Why sustainability reporting now sits with the CFO

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today's discussion focuses on a fundamental shift taking place across the corporate reporting landscape.

Sustainability reporting is increasingly becoming a CFO responsibility. As stakeholder expectations rise and sustainability disclosures demand the same levels of governance, accuracy, and auditability as financial reporting, finance teams are playing a much larger role in ensuring trusted and transparent reporting.

To help us understand what's driving this transition, we're pleased to be joined today by Vedantix, who will share key findings from their latest research on sustainability reporting trends, market development, and the role finance leaders are playing in shaping the future of corporate reporting. Now let's get started.

So we are gonna do a little quick intro just to the presenters today, then I'll hand over to, Verdantix. Jessica will will take us through the research.

We'll do a bit of an an overview of ESG. You'll see a demonstration of of the ESG solution from OneStream.

I'll come back and do a very quick introduction to to to OneStream, and then we'll have time for some questions. So there is a q and a, feature in in the, in the webinar there.

You can post questions, and we'll be monitoring those, and we'll try to answer some of those at the end. So into a quick introduction.

So I'd like to open up the the floor to Jessica just to say hello and, introduce, yourself, please, Jessica.

Great. Thank you, Nick.

My name is Jessica Pransky. I'm a senior manager of the ESG and sustainability research team at Verdantix.

As Nick mentioned, Verdantix is an independent research and advisory firm, and we've been covering the sustainability space for over fifteen years. Andrea.

Alright.

Over to, you.

Jessica. Hi, everyone.

My name is Andrea Tout. I am the group product manager over ESG here at OneStream Software.

I've been with the company for a little over eleven years now, and I am based in Michigan. So excited to be here, excited to be presenting with you here, Jessica, and I will kick it over to Liane.

Hello, everyone. It's Liane BOYER.

I'm actually out of, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I've been with OneStream for almost seven years now and, have been spending most of my time in the ESG side of the house as well as consolidations.

But my role here today is the ESG domain lead, and I will be bringing you through the demonstration of the software. And, I'll pass it back over to Nick.

Great. Thank you.

So thank you, Rolando. Yes.

I'm Nick Cox, part of the product marketing team at OneStream, and I round off the, nationalities for the for for the presenting team today being being from The United Kingdom. So, there we go.

We're we thought we'd just show where we're all from. So with that, I will, hand over to Jessica, and, and, please would you like to move on? Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Nick.

And thank you everyone for joining us today. Really timely topic that we have to talk about here.

Talking about the case for sustainability reporting and the evolving role of the CFO. And these are some of the key themes that at Verdantix we've seen in our research over the past year or so.

And I'm gonna present to you some of the findings for our most recent global corporate survey, as well as some other findings we've had speaking to, to various sustainability leaders in the market. But before I jump into that, I just wanted to make you aware of something called Verdantix Vantage.

So if you are a sustainability leader, a financial leader on the line, I really recommend that you look into our Vantage platform, which gives you complimentary access to all of the research that I'm going to be talking about today. You just need to go on to the Verdantix Vantage website, sign up, and wait for someone to verify that you are in fact a qualified buyer.

And then there's no catch. It is completely free, if you meet our qualifications.

And with that, I'd like to first introduce three of the key themes that I'll be talking about today. So the first is this idea about resiliency and business value.

Really that we've seen a shift from how sustainability leaders are thinking about sustainability initiatives in general, going more from a compliance mindset to more of a mindset of how can I really make my company, be resilient to whatever is at stake and really reduce risk along the way? One of the other key themes is that in order to do so, to really build this argument for resiliency, sustainability leaders really need to work with their financial teams, with the CFOs and really build the business case for why to pursue certain sustainability initiatives. And I'll dive into a little bit as to why that is and the trends that we've seen in the market over the past few years.

And then another the third key theme is all about data quality. So in order to really build that business case, companies' sustainability teams really need to have a lot of trust and confidence in their sustainability data.

And they also need to make sure that their sustainability data passes muster with the chief financial officer. So is it auditable? Is it timely, accurate, investor grade? These are all things that are gonna become or that already are really important for financial teams.

Alright. And with that, I'll kick off talking about the business case for sustainability and where we're seeing the actual return show up.

Alright. So if you work in sustainability, no matter where you're located in the world, you know that the past year or tow that past year or so, we've been on a bit of a roller coaster.

