The EY organization and Microsoft has on Friday announced a deepened strategic relationship to further develop environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data management offerings that support clients with achieving operational decarbonization and net-zero goals.
EY said in a statement that through this commitment, EY and Microsoft will address a host of sustainability needs through technology, including improving carbon tracking and reporting, facilitating value chain traceability of carbon, and developing enterprise carbon management solutions that support carbon capture businesses.
“Climate change is no longer a risk event on the horizon, it is happening here and now. Many organizations set ambitious targets to get to net-zero by 2050, or earlier, but face significant challenges to get there,
“This strategic EY-Microsoft Alliance expansion will accelerate the pace of innovation needed for clients to meet ESG requirements,” said Matt Bell, EY Global Climate Change and Sustainability Services Leader.
According to him, the expansion is underpinned by the 20-year proven sustainability and ESG service history of the EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services (CCaSS) EY teams.
Leveraging leading-edge digital technology platforms (including Cloud for Sustainability) and the engineering prowess of Microsoft, he opined that this deepened relationship is well- positioned to assist some of the world’s largest companies in tackling their biggest sustainability hurdles.
To address the growing set of challenges that organizations face, EY and Microsoft continue to strengthen their platforms and solutions on which they collaborate.
The expansive portfolio of offerings provides enterprise-ready services and solutions across the sustainability life cycle, designed to help clients address planning and roll-out of decarbonization and end-to-end ESG strategies that build trust and drive change.
With a focus on decarbonization through solutions such as the EY Decarbonization Management Platform, clients can more clearly understand their current state and manage, monitor and report against it.
They gain full visibility of carbon footprints to make sound future decisions and prioritize and monitor the right intervention pathways and investments for their business.
Meanwhile, the suite of offerings facilitates emissions and offsets data capture, accounting, scenario modeling, risk assessment and external disclosures across asset portfolios and investments.
This results in a lower risk transition that will accelerate clients’ sustainability journey, helping them to model ESG strategies and support planning, management and roll-out of end-to-end decarbonization.
Recognizing the complexity and variety of ESG data, EY and Microsoft are building a robust set of solutions unifying data intelligently, leveraging the Structured Data Manager and integrating with Microsoft Sustainability Manager.
These solutions support better, more informed decision-making, financial analysis and external reporting for carbon and other critical ESG areas.
Understating how the industry views ESG and sustainability performance requires a set of data intelligence, which is easily delivered with EY ESG IQ.
This unique accelerator standardizes and enriches company rating data, calculates score gaps at the most granular level and makes rating improvements faster and easier. This is critical for end-to- end monitoring of supply chains.
“The inherent flexibility of the Microsoft Cloud combined with deep EY sustainability experience and development of business applications will allow clients to rapidly adapt and implement solutions that help them to meet their sustainability goals,” said Elisabeth Brinton, Corporate Vice President, Sustainability at Microsoft.
“This modular solution approach provides a highly scalable platform that utilizes artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analysis,
“This will help clients to meet ESG requirements as they evolve and address them through a life cycle of services for end-to-end decarbonization, transforming their operations to not only reduce their environmental impact and address regulatory requirements but also seize opportunities along the way,” she added.
By leveraging the knowledge and implementation capabilities of cross-functional EY teams and the power of the Microsoft Cloud, clients will be able to better assess and drive enterprise readiness for carbon tracking and traceability opportunities; obtain a clear understanding of both the technology landscape and data emission sources; identify digital opportunities to streamline data processing; evaluate industry standards; and identify opportunities to influence and lead.