Data Leaders - ESG and Data

Our Data Leaders event on Wednesday April 24th focused on ESG and Data. This is a really important subject that can tend to get sidelined in the rush to embrace all things AI related.
Our senior expert panel highlighted the key issues for leaders.

A big thank you to Yvonne Holmes (DCC plc), Sorcha McKenna (QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey), Adam Ryan (Calligo), Jitesh Goyal (KPMG Ireland) and Sven Strassburg (IBM) who shared their insights with us.

Some of the findings:

- This stuff isn't easy. A lot of the data you may need to report on may not even reside in your organisation. As regulations get more robust and more widespread, there will be more reporting demands placed on data teams. Get ready.
- Don't try to do this alone. ESG reporting is a team effort requiring input from across the organisation. Non financial data can be difficult to analyse without domain expertise from other areas of the business.
- Investigate new ESG reporting and analysis platforms which are increasingly helpful.
- A culture change is required to fully embrace ESG in an organisation. This wont happen just from the top down. Include younger staff members as they tend to understand the issues better.
- ESG can be a business opportunity as well as a challenge. Those who have good ESG practices will be more attractive to procurement managers and to customers in general. This is an opportunity to improvise.
- The 'S' in ESG is widely misunderstood. It stands for Society not Sustainability. Impact on society may be hard to measure but it is essential for your brand and for how customers see your organisation.

We will be running further sessions and masterclasses in this area.