The early twenty twenties, you know, sustainability, as I mentioned earlier, was heavily tied to compliance. We had the CSRD, the SEC, and their climate disclosure rule, and all that shifted really dramatically at the beginning of 2025.

We had omnibus come into play, which greatly reduced who is considered in scope for CSRD, and the SEC withdrew their climate legislation here in The US. And what we saw in the market, how a lot of companies reacted to this, was a lot of companies took a pause in terms of advancing some of their sustainability initiatives.

But now, you know, fast forward a year, we're seeing more clarity in the market in terms of these regulations. We know who's in scope for regulations like CSRD and CS triple d.

We've seen more countries adopting regulations aligned with ISSB. And even in The US, we're seeing states really push ahead with, state level climate related disclosures.

And as we're seeing more firms understand their compliance obligations, we understand that these firms have also had more time to think about not just how do I comply, but if I have to go through this effort of gathering all this data, making sure I can disclose it, it's of high enough quality, How do I use it in a more meaningful way? How do I really create value from all of this data? And I wanted to jump to a survey statistic from our most recent global corporate survey. So, this survey just for background was fielded in April and May of this year.

And as part of the survey, we interviewed 400 sustainability leaders from around the world and from a variety of industries. And what we found is that more than two thirds of firms told us that measure measurable return on investment is either their most important or a very important outcome for their sustainability investments.

So so over two thirds, that's a pretty meaningful shift. And what we saw just a few years ago when companies were really talking about compliance was one of their most important outcomes for their sustainability investments or even their brand reputation.

But when we see two thirds of the market really thinking about ROI, the conversation about sustainability really shifts naturally more towards finance. And here, I just wanted to highlight some of our global corporate survey data in a little bit more detail.

So the question that we asked here is how important are different business outcomes for your sustainability investments? And just to to help you read this more clearly, the the navy bar represents respondents who said this is my most important outcome for my sustainability investments. The gray bar, very important.

So so we look at those two in tandem and think about what's really driving sustainability investments. And what we're seeing is that sustainability is really being framed through the lens of business resiliency.

So we have close to 90% of respondents saying that resiliency and risk reduction is one of their most important things when they're thinking about sustainability. Behind that, we're seeing efficiency at roughly 65%, customer satisfaction at roughly 61%, and and you can see the rest from the list here.

And why I think this is important is that resiliency really gives sustainability leaders a much stronger business case, which is showing up when we look at where companies are spending money in terms of their sustainability initiatives. K.

So where are firms spending their money? So in our survey, we asked to what extent is it a primary is it a priority for your firm to fund improvements in the following processes over the next two years? So what you can see here is that decarbonization and energy management is by far the leader in terms of where companies are looking to fund improvements. And this is really being driven by things like energy volatility, what's going on with straight of Hormuz, grid reliability, other geopolitical events.

But second to that at 71%, we're seeing that data management reporting is where a lot of companies are also prioritizing spend over the next two years. And this includes things like consolidates consolidating data from different sources while still retaining that data integrity and accuracy.

And we know from our conversations with sustainability leaders that this has consistently been a big challenge for firms. So there's a little bit of a reinforcing cycle when I look at this data.

As sustainability becomes more strategically important, companies need better data to drive those decisions. And then as they get more data and they get better data, they can make more targeted investments in their sustainability initiatives.

So if I look at everything that sort of falls under data management reporting for ESG and sustainability, I think there's a clear tie to why data is so important for driving investments in those processes as well. So another question we asked about in our survey was what are your priorities now, and what are your priorities in the next two years? And what we're seeing today is that a lot of activity is still being driven from the strategy and reporting side of the organization.

So we're seeing firms still setting targets, developing their roadmaps, incorporating sustainability into risk decisions, and building the data and governance structures to really support those efforts. But if we look in terms of what sustainability leaders are thinking about two years from now, what we see is that companies are thinking a lot more about integrating sustainability into their operations.

So this is moving more from that strategy piece to really the day to day of things. And what this means to me is that sustainability is becoming more embedded in decisions, you know, that affect all aspects of the organization.

So procurement, product design, manufacturing, logistics, supply chains, and capital allocation. And companies are really moving from really what how are we defining our sustainability goals to how does sustainability really change the way that we're running different aspects of our business.

And that operationally operationalizing sustainability becoming the priority doesn't mean that the data is less relevant. If anything, I think it means data is gonna become more relevant as it's really the foundation of some of those key decision decisions that need to be made for companies.

