Salesforce has unveiled new Einstein features for Net Zero Cloud to make corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting easier for companies as they navigate a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.
Beginning in 2024, approximately 50,000 companies including many large, multinationals based in the U.S. must comply with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This includes disclosing both climate-related financial risks and societal impact, along with scope 3 or the emissions generated by a company's supply chain.
The company also introduced two new capabilities for Net Zero Cloud CSRD Report Builder and Materiality Assessment. The Report Builder automates CSRD report generation, and Materiality Assessment helps organisations determine what is material both to their business and broader societal impact, the double materiality assessment that is a requirement of CSRD.
"Meaningful corporate transparency benefits us all, yet businesses can find themselves lost in the complex landscape of regulatory frameworks," says Ari Alexander, VP and GM of Net Zero Cloud at Salesforce.
"Equipped with Einstein, Net Zero Cloud will help simplify the process of reporting ESG data, offering a valuable solution that any company can leverage towards achieving net zero," he says.
AI enhances Net Zero Clouds ESG reporting capabilities
McKinsey found that successful ESG execution can cut a company's operating costs by up to 60%. Yet, 51% of finance leaders, including chief accounting officers, said that they invest substantial time addressing ESG data collection and disclosure.
Net Zero Cloud, a complete sustainability solution built on the Salesforce Platform, enables companies to easily assess and report on their environmental footprint across scopes 1, 2, and 3. It also manages social and governance metrics, and generates ESG reports aligned to SASB, CDP, GRI, and now, the EUs CSRD standards.
The latest Net Zero Cloud innovations include:
Einstein for Net Zero Cloud: With Einstein, Net Zero Cloud will suggest responses based on prompts that are in line with specific reporting framework criteria to help companies streamline the ESG reports authoring process. For example, Einstein can leverage a company's ESG data from previous years disclosures, uploaded documents (e.g., 10K, impact reports, compliance documents), and other Net Zero Cloud data, such as a company's emissions. It will then use this data to automatically populate responses for each written question in the report.
CSRD Report Builder: As the world shifts from voluntary to mandatory ESG disclosures, the CSRD Report Builder for Net Zero Cloud will help companies automate reporting to align with CSRD-specific requirements, including double materiality. This new feature expands the collection of existing Net Zero Cloud report builders, including GRI, CDP, and SASB found in Salesforce's Disclosure and Compliance Hub.
Materiality Assessment: This new feature will empower ESG managers to identify the topics most material to their business. Using a customisable survey, they can more easily gather critical stakeholder input, rank topic importance and calculate scores, and then visualise the results in a matrix. These results can ultimately help ESG managers shape their company's ESG program and reporting strategy more effectively.