Despite their smaller environmental footprints, software and technology providers have proven themselves to be some of the strongest leaders and most ambitious investors in corporate sustainability and climate action. One well-known technology company is taking climate risk and responsibility seriously and relies on Manifest Climate to get a lot done with a small team.
Within the company’s Sustainability team sits a smaller team responsible for the company’s climate risk program. The climate risk team is tasked with addressing physical and transition risks across data centers, supply chain officers, products, and services, and complying with relevant upcoming regulatory requirements. The team leverages Manifest Climate to assess the strength of its climate disclosures, benchmark against peers, and understand complex regulatory requirements.
How would you describe Manifest Climate?
A climate-related regulatory analysis tool that uses machine learning and AI to hone in on what’s being disclosed, what’s not being disclosed, and what could be — and then develops a high-level action plan.
Head of Climate Risk, Leading Technology Company
A comprehensive cross-check along the different risk climate, related risk frameworks out there, so it could just be your one stop shop platform for doing your initial cross check among the various standards out there.
Climate Risk Analyst, Leading Technology Company
Keeping up with disclosure trends
One climate team member we spoke to explained how, when she joined the company, there was no consolidated way for the team to understand where the gaps were in their voluntary climate disclosures, particularly as voluntary and mandatory disclosure standards have rapidly progressed in the last two years. “It’s hard to keep up with knowing what’s required, what’s voluntary, and what’s recommended,” she explains. Since Manifest Climate leverages machine learning and AI to help companies keep on top of the latest regulations and how they’re performing against them, this has helped make the teams’ lives easier and has meant that they are no longer “starting from scratch” when evaluating the climate disclosures.
Making sense out of complexity
It’s not just that keeping up with climate disclosure trends is time-consuming. Unless you’re a legal expert, these disclosure requirements are also very difficult to understand. “We have zero time to read through these documents,” says one team member, “but also, they’re dense. They’re confusing.” An individual may not easily pick up on small nuances in language within these requirements, but failing to do so can have serious ramifications down the line. Manifest Climate helps the team understand which elements are truly required by each disclosure standard. “It does the heavy lifting,” she explains. “We just don’t have time for it. The dashboard is really easy to navigate, and I like how it gives recommendations and a progress check.”
Saving time
“It’s a huge time-saver,” says another team member. “It’s such a crucial exercise, and it’s one that would take a lot of time.” Without an AI-based tool, the team would struggle to achieve such a deep level of cross-checking and comparison across their climate disclosures. “This is just an epic time-saver,” he explains. “Its cross-checking abilities gives us all the more assurance that we aren’t missing anything and can move ahead with doubling down on an existing initiative and filling in our gaps.”
Another example of the time Manifest Climate can give back to climate teams is with benchmarking exercises. “I guarantee you, every leadership call that I’ve had at this company and at other companies always involves the question: What are our peers doing? We don’t want to be behind them.” Before they had Manifest Climate, this team member conducted a manual benchmarking exercise that required approximately two weeks or 80 hours of effort. Including their initial setup with Manifest Climate, it took the team no more than 10 hours to conduct their next benchmarking exercise. “I like that Manifest Climate pulls examples of good practice for disclosure from our peers,” says this team member. “We wouldn’t have time to be able to go through that and find good disclosure examples for different regulatory requirements.”
A disclosure assessment solution that is focused on climate
While the company frequently engages consultants for other business services, evaluating their climate disclosures was something they were keen to attempt in-house — but they needed the power of an AI-based tool to analyze such vast amounts of data. As far as other solutions were concerned, no other tools on the market rival Manifest Climate’s focus on climate risk and disclosure. “ESG is so broad,” explains one of the team members we spoke to. “Our remit within our team is climate change, so the fact that Manifest Climate hones in on specific climate change elements is really, really helpful.”
Manifest Climate offers a wide range of disclosure standards against which companies can benchmark. “Using Manifest Climate as the go to, one-stop-shop for all voluntary and regulatory frameworks has been really valuable,” says another team member.
Formulating climate actions plans
With a well-established sustainability team and roadmap in place, the climate team has found Manifest Climate’s recommended action plan functionality helpful, not as a starting point but as a point of comparison for their existing climate plans.
When it comes to upcoming regulatory requirements, the team is able to quickly see where their current disclosures will help them meet future requirements and where there are gaps that need to be filled. “We’re not fully compliant with CSRD yet,” explains one team member, “so having everything laid out and being able to map and cross-check is really helpful. If there are ever instances where we need to go back and look at the documents themselves, Manifest Climate has very clear references to where that information lives, which has been super helpful.