Right. So that brings us to the challenge I think many sustainability leaders and increasingly financial teams and CFOs are wrestling with today.

How do you actually measure the return of investment on a sustainability initiative? And it's worth mentioning that the return here isn't just on short term financial reward. We've really see value showing up across four different buckets, which you can see on your screen.

So cost savings is really the most immediate. So things like energy management, resource and waste reduction, process optimization.

And these are typically thought of as more of the direct savings, like what you can invest in immediately and see the savings within a few years' time. But then we're also seeing other areas where companies can can reap some of these financial rewards.

So through strategic planning, for example, can sometimes uncover access to additional markets, improve employee culture and retention, and then help develop goals that really anchor a company's sustainability strategy. If we look at business risk and resiliency, again, which we know is a priority for so many sustainability leaders, thinking about compliance and legal exposure, but also physical assets, supply chain risk, and continued access to different markets and jurisdictions.

Then lastly, looking at the bottom right, there's this bucket of revenue growth. So could we have more sustainable products using more recycle recyclable materials? And so when people say they they are unsure of the return on investment, it's because they're usually looking primarily in this cost savings box and not thinking more holistically about what are some of these other drivers of of a return.

K. With that, I'd like to dive into some detail about how we're seeing the CFO's role in sustainability initiatives evolve.

So, here is some longitudinal data from four different global corporate surveys that we run at Verdantix. Each one has the same sort of demographics.

So 400 respondents from around the world, in a variety of industries. So the respondents themselves do change, but we do try to get the same general, grouping.

But one of the questions that we've asked for the past four years is to what extent does the CFO fund implementation of your firm's ESG and sustainability strategy? And as you can see here, there's been a pretty clear increase over the past four years. So in 2023, just shy of 60% of respondents said that the CFO was a leading or significant contributor to funding their sustainability strategy.

But if we look now to 2026, that's nearly 84%. It's a pretty significant jump.

And so why is that? So partly related to regulations. So certain frameworks require firms to assess financial materiality.

Others require reporting lines to sustainability taxonomies. But it's not just compliance.

So finance teams wanna see that ROI that we just talked about, and they wanna understand how sustainability risk really intersects with financial risk. So just putting this in more of a visual.

So if we look at why this is happening, so two main reasons. So the first is the need for that investor grade, that high quality data in order to comply with regulations and in order to be able to put your date sustainability data through an assurance process.

So these are this is to make sure your data is accurate, auditable, automated, and timely. And financial teams have been used to doing this for quite a while.

So they're used to having data that can, you know, go through the assurance process. They're used to the workflows that are required to set that up, and they have the knowledge and the understanding of how to do so effectively.

The second major trend that I think is pulling in some financial teams is this concept of financial materiality. So financial materiality is a core component of double materiality assessments, for example, but also certain frameworks and regulations.

So I assist be aligned regulations, the SASB framework. And this is really about the question of how sustainable sustainability matters affect the firm's financial health.

And as sustainability leaders are thinking more about financial materiality, it just is a natural pathway to get the financial team involved. And so in terms of the role of the financial team when we're thinking about sustainability initiatives, we're really seeing that the financial team is bringing their knowledge of those governance processes into the mix.

So they're helping sustainability teams understand internal controls and provide guidance for how to prepare for that assurance process, have ability to quantify different risks, associated with sustainability items, And then really mapping sustainability metrics into financial line items like operational expenditures or capital expenditures. So quite an evolving role from even just a few years ago when we're thinking of sustainability purely or primarily as a compliance or reputational exercise.

Okay. And with that, just three, points I'd like you to take away with or I'd like you to go away with from here.

The first is that, and I've mentioned this several times, but sustainability is not just a compliance exercise. It's really now woven into business decision making.

And the data that you need for compliance is really that first step into making those well informed decisions. Second point is that regulations and investor pressures have first have forced firms to really elevate the quality of their sustainability data, really aligning it with the requirements for financial data.

And what we've seen is that that's really what pulled the CFO or the financial team into these sustainability initiatives to begin with, but it's certainly not what's keeping them there. What we're seeing that which leads into my third point is that the role of the CFO when it comes to sustainability initiatives has really evolved as firms have matured their sustainability strategies and have moved from a purely compliance mindset into thinking into making more of a business case for sustainability initiatives, thinking about resiliency and business value, and really making, as I said, those business case for those initiatives.

