re you currently facing the task of preparing your company’s first ESG report and having to cope with and filter the sheer volume of information on the subject? We provide insights and examples from ESG reporting and show you which service providers will help make your reporting best practice in the future.
You are already familiar with the ESG basics, have already heard about our matching, and want to know right away which external consultancies or ESG software providers fit your requirements? Then use our ESG provider matching.
With Matchilla’s free and non-binding matching service, you can quickly and easily find the right ESG consulting or ESG software to implement reporting efficiently and with sustainable structures in your organization.
Preparing an ESG report is already part of the agenda for many companies and will become mandatory for almost everyone else in the future! On the one hand, there are legal and regulatory requirements to be met, under which you must provide information on environmental impacts, social matters, and governance practices. On the other hand, stakeholders such as investors, customers, employees, and suppliers are placing increasing importance on companies acting sustainably. So there is pressure from both sides.
Some companies equate ESG reporting with CSRD reporting; however, this is only one piece of the puzzle. ESG consists of several laws, which entail additional individual reporting obligations. The best-known examples are the LkSG and/or CSDDD, CBAM, EUDR and the EU Taxonomy regulations.
Anyone who thinks it is sufficient, in order to meet the obligation, to aggregate just a few data points and present them in an Excel spreadsheet is mistaken. An ESG report is not purely a set of numbers; it also includes qualitative criteria, information on corporate strategies, on specific measures, and even on the company’s philosophy in the context of sustainability. The requirements therefore go far beyond purely financial reporting and aim to ensure transparency and accountability with regard to a company’s sustainability performance.
Until the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the resulting European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), there were no mandatory reporting standards or fixed rules. In the past, various frameworks for standard reporting were developed to ensure the comparability and reliability of sustainability reports. Examples of such frameworks include the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, the German Sustainability Code (DNK) and the principles of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) are widely used in the German SME sector, as they have reduced requirements and simplify processes.
The various frameworks define which information should be included and which structure must be followed. By applying such standards, companies can improve their ESG reporting and gain stakeholders’ trust by providing transparent and comparable information.
For CSRD reporting, which is now in force, the ESRS guidelines apply. In Set 1 of the ESRS, the first milestones for companies required to report were defined. The reporting standards that all companies must adhere to are therefore defined, and GRI, DNK & Co. are thus guidelines that can optionally be used as guidance. You can find more information in our article European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).
The components of ESG reporting are specified, for example, in the ESRS. These set out binding concepts and principles that must be applied when reporting under the CSRD (see also our article on CSRD solutions) in order to make the reports understandable, relevant, and verifiable.
An ESG report includes the following components:
E: Disclosures on environmental topics (Environment)
Climate change (ESRS E1), pollution (ESRS E2), water and marine resources (ESRS E3), biodiversity and ecosystems (ESRS E4), resource use and circular economy (e.g., waste management) (ESRS E5)
S: Disclosures on social topics (Social)
Own workforce (ESRS S1), workers in the value chain (ESRS S2), affected communities (ESRS S3), consumers and end users (ESRS S4)
G: Disclosures on corporate governance (Governance) Corporate policy (ESRS G1)
In the ESG report, ESRS 2 is always mandatory. All other ESRS must undergo a materiality assessment.
Here, we only cover the components and structures on a superficial level. However, you’ve surely already become aware of the complexity of ESG after these few sections.
Preparing an ESG report involves high initial costs and resource requirements – but from a business perspective, it’s definitely worth going the extra mile. Use the reports to present your sustainability activities in a positive way that resonates with the public! Don’t report only because you have to, but because you want to. In doing so, don’t think only about the immediate impact on brand and revenue. Think of talented young people who (can) choose their jobs – in the selection process of potential employers, they will also use your approach to sustainability issues as an important criterion. The same of course also applies to potential investors.
At this point, we’ll show you some very successful examples of how companies design their ESG reports. Depending on your company size, you may not have the same resources to implement such extensive reports and landing pages. But it should be a bit more than the standard exports from ESG reporting software.
ESG reporting largely consists of figures that, packed into tables, interest only a few people. But how can you tell whether not only a lot of budget is being invested in ESG reporting?
The following reporting examples show quite impressively that ESG is increasingly being embedded strategically and as a possible clear competitive advantage. In some cases, the ESG corporate pages are far better than other parts of the website—both in terms of content and design elements.
You can definitely draw inspiration from the following ESG reporting examples:
The trendy e-commerce company ABOUT YOU, acquired by Zalando in December, shines with an innovative, fresh, and modern sustainability presence. Of course, as a fashion retailer with a very young target group, this is an absolute must. However, the way the various ESG areas are presented and the content itself are second to none – one of the best examples of ESG reporting in Germany!
See ABOUT YOU’s ESG example (financial year 2022/23)
→ corporate.aboutyou.de/de/esg-report-2022-2023
Ottobock SE is an international company in the field of orthopaedic technology with more than 8,000 employees and revenue of around 1 billion euros. Anyone expecting a barrage of figures from a conservative mid-sized company is mistaken:
The company’s landing page with all ESG information
→ corporate.ottobock.com/de/nachhaltigkeit/reporting
Ottobock’s ESG KPIs in line with GRI
→ corporate.ottobock.com/de/nachhaltigkeit/reporting/esg-kennzahlen
The GRI standard will be linked to the ESRS in the future; an initial draft for this was published at the end of November 2023.
