Harnessing AI for Enhanced Sustainability Reporting

Inclus is integral to Swisspearl’s business processes, particularly in sustainability development and double materiality assessment. Pasi Koskela, Head of Sustainability at Swisspearl, reflects on their current venture into their first Sustainability report, emphasizing the transformative nature of their approach to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Swisspearl is not only complying with reporting standards but also deriving intrinsic benefits for the organization.

Partnering with Inclus, Swisspearl develops robust methodologies and data interpretations beyond mere reporting compliance. The aim is to integrate sustainability reporting into Swisspearl’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) to promote strategic thinking and bridge potential competency gaps. With Inclus’ help, they weave sustainability data into their ERM framework, bolstering their risk assessment and strategic decision-making capabilities.

The double materiality assessment process, particularly supported by Inclus, significantly enhances the collection of inputs and data for assessments. Inclus’ AI tools proved to be exceptionally beneficial in processing and summarizing the approximately 3 500 text and numerical inputs, avoiding the tedious task of manually sorting through extensive data in Excel files.

“Forget Excel. AI is the way to help process the massive amounts of data we are trying to make sense of.” Pasi Koskela, Head of Sustainability, Swisspearl

Strategic integration and stakeholder engagement

Swisspearl leverages Inclus to analyze and visualize assessment results, also finding it beneficial in creating methodological documentation for auditors’ reviews. Their commitment to sustainability is further demonstrated through a fully digital assessment and reporting process that involves participants from seven countries without the associated costs and impacts, like CO2 emissions from travel. High participation rates and the facilitated discussion of complex financial impacts mark the success of this digital approach.

Inclus also offers process planning support, which helps Swisspearl in pinpointing relevant topics and their complexities. Dynamic visualization features offered by Inclus allow for a comprehensive understanding of diverse perspectives on risks and opportunities, aiding in the assessment of risk against probability.

”We were looking for a partner with whom we can develop our methodology and interpretation of data and not just fulfill the reporting obligation. In Inclus’ team and tool, we found the support and sounding board we needed to develop our approaches.”

The next step in taking the double materiality forward, is engagement with external stakeholders. Swisspearl sees Inclus as the primary platform to support this process and the potent conversations among stakeholders. These discussions not only will share light on various points of view but also have the potential to deliver insight into the strategic discussion and performance of the company.