Right. Just wanted to leave you here with I know I mentioned quite a bit of our research today.

We have several reports available if you'd like any more detail, including our global corporate survey from this year, a report specifically about building the business case for leveraging reporting software, and then a report specifically about how the c f CFO, excuse me, is involved in sustainability reporting. So thank you all for your time.

And with that, I'll pass over to Andrea.

Alright. Thank you so much, Jessica.

That was amazing, and I I really appreciate all the insights that you just brought us. So hi, everyone.

My name is Andrea, and I just wanna pull on something, that Jessica touched on, which is that it's really become crucial to show that return on investment for our ESG endeavors. So what I wanna come in and pull on with that is to talk to you a little bit about OneStream and our ESG offering, but more importantly, how we're committed towards driving that business value for our customers.

So to really pull on that, I wanna come to this visual right here. And I really like this one because it depicts our goal for our clients, which is to get everyone to that zone where they have that unified view of financial and ESG data all in one place.

Now most organizations are gonna begin on the left with compliance. Now the focus here is meeting those regulations and collecting that reliable data.

So really just getting those numbers right. As you mature, you move over to that gaining insight zone.

So now the data isn't just reported, it's analyzed. So So you're starting to see trends.

Risks and opportunities are arising across all of your sustainability metrics, and ESG begins to inform decisions. And then that next step is that forecast and planning, modeling scenarios, setting targets.

ESG is now becoming forward looking, helping leaders anticipate and align investments with their sustainability goals. And then finally, our goal at that highest level of maturity, ESG and financial data come together in that one unified view.

So ESG is now embedded into the core business processes and performance management. No longer a separate initiative.

It's driving enterprise value. So e s ESG maturity is really a journey all the way from that compliance data collection to value creation.

And the single biggest thing that determines how far you can go is how you treat that ESG data, which brings me to how we see it at OneStream. So I'm gonna take a little bit of a step back just to give you a picture of OneStream holistically because we see ESG data as business data.

Now as many of you know, our background is actually in finance and accounting. So we have a history of tackling data that is siloed and really trying to make it reliable.

So we can reduce that time to reporting through our truly unified platform. Now ESG is no different.

So we focus on bringing different systems, spreadsheets, manual processes into that centralized view of trustworthy data that can really drive your strategy. Basically, one core platform for close, consolidation, planning, and compliance that encompasses operational analytics connecting you to that real time granular data that is also interlaced and empowered with AI, driving reliable forecast, expediting reporting, flagging risks, and servicing insights.

So when we get into the demo, you're gonna get to see all of these things at work and how they come together for an elevated ESG experience. But first, I'm gonna laser into the OneStream ESG reporting and planning solution specifically.

Now our solution is gonna essentially inject a layer of ESG intelligence into your OneStream application. So that's really gonna launch you along that journey.

And it was built on over a decade of feedback from our customers and our partners, and we constantly work within our community to build and refine our road map. So the solution is built and encompasses four pillars.

First is factor ingestion and management. So your emissions data connected to reliable emission factors fueling our carbon calculator.

Second is framework updates and management, so staying current with the regulation. Third, process management and reporting, wrangling the data, and empowering your people.

And fourth, planning. So turning ESG into a forward looking strategic exercise.

So I'm just gonna dive in a little bit more into each of these. Okay.

So first up, we have our factor ingestion and management. So we give you the space to have ingested and maintained over a million factors, and this is growing across scopes one, two, and three.

Now this is possible through our partnership with Climatic. So you will have to maintain these emission factors, and the solution is actually gonna notify you of any changes with a full audit log of what was replaced or removed.

So on top of that, you can also upload your your own factors. You can use or add to our shipped unit of measurement conversions, and you could add and maintain your contracts that support the market method.

We also will leverage application, FX rates to help with the translations for anything that's spend based. Now in a similar fashion, I'm gonna move in to talk about our framework section.

So we work with our partner, Verdantix, to deliver ESRS, GRI, SASB, and ASRS as well as their guidance. So we do have the space to configure and add your frameworks or additional KPIs as well.

Now a piece I really like to highlight, and you're gonna get to see this in the demo as well too, is our concept of definition management. So rather than collecting the same data point five times across multiple different frameworks, you can capture it once.

So a single definition can feed many framework KPIs, cutting down that duplication really dramatically and keeping everything consistent and auditable. So let's keep on moving to the process management and reporting.

