Global professional services firm EY and tech giant IBM announced the launch of a new sustainability reporting Managed Services solution, aimed at enabling companies to address growing and evolving ESG disclosure requirements, including capturing, analyzing and managing sustainability data, and providing assurance-ready reporting.

According to the companies, the new solution brings together EY’s assurance expertise and IBM’s Envizi sustainability software solutions, and marks an expansion of the EY-IBM Sustainability Center of Excellence (CoE). EY and IBM announced an expanded collaboration last year aimed at providing ESG solutions to help companies accelerate, manage and report on sustainability-related business transformations and initiatives.

Forming part of EY’s Sustainability Managed Services, the new end-to-end solution aims to help companies address sustainability reporting challenges including the need to continually invest in people, processes and technology to meet evolving requirements, and find talent with the appropriate expertise, while also helping add long-term value, instead of focusing entirely on compliance.

Amy Brachio, EY Global Vice Chair, Sustainability, said:

“Too often organizations are navigating disparate data, systems and spreadsheets that anchor sustainability in operational data rather than business wide transformational insights and progress. Now they can access an organization-wide view that creates report ready insights now, while also having the flexibility for evolving with reporting, standards and how the strategy evolves over time.”

Key features of the new solution include data management, with sustainability data centrally managed and integrated with third-party, internal and external data sources; reporting and analytics, including flexible reporting and visualization tools for ESG reporting and performance insights; compliance and risk management, including automated compliance monitoring and reporting, and; stakeholder engagement and communication tools targeting better transparency and accountability.

Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Product Management and Growth, IBM Software, said:

“It is crystal clear that sustainability challenges are also business challenges. Companies that want to thrive in today’s competitive landscape need a deep understanding of their waste, energy costs, environmental risks and supply chains. Our partnership lets organizations rely on IBM software and EY experts to deliver transparent, trusted ESG reporting, so that they can focus on building value for their shareholders, board members and employees.”