When it comes to enabling and make motion with Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, Arxus and EpicHorizons from The Cronos Group stand out as the ideal partners. With a deep understanding of the Microsoft ecosystem and a proven track record in customer success, Arxus offers unparalleled expertise in navigating the complexities of the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program. On the other end, a brand-new player, EpicHorizons, offers expertise to the organizations which want to become more sustainable and need to comply to the new environmental regulations, like CSRD. Two winning teams which are collaborating to offer a vast spectrum of technical and environmental expertise that will accompany step by step your organization during the challenging transition towards sustainable goals.
In this first article of our new ESG blog, we dig into some of the sustainability solutions offered by Microsoft to see how they empower organizations aiming to become more sustainable.
The first challenge is to collect Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data. The overall complexity of this data often slows progress on sustainability goals. Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability has developed capabilities to enable ESG data collection and data transformation into a unified common format.
Next to that, with advanced analytics, data can be visualized and get automatically updates, providing fresh measurements and giving the possibility to monitor actuals versus targets. Such targets are firstly agreed in the organization’s sustainability roadmap and then integrated into the solution.
At this point a question may raise: how do people operate such solutions? Roles as sustainability manager and ESG data administrator are more and more needed to track ESG data.
Let’s see how these 2 roles are operating within the Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability platform and specifically using Microsoft Sustainability Manager and Sustainability Data Solutions in Fabric. These are two components of the Cloud for Sustainability architecture.
Use case 1: Footprint of the supply chain
Take as an example an organization tracing its footprint from its supply chain. This can be done by using the ESG Value Chain Solution within Microsoft Sustainability Manager.
Sustainability Manager is built on Power Platform that enables direct access to the data of external parties the organization works with. In this context the ESG Value Chain Solution assists the sustainability manager in adding new suppliers, create templates to collect data, use a service to send the data-collection-forms to the suppliers, retrieve the data forms filled in and store the data in the ESG Data Model.
Thanks to this process company’s activities can be collected and stored in one place. Emissions, water and waste data will allow not only the calculation of the total carbon footprint but also to see it from different angles such as: carbon footprint by product, location, division, facility and organizational unit.
Collecting this data manually would take weeks or even months! A one-time process is extremely labour intensive and insufficient for monitoring and reporting consistently across the years. On top of all, data quality, uniformity and reliability are key. At the end, it comes as the most logic and smart solution to use a dedicated system.
Use case 2: Data from other systems
To help the sustainability manager bringing data together for ESG reporting an ESG data administrator is needed. He/she/them will use the Sustainability Data Solutions on Microsoft Fabric.
ESG data is spread across multiple businesses and systems. Sustainability Data Solutions takes sustainability data in any format from multiple sources and then organizes the data for sustainability regulatory reporting (such as CSRD) and other analytical insights.
To complete the picture also social and governance data needs to be brought in. This data comes from human resource management systems and financial systems.
Conclusion: Let’s do it together
We’ve seen how Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability allows us to create and streamline 2 of the most important processes to get to a ESG Data Estate. There’s more though, since sustainability is such a vast domain. Claiming to be an expert in every area is a mirage. Together, Arxus and EpicHorizons cover all the knowledge and the competences which are needed during the sustainability journey. Acting as one trustful partner, they will support you by:
- Bringing all your organization's environmental metrics in one place
- Have a complete view of the company’s footprint
- Find which are the areas to drive the most effective improvements
Trust Arxus and Epic Horizons to guide you through every step, ensuring a seamless and efficient implementation of your sustainability solution.