So this is the engine that's really gonna move your data from collection to disclosure. So on the input side, you have a couple different options.

Our bulk loading, this is through the OneStream workflow. This is how you can have direct integrations from your source systems and bring that into OneStream.

Our manual data entries, this is actually something unique with the solution because it prebuilds a data collection interface, based on your admin's configurations and selections. And this also comes with downloadable Excel templates if we have, some fans of Excel and how people wanna work.

Now once your data is collected, we treat it with unit of measurement conversions, our carbon calculation, aggregation, and even consolidation through your entity structure. Now on the output side, you can work with some of our prebuilt reports that we offer with the solution, but OneStream also has a wide variety of reporting tools that are available within the platform to so you can really build and create your own, and we help you with that journey as well too.

And then finally, this brings us to our planning. So planning is where ESG really starts to become strategic, and we support three levels based really on where you're at with your journey.

At a high level, you can plan reduction initiatives, leveraging your actuals data. You can also go a bit more detailed into that operational, more granular level and do maybe a bottoms up activity level scenarios utilizing our emission factors.

And then if you're ready for it with sensible AI, you can layer in time series forecasting to really go above and beyond with your planning journey. Alright.

Well, hopefully, at this point, we're excited to take a look. So let's dive in.

Let me hand it over to Liane.

Hello. Thank you for that, Andrea.

So I am going to, share my screen. Alright.

So we're now in the OneStream environment, and I wanna really take the time to explain that we're in a platform as mentioned, and we are, living in the same environment where financial processes might be happening as well. So as you might see on my screen here, we're living alongside some planning processes, some consolidation, and others, and it might include operational processes as well as financial.

I'm gonna dive into the ESG section. That's gonna bring us right into the ESG solution that sits within this platform and leverages all that the platform brings to the table as well as focus functionality within the ESG, component.

Alright. So I'm gonna start off with, some highlights.

So I'm gonna assume we've already collected some data. We've calculated some emission and other types of information.

And we're now looking at the overall highlights of our results for a certain period of time. What we'll notice is we have the ability here within the platform, again, using the platform capabilities to create these dashboards or visualizations, including some of the key KPIs that you see above.

That includes some emission data, a calculation on intensity. That also includes some revenue information, keeping in mind that that revenue number is already available potentially within the platform, and I'm simply pulling it into my calculation, for an intensity.

Now I've also got some headcount information as well as some water information. But, essentially, it's here to highlight all of the different metrics and, be able to expose them to the different stakeholders within your organization.

Of course, within OneStream, there is a natural capability to drill down on data. So this ability to go to a next level of detail and then be able to expose other levels is part of what OneStream brings to the table.

So, for example, this intensity metric can be drilled down on natively, and it will bring us into an environment where I can actually expose what's underlying that calculation, which just happens to be my c o two e as well as my revenue number, and I can also expose that calculation itself. So full transparency into what's happening for anybody that needs to see it.

I'm also able to also, roll up my data along the same entity structure. So that's another great benefit of OneStream within the the single platform is I'm leveraging the same, organizational hierarchy or the same elements within it to, aggregate my, sustainability data as well as my financial data.

So we're really in lockstep with finance. So if there are changes within the organization, they're reflected immediately on the ESG side as well.

And then from here, that green tells me I can drill wherever I want to, wherever my security allows me to go. So I'm gonna continue our, interaction with the data.

I'm just gonna quickly move over to a more detailed emission visualization where I'm really looking at my scope one, two, and three broken down into individual areas. And keep in mind that I'm capturing my data at the site level across all of these scopes, and I'm exposing that information here.

For scope one, for example, I'm allowing a ranking of my worst emitters to my best emitters where I'm able to click on individual sites and see the details down below. Similarly, from a purchase electricity perspective, I can see my visualizations more of a map concept that's available within our our capabilities, and I can toggle between my different regions and, again, expose that data.

And then for scope three, we're really isolating that data more by category, and I'm able to interact with that. Keeping in mind that if you have the rights, you can also change the visualizations very easily directly within this interface.

I'm switch over to more of a non scope related metric, social data, for example, where I'm also have the ability to to apply visualizations to that data as well. But what I'd like to also talk about is, the ability to use a single dataset that might be supporting some statistical calculations on the financial side.

