Datamaran announces agreement with Deloitte to use ESG software

(Bloomberg) — Datamaran, a provider of sustainability-related software, announced a partnership with Deloitte in three European markets to provide companies with ways to better assess their environmental and social impacts and risks.

As part of the agreement, Deloitte will use Datamaran’s dual materiality analysis software for clients in Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, according to a statement on Wednesday.

Chief Executive Officer Marjella Lecourt-Alma said in an interview that the deal could be the first of several with Deloitte and other firms, and comes at a time when Datamaran has signed up more clients in the United States than in Europe. Quantity occasion. One important reason, she said, is CSRD.

CSRD is the abbreviation of the European Union Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. It’s a vast set of mandatory quantitative and qualitative disclosure requirements covering everything from climate to labor practices. The directive takes effect this year and is expected to be fully rolled out in 2029.

Lecourt-Alma said there is “a lot of fear” associated with CSRD and it’s important for business leaders not to panic.

CSRD forces approximately 50,000 companies to disclose, track and measure their environmental, social and governance performance alongside their annual financial reports. It requires disclosure of data points on potentially more than 1,000 ESG indicators, from pollution to biodiversity, with more requirements to come.

The broad scope of the CSRD has led industry associations to plead with the European Commission to relax certain requirements, saying they make EU companies less competitive.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. announced last week that it would leave a major climate group to the bank, in part because of the need to comply with mandatory reporting requirements from initiatives such as CSRD, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The company’s withdrawal from the net-zero banking coalition comes amid growing pressure from US Republicans on anything that smacks of ESG. The challenges are almost certain to increase after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory last month.

Lecourt-Alma said the idea that ESG is dead is “clickbait.” She said that while ESG information is “ubiquitous”, the concepts and practices behind sustainability reporting are not fundamentally different from financial reporting.

Datamaran, which recently received funding from Morgan Stanley, counts Kraft Heinz Co., Dell Technologies and Cisco Systems among its clients.

Lecourt-Alma said that our goal is to enter the top 1,000 companies in the world by the end of 2028. The company does not “plan to raise additional capital,” she said. Instead, the idea is to get to a stage where “we’re ready to exit in the next three to five years,” either by doing an IPO or “becoming part of a larger structure,” she said.

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