Expert ESG Advisory Services | A Strategic Approach

Developing Your ESG & Sustainability Strategy for Long-Term Value

Want to build a business that lasts? Sustainable business practices prioritize long-term stability over short-term financial rewards. Strategically, they help you improve performance and address risk while positively impacting the planet, community, or society.

When your business strategy integrates Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), it can help you better measure your impact on your community and beyond. This in turn can increase stakeholder trust, help your company thrive amidst future change, and better tell the story of your organization.

Why ESG Initiatives Matter

Increasingly, stakeholders are looking for more transparency that your company’s practices are helping the environment it serves. With the recently passed enhanced SEC disclosure rules in the U.S. and the new California regulations becoming law, companies should prepare to adapt to increasing ESG compliance requirements. Large retailers and other businesses are also expecting their suppliers to get onboard their ESG goals to reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Whether your business has an ESG program in place or is in the process of developing one, it’s attracting increased scrutiny from stakeholders and regulators alike. So your statements and reports published around your ESG goals, targets, and achievements must be defined appropriately to avoid greenwashing and to be executed effectively.

If you’re a board member, head of sustainability, or finance personnel in charge of ESG initiatives at your company, Centri can support you with the guidance needed to confidently move forward in your ESG journey.

Our 4-Step Approach to Helping You Build An Effective ESG Program

1. ESG Strategy and Readiness Assessment

We’ll start by evaluating your company’s ESG integration into your overall business strategy. This includes identifying areas that are important and material to your organization in terms of stakeholder importance and business impact.

Doing so allows you to develop your ESG goals across the environmental, social, and governance pillars. We will help guide you in the goal-setting process based on the 17 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), SASB’s industry-specific best practices, and benchmarking against your peers. Next, we’ll evaluate your company’s preparedness to report accurately and completely on your ESG goals, metrics, and related progress. We’ll then help you develop an action-oriented implementation roadmap and recommendations along with a timeline for its execution.

2. ESG and Sustainability Reporting Process Improvement

We assist companies in the implementation or enhancement of your governance structures, ESG-related policies, data mapping, metric calculations, technology, and reporting processes to ensure metrics and KPIs are calculated and reported accurately. We will also provide your team with best practices on how to implement internal controls throughout your data collection, calculation, and reporting processes to ensure your teams are in the best position to report accurately.

3. ESG Compliance Reporting Readiness

As new requirements become effective globally, it is important that organizations are prepared to comply based on key established frameworks and standards such as SASB, TCFD, and the GHG Protocol. Large retailers are also requiring their suppliers to start disclosing requirements include the following:

SEC Climate Disclosure Final Rules for publicly traded companies in the US
California Rules (SB 253 and SB 261)

4. ESG Program Management (Outsourced / Co-Sourced)

As ESG and sustainability reporting becomes more of a standard, we can operate as an outsourced/co-sourced ESG Controller to manage your ESG program via KPIs, continued education, process, and control enhancements.

We’ll also work alongside your accounting and finance teams on any required disclosures or regulatory requirements. Plus, we’ll continue to communicate progress to management and any oversight board committees in charge of governance. As a piece of that, we’ll even support your marketing and legal team in the review of your impact report and continue supporting your teams as they continue to communicate progress towards your ESG goals, actions taken, and related metrics.