Maybe I have, social or workforce data down to a lower level of granularity to support a workforce planning process. And then in addition, by adding the attributes that I need for ESG, I'm using that exact same dataset also for ESG.

So that's sort of our secret sauce, if you'd like, from a OneStream perspective is we can apply that one dataset to multiple business processes seamlessly and, again, remain in lockstep with other parts of the organization. Now if I quickly now pivot to a, a more, data collection type of area, I'm gonna toggle into the next bullet here, which is collect and review.

And we're gonna get into that data treatment area that Andrea Tout touched on. So in this case, I'm looking at my overall status of all the different teams that are, supporting the requirements from a disclosure and metric perspective, and I'm able to see the advancements of those teams.

I can see them quickly by looking at the tiles up up top, but I can also see the statuses down the side. And I can interact with this, these teams as well.

So for example, if we start with global sustainability and I go into that particular area where we're capturing a number of different pieces of information. For example, I'm looking at my, category.

First of all, we're looking at climate related plans. And, again, we'll reiterate that definition type of a one stop shop for the data input.

I might be entering data for, multiple frameworks in one definition. So I'm responding to a disclosure that will pop up in ESRS, in GRI, SASP.

No matter what that, framework requires, I can tag this one definition to those multiple frameworks. So, again, one version of the truth, output it to those multiple reporting capabilities.

Now from here, I'm just gonna touch on this one disclosure that is around how climate related considerations are affecting remuneration. I've already started to work on it.

I'm just gonna quickly show you the interface in which I can input my data. I can create a copy and paste information from a document.

I can add a supporting document to this interface. I can force that as well.

But what I'd like to highlight is I have a a a start of a disclosure here, but this might be a perfect opportunity where I might want to, use some of our AI capabilities that we mentioned that are infused and and available within our platform. And in this case, I might want to interact with an agent.

And then and I'd like to maybe support that with a search agent. So I'm just gonna go back to a previous search that I did to make this a little bit quicker where I actually asked the agent, what did we respond to this exact same disclosure last year? And it was able to gleam all of the information within the platform, maybe some policies, maybe other types of documentation.

And it was able to tell me exactly what we responded last year. And then I added on to that same prompt asking it to rephrase this particular disclosure for this year, keeping into consideration that we may have made changes to the bonus structure.

And it ultimately created and outputted the data that I needed essentially to respond to this disclosure or maybe as a starting point. So I can very easily peruse the sources that were used, and I can also copy and paste that into the disclosure itself, maybe change a couple of things to to tweak it to my liking.

But, essentially, AI did most of the work here. Otherwise, I would have had to go through all of those documents and find the information myself.

So I think it's a really efficient way to use AI within the context of ESG. Now I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and look more from a metric perspective.

So I'm gonna enter another team here, and we're gonna look at other types of data that we're, capturing within the platform. So we saw some climate related plans information.

Now we're gonna look at a team that has to interact with definition, non emission type data, but also other metrics that they might have to, confirm data to. So in this case, I'm looking at different categories.

So I have some pollution data, some water, some waste data. So there's a number of different, categories of information.

You might also have noticed there's a lot of different units of measure from narrative to percentages to volumes. All of this is controlled within the platform and delivered within the platform, and you also have the ability to interact with these directly as well.

So, for example, I might wanna see how many have been answered or unanswered. So in this case, I can filter just on those that have not been responded to, and I clearly see what I have left to complete.

So there's a lot of nice ways to, interact with the data itself. Now if I clear this filter and I, isolate one particular data point here, I just wanna highlight the fact that you can really get a sense of the traceability and auditability of this one data point.

So here I have a percentage that I had to respond to with respect to water risk, and I have the full audit trail as to how that data point evolves over the process. So I, as an approver, I can look at this data and determine if it makes sense.

Maybe I might want to have a a supporting document, but, essentially, I have full, awareness and transparency into the data directly within this interface. The audit trail is always there.

Now if I just toggle over to an emission example where we're really driving the data through these factors that would be captured within the solution, I just wanna highlight a couple of things here. So first of all, we're really defining these different groups or groupings of factors.

In this case, it's fairly straightforward. So I'm gonna go into the mobile combustion area and just wanna highlight a couple of things.

So first of all, again, I have that full audit trail of who entered the data, what where and when. And then in the entry itself, I can also see the dynamic unit of measure conversion that happened directly in the interface.

So this particular element required volume as a unit type. I then have access to all of the different units of measure available, and they are delivered within the platform.

