporting process, improves efficiency, and enhances transparency in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting.

Screenshot of the External ESG Reporting home page.

This solution helps organizations with the creation, completion, and approval of reports that adhere to multiple ESG disclosure standards, encompassing quantitative and qualitative metrics. It provides a range of templates, frameworks, and guidelines that organizations can fill out and reuse for future reports, which helps streamline the reporting process for years ahead.

The templates are customizable, allowing for flexible data input options, from numerical data to rich text. As a result, organizations can create comprehensive reports that accurately reflect their ESG performance. Additionally, customers can incorporate their own templates. Furthermore, collaboration and approval workflows are available to help improve data quality and consistency.

External ESG Reporting includes standardized reporting templates for the following frameworks:

  • Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

  • Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards (ASRS)

  • Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) 1 and 2

  • Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

  • International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 1 and 2

  • Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)

Additionally, External ESG Reporting (Preview) offers:

  • Integration with Microsoft Sustainability Manager for company profiles and data points.

  • A workflow user interface (UI) for task management and content approval.

  • Disclosure generation in Microsoft Excel.

  • Extensibility for custom template creation.

Screenshot of the All standards screen.

Solution focus area

Contoso Corp faces the challenge of meeting diverse voluntary and regulatory reporting frameworks for ESG disclosure. The lack of standardization across various reporting frameworks makes it difficult to determine which metrics to report and how to structure disclosures. To enhance its external ESG reporting, meet stakeholder expectations, and comply with regulatory requirements, Contoso decides to use the External ESG Reporting capabilities in Microsoft Sustainability Manager. This tool empowers Contoso to collaboratively create comprehensive and accurate reports, navigate a range of standards and frameworks, and ensure compliance and data integrity through built-in approval and audit workflows.

Personas and scenario

This exercise features the following personas:

  • Amber Rodriguez - Sustainability specialist for Contoso Corp

  • Jamie Evans - Emissions analyst for Contoso Corp

    Screenshot of personas.

These personas participate in sequential scenarios, as outlined in the following image.

Screenshot of scenarios.