Rethink your ESG program to unlock long-term business value

Sustainability is now a business imperative and top of mind for most enterprises. They know that to thrive today, and, in the future, they must give more than they take from the ecosystem and drive a net positive impact. Companies are also facing rising expectations from shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders to make environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations integral to business strategy.

Most companies are increasing their ESG efforts, moving sustainability out from corporate social responsibility and connecting it with their business strategies. Increasingly, the ability to drive net positive impact is becoming a competitive differentiator. But making this change is not straightforward.

Businesses face five key challenges in implementing their ESG agenda:

1. Lack of transparent and accurate data: In order to have reliable, complete, and compliant disclosures and reporting, companies need to capture investor-grade ESG data. This is difficult to do when a company is collecting and reporting data manually and from multiple sources. Disparate, fragmented, and unstructured data also makes it difficult for organizations to gain real-time, actionable insights into their ESG efforts.

2. The need to connect ESG to supply chain and procurement processes: Supply chains carry ESG risks and opportunities, so companies are looking to embed ESG risk mitigation strategies in its supplier management program and obtain ESG-related data – much of which is on scope 3 emissions accounting for nearly 70–80% of total emissions – from suppliers to improve visibility of third-party practices.

3. Lack of standardization in ESG reporting: With proliferating standards to choose from nascent regulatory guidelines, companies run the risk of non- standardized and inconsistent reporting.

4. Limited ESG expertise: Many companies do not have the right skillsets in place to understand sustainability risks, their impact on the business, and established governance and assurance processes. Few companies have the knowledge, capacity, data, or experience to handle the full range of ESG requirements.

5. Limited use of digital technology and analytics: Several organizations still put in significant manual effort to collect, consolidate, and report ESG data and obtain actionable insights, limiting its ability to deliver investor grade ESG information.

Our sustainability solutions help businesses implement an effective ESG program. We bring in functional knowledge, process excellence, technology capabilities, and knowledge partnerships to deliver solutions that drive tangible value. Our solutions include:

ESG advisory:

• ESG assessments: Genpact, with its considerable experience in benchmarking and delivering transformation blueprints, helps companies evaluate their ESG program maturity across strategy, digitalization, data, and reporting against benchmarks and use leading practices to define a roadmap for the future.
• Supplier assessments: We quantify and qualify the ESG impact of your company's supplier base with a blend of third-party data and information requests while also identifying opportunities for improvement.
• Due diligence: We use customized questionnaires, inquiries, analytics, and audits to examine businesses' ESG policies, performance, and track record and carry out due diligence assessments to mitigate risks arising from commercial transactions.

Implementation and monitoring:

• Carbon accounting and decarbonization: Many companies find it relatively simple to measure their scope 1 and 2 emissions. But when it comes to measuring scope 3 emissions that lie outside their organization, most large enterprises struggle. Genpact helps enterprises accurately measure, consolidate, and report all internal and external carbon emissions in line with their disclosure obligations and regulatory requirements and design carbon-reduction roadmaps.
• ESG data management: Without the right data, generating insights to build a sustainable business is impossible. Genpact helps companies manage this process by designing a data management system, including data requirements, capture methods, source identification, governance, and reporting. This helps companies stay compliant and delivers the key insights into the performance companies need to utilize resources efficiently.
• Responsible sourcing: A company's supply chain is one of its biggest sustainability risks – if not its biggest. It is also one of the toughest areas to manage. Genpact helps companies to integrate ESG risks across their third-party risk management program. We conduct focused assessments and due diligence, including design of policy and frameworks on areas such as human rights, antibribery, environmental violation to help companies stay compliant and mitigate ESG risks.
• Supply chain network design: We design structural and operational models that reduce the carbon footprint of supply chains using network design and inventory and transportation optimization.

Reporting and assurance:

• Regulatory audits: Sustainability regulations are evolving so quickly that companies can find it hard to keep up. Genpact helps businesses stay compliant by performing periodic statutory and compliance audits.
• Limited assurance: Our analytics and evidence-based reviews provide assurance of the accuracy, timeliness, and completeness of ESG reporting and disclosures.
• ESG reporting: We deploy integrated and simplified reporting for investor-grade ESG disclosures in line with international guidelines such as the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures), and SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board).

Genpact's solutions are helping companies digitalize and successfully implement complex sustainability programs at scale to meet their ESG objectives. For example, we:

• Helped a multibillion-dollar global consumer goods company expand by a factor of five its third-party due diligence coverage to include human rights, health and safety, and environmental risk drivers.
• Supported one of the top five global alcoholic beverage corporations to take its supplier code procedure compliance from less than 70% to more than 95% and screened its suppliers against human rights, labor, and health and safety risks.
• Worked with a large German e-commerce company to integrate ESG risks into its supplier management program by performing additional screenings across its supplier databases for parameters related to environment, health and safety, human rights, and labor rights.

At Genpact, our commitment to sustainability runs deep. A strong heritage of leading large-scale process transformations equips us with the ability to drive synergies and efficiencies across ESG data management. Our ecosystem includes best-of-breed technology and knowledge partners and an established pool of sustainability experts. And we can partner with organizations along the entire ESG lifecycle – across assess, run, monitor, and report processes.

We have founded the frameworks we help build on years of transforming the governance and compliance practices of global organizations. Our deep expertise in the area enables us to gather and manage the data and provide the assurance companies need to seamlessly drive their ESG programs.