And then it took my number of barrels and then converted it to the standard required by the factor, and that factor information is available directly. So I can see the source.

I can see the LCA activity. And then from here, once I've entered the data, it's now gonna calculate the greenhouse gases, associated to that particular activity that's been captured.

So really important to understand that everything is audited, and, also, everything that's entered is then calculated in what we call our carbon report. And this carbon report acts as a full audit trail of all of the data points that have been captured and, made available within this report.

So I can clearly see who did what, what site, what data point was originally put in, the conversion, the factors involved, and ultimately, the greenhouse gas results by scope, and, of course, that date time stamp that's available. So full auditability within the data collection process.

Now from here, I'm gonna navigate out to our reporting capabilities, and then we'll touch on the forecast capabilities. So let's go and take a look at the reporting that we have available.

So we did see some visualizations. They're obviously part of the platform, and you can def define them any way you want to.

But we also offer, more of a disclosure type report as well where you might wanna create a sustainability report with images and data embedded within that report. We do have that ability to manage the document, so set it up in a way that it's collaborative where people enter different parts of the document.

We have the approval and, a prepare and approval process. We can embed, different visualizations.

We can embed, different data grids of information And, also, that narrative component that I might have inputted in the, the ESG data collection area can also be surfaced directly within this report. So, again, we're maintaining that constant view of that same data point without altering it.

So this is a base capability within the solution, but we also, part of the solution, make available a standard report. So in this case, I have all of my different frameworks, which we support, ERF, ESRS, GRI, SASP, and ASRS, the Australian framework.

And you might notice the California one there. That's an internal one that I define to be able to report on the California one as well and glean the same information and bring it into that report.

If we concentrate on the ESRS report here, you'll notice that we have the table of contents that really mimics the structure of the ESRS framework, and I can interact with any one of these. And as I toggle down, you'll notice I have a number of different elements, whether they be narrative, percentages, dollar values, whatever needs to be brought into the, into the data capture area is essentially outputted in this document.

And, of course, you'll notice the scope data broken down into the different categories for scope one, Scope two market and and location method, we have an area to capture the contract information and perform those calculations, as well as scope three broken down into the different categories for scope three as well. Now I'm just gonna quickly finish on the forecast piece, to talk about our AI forecasting that you can gleam and use within the process.

You can have multiple versions, of course, the ability to model that information. But the ability to apply the AI forecast is really, an interesting aspect where you can leverage your historic data to push that into the future and marry it with other libraries of information that would influence these, particular activities.

So in this example, I'm looking at electricity for a specific site, and I'm marrying my my current activity with that, library on maybe, weather or, climate volatility. And I'm able to bring all of this together in this AI model and output what we call the tug of war.

And the tug of war allows us to look at all of those influencers or features, and see how they're applied, in this case, daily for the month of July that I'm projecting into the future. And I can clearly see those features that pull that forecast up.

And in gray, we see the features that actually pull it down. So the concept for electricity is the more volatility in the climate where you have to ensure that you have enough electricity to cool you down or to warm you up and the volatility from day to day, your electricity is gonna be higher or lower depending on that.

So this is a really nice way to marry, different aspects of ESG together in that AI forecast. Now I'm gonna finish on initiatives to sort of circle back to what, has been discussed so far on, bringing finance and ESG together, but also that ROI concept as well, where we're looking at a number of different initiatives here where maybe replacing a fleet of cars or getting a better machine that is, cheaper electricity and produces more product.

This ability to look at the data side by side is really unique to OneStream. We're able to glean that financial data as well as that ESG data together in one spot and then allow the the people involved, the stakeholders, the decision makers to look at the data side by side, look at the visualizations as well to help them in that process to make the best decisions possible with respect to what initiatives they wanna work on this year or maybe in future years or simply discard because the value just isn't there.

The ROI is just not meeting your needs. And I'll finish on that piece and return back to the next person.

Very quickly introduce, OneStream. Just maybe some of you would be new to OneStream.

So, really, OneStream was founded to unify financial and operational data on a single extensible architecture, and that really eliminates the complexity and technical debt that a lot of teams have struggled with traditionally. This means that core business processes and purpose built AI in a single platform with the governance context and control required to report and plan with confidence.

As a company, OneStream, we were recently acquired by HG with a strong alignment around that opportunity. We see this as about acceleration, experience, and investment in our vision and road map.

