Sustainability reporting with Oracle Cloud

Sustainability is no longer a compliance requirement or a chapter in a stakeholder report—it’s now a key business priority. Consumers, board members, investors, regulators, shareholders and employees put increasingly higher pressure on business leaders to limit their environmental impact, increase transparency around social-economic issues, and incorporate sustainability into their practices.

Forward looking leaders know that sustainability is actually good for business. Sustainability insights can guide decisions such as climate-related impact on productivity. Consider, for example, the insights that carbon emissions reports can offer to manufacturers and help them reduce monthly energy costs, improve operations and supply chain resilience.

According to PwC’s CFO Playbook 2024, nearly 75% of CFOs say sustainability is integral to long-term business success.

Turn sustainability compliance into business opportunity

As global corporate regulations continue to evolve and disclosure deadlines approach, enterprises must address a complex data management challenge. Starting in 2025, companies with a global footprint must meet the requirements introduced by emerging sustainability-related regulations and standards.

Today’s sustainability agenda

The new regulations are part of a broad effort by policymakers to foster a more socially and environmentally sustainable future. But compliance requires in-depth critical business data, and as PwC’s analysis indicates, leaders don’t yet have access to the quality data they need to meet the array of new requirements. That’s because sustainability touches every function of an organisation, and the emerging regulations require gathering and analysing a vast amount of data that was previously uncollected and may not exist today in company enterprise resource planning (ERP).

Most of this data is managed across systems, stored on premise and on cloud, across territories and in multiple business functions. Of the mandates, the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) stand out for their scope and complexity. In the United States, climate and sustainability regulations are also coming to surface. Learn more about them.

This regulation makes it mandatory for businesses operating in the EU to disclose over 1,000 ESG-related data points from a myriad of business functions. CSRD mandates disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, biodiversity loss and human capital––both within one’s own operations and throughout the value chain, and more––pending materiality determinations. CSRD’s reporting requirements present significant challenges.

As PwC’s analysis shows, although respondents to the survey express a high degree of confidence that they will be ready to report against their sustainability frameworks by the end of FY25, their answers also reveal potential challenges—including low completion rates for some early-stage activities, lack of senior stakeholder involvement at some companies and low rates of adoption for technologies that support efficient ongoing reporting.

“Companies that have not completed upfront CSRD scoping should consider accelerating this task now. Only then can they fully understand the data challenge they are facing.” Renate de Lange-Snijders, Global Sustainability Tax and Legal Services Leader, PwC

According to the European Commission, the new rules apply to nearly 50,000 companies––including US companies with EU subsidiaries and all companies with securities listed on EU-regulated markets. Currently, many F500 companies publish annual voluntary sustainability reports, but it’s often a manual process covering a limited scope. CSRD is a different ball game, standing out for its scope and complexity. According to PwC’s Global CSRD Survey 2024, business leaders say that reporting under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive will bring tangible business benefits––even as they grapple with tight timelines and the complexity of implementing the regulation.

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is an effort to fairly price carbon emitted during the production of carbon-intensive goods entering the EU. Starting on January 1, 2026, companies exporting to Europe must declare both direct and indirect emissions embedded in their goods and surrender the corresponding number of certificates each year. Declarants must submit annual reports specifying the reported emissions for each supplier, for each type of imported good in scope of CBAM—including data on the quantity of CBAM goods imported and any equivalent carbon price paid abroad. This information must be provided on a per-product and per-production installation basis, which requires in-depth data across the supply chain, and unless companies collect this data in advance, they won’t be able to import goods. To remain compliant, companies must automate the collection of emissions data within their operations as well as gather and standardise the information from suppliers.

Climate and sustainability regulations are also gaining momentum in the United States, where additional reporting rules are poised to change the landscape of climate reporting. On June 26, 2023, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) issued its first two sustainability reporting standards - IFRS S1 and IFRS S2. Additionally, on October 7, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed three landmark climate disclosure bills impacting over 10,000 US companies—including both public and private companies as well as subsidiaries of non-US headquartered companies.

Embed sustainability into your strategy

While sustainability reporting is now a reality and a business opportunity, for COOs and sustainability teams it is a complex code to crack. As your organisation addresses this challenge, you can use this as an opportunity to build a better data strategy for the future—