VAUDE has been a role-model company in the field of sustainability for years. Especially for ESG newcomers who need to focus in particular on CSRD, it’s worth taking a look at how an ESG report in accordance with the DNK standard is presented:
VAUDE’s sustainability report in accordance with DNK
→ nachhaltigkeitsbericht.vaude.com/gri/csr-standards/Deutscher-Nachhaltigkeitskodex.php
Some “traditional” German SMEs also impress with appealing ESG reports. Since 2011, comprehensive sustainability reporting, including an environmental statement, has been published by the office furniture company Assmann:
By the way: ESG or sustainability reporting is nothing new. Since 1994 (!) there has already been a ranking of the best sustainability reports by IÖW (Institute for Ecological Economy Research) and the business association future, where you can draw inspiration from the best companies.
Especially at the beginning of your reporting, you can use the fundamentals and visions of the best companies as a basis to apply quite a bit to your own report. But: inspiration is not copy + paste 😉
From the examples listed, you can see how extensive the expertise in sustainability reporting already is at some companies. However, this does not apply to the majority of mid-sized companies. From all our conversations with companies and our over 700 matchings, we have the following tips for you:
Start one year before you have to prepare the sustainability report!
It will take you a lot of time to build the necessary structures, aggregate data, and set up processes. There’s no way around it. If you are only required to produce a CSR report in 2026 (i.e., for the 2025 reporting year), start voluntarily one year earlier. The trial run takes the pressure off, spreads resources, and saves your nerves when it counts.
Choose an ESG framework!
Find out about the different frameworks and, alongside the ESRS, choose the one that best fits your company and employees. Use external support from a competent consulting firm and/or reporting tool provider. More on that later.
Start collecting data for the ESG analysis right away!
Depending on which ERP, CPM, SCM software, or other systems you work with, it will be a Sisyphean task to collect data from different departments. So it’s best to start right away with a clean structure and preparation of the data.
Bring Marketing and HR on board (content is green)!
Use your sustainability activities for your communications. Your Marketing and PR, as well as HR and recruiting, can unlock great potential from this.
Bring Sales on board!
Sustainability as a sales argument: Work closely with your sales team—on the one hand to formulate and align your ESG strategy in a customer-oriented way, and on the other hand to gain information on trends and updates through sales.
And now to the actual doing, with a few options for action:
Figure it out yourselves: ESG sources, workshops & more
Independently inform yourselves about relevant ESG sources, attend workshops, listen to podcasts, and take part in events. Understanding the complexity of the various reporting aspects will require a high level of resources, but at the same time it will be an investment in the future.
Select ESG consulting according to your own criteria
Especially for SMEs and smaller, local companies, it doesn’t always have to be the renowned consulting firm. By now, there are freelancers or smaller ESG consultancies with strong expertise in ESG reporting. Before you sign a mandate, convince yourselves of the relevant competencies in an individual workshop. Below you will find a link to select an ESG advisor in the categories CSRD, LkSG, CO2 emissions, etc.
ESG reporting tool including initial consulting
Experience from the matchings we have carried out shows that the most recommendable—and also most commonly used—option is to start directly with an ESG software provider. In addition to the important technical solutions, providers also offer individual strategy consulting (both external and internal), the execution of the double materiality analysis, and a tool-based entry into ESG topics.
So that you can continue to create value-adding and, of course, compliance-compliant ESG reporting in the future while establishing efficient processes, it is essential to seek external support. And we’re here to help you with the selection of the ESG service provider that best suits you.
For more than two years, we have been progressively and carefully screening the provider market for both technical service providers (reporting software & tools) and consultancies: Our database includes over 170 ESG software providers as well as numerous specialized ESG consulting boutiques in the German-speaking region.
We make our database, access to the matching platform, and the experience from more than 700 matchings for SMEs available to you for your search free of charge and without obligation.
If you would like to take the first and, if applicable, future steps with a consultancy, please go to our information on the selection of consulting firms for ESG reporting.
If you would like to follow our recommendation and first start conversations with relevant software providers for reporting, you can find more information in our article on the comparison of ESG software providers, or you can fill out our match assistant directly 👇
Benefit from our in-depth research work on the most important tools for ESG reporting. In a structured overview, we identify the three providers that fit your individual requirements exactly.
Providers in matching: 178
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Finding suitable ESG service providers is simple and super fast via Matchilla. Getting in touch, specifying requirements, and after just a few days the results were there. This gave us information about providers we hadn’t even heard of before. Real added value.
What convinced me about Matchilla were the short, clear paths: our specific needs are understood immediately, analyzed perfectly, and matched with the right providers in a short time. Matchilla’s platform works quickly, is straightforward, and guides you precisely through the provider selection process.
Matchilla’s approach is brilliant: I no longer have to laboriously research consultancies and software providers and fight my way through countless comparison portals – the right providers come to me, so to speak – with just a few minutes of effort. The matching process saves us a lot of resources.
Ulli Theves is Head of ESG Reporting at Matchilla and an expert in technical solutions and reporting providers in the sustainability space. In MatchZINE, he shares his expertise and regularly publishes news and useful insights on ESG.
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