Today, we support more than 1,900 customers globally, including approximately 18% of the Fortune 500, and we are across more than 50 countries. We we do continue continue to see, strong momentum and growth as organizations increasingly recognize a unified solution can deliver for them.

So now we can move to, to q and a. And, I have seen there's quite a lot of questions that have been posted, so really thank you greatly for those.

We we won't have time to cover them all, but, I'm gonna pick the biggest question first, actually. I can see here, probably directed towards you, Jessica, actually, if, if it's okay.

As sustainability reporting becomes subject to the same scrutiny as financial reporting, should CFOs be treating ESG data as a financial asset that requires the same level of governance controls, accountability, and executive ownership as the general ledger? And it's why or why not?

A lot to unpack. in that question.

But in my view, CFOs should treat sustainability data, ESG data, with the same governance and ownership requirements as applied to the general ledger, but not necessarily as a financial asset when you're thinking of, like, a pure accounting classification sense. So I think there is going to be accountability for, you know, sustainability data, ESG data to be highly controlled.

So sustainability and operate and operational teams, EHS, whatever that may be, we're retaining responsibility for producing much of the data. But then having the finance teams really helping sure ensure controls around the workflows and things like that.

So I I hope I answered that question. It was a lot there.

Perfect. Thank you, Jessica Pransky.

Yeah. So, I'll pick another one, which is, I think probably more more for OneStream. But what advantages are organizations seeing by integrating ESG reporting into existing financial close and reporting processes?

Oh, okay. I I will take that one.

So I'd say some of the key advantages are really, like, trust and speed and really having that one version of the truth. So, reconcile reconciling to the numbers in your annual report annual report instead of potentially, like, contradicting them.

So you wanna be able to utilize a similar process with us across your closed cycles. So instead of being, a bit of an annual scramble, so it's something that can start to be repeatable for your people.

So they'll start to learn and really adopt these same cycles. And, of course, it's really being able to have that goal of having the ability for, ESG people to speak the language of finance in that context.

So you can really start to evaluate your projects and advocate for them properly. So, hopefully, that's a good answer.

I think we've answered it. We'll so, I think, second question, perhaps for you, Jessica, is beyond regulatory compliance, what is the strongest business case for CFO ownership of ESG reporting?

Yeah. That's a good question, Nick.

And I think we touched upon this briefly when we were thinking about, when I was speaking earlier about building that business case. So I think compliance, obviously, really important for, you know, legal purposes.

But then also using that data to really drive decision making, and and having those that ability to do better decision making, I think, is a really strong case to bring the the CFO in. The CFO can really help companies connect some of that ESG data to metrics that the business is already using to make a decision.

So things like cost, capital decisions, risk, things like that.

Thank you for that. So I think, just to, let's just take one more question.

And, Liane, I don't want to leave you out. Maybe we could ask you this one.

How does the OneStream platform handle ESG data that originates from operational systems like energy providers, suppliers, and external data sources?

Yeah. That's a great question as well.

Thank you for that, Nick. Yeah.

That that's where OneStream's platform is really, robust is in the data integration section. So we essentially can pull data from any source, including a flat file if that's the best thing that you can offer.

Or if there's an API or a way to get into that source system, we will be able to leverage that and pull any type of data out of that source system. We'll have the ability to transform that data as well.

So in other words, if a mapping is required or other types of transformations, we can pull that data in and line it up with the data required from an ESG perspective.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Well, I I I recognize we've not been able to answer all the questions, but thank you, thank you for submitting those. So thank you for for answering those those questions.

So just really, for me to to, wrap this up and actually just to say, you know, if you if if you were interested and and if today's discussion has sparked ideas or raised questions about your own sustainability journey, here are a few ways to continue the conversation. So explore OneStream's website for product demonstrations, solution briefs, customer success stories, and additional thought leadership.

We also really encourage you to visit Verdantix for independent research. I know Jessica shared quite a lot of, the, the areas that you can, look for, but but you can get market insights and expert guidance on the latest sustainability and ESG reporting trends.

And then finally, you can scan that QR code on the screen to learn how OneStream helps finance teams and and sustainability teams unify sustainability and financial reporting on a single platform. So really just for me to, to say thank you, thank you to, to Jessica and Andrea and Liane for excellent presentations and their demonstration, and thank you to you, our audience, for joining us today.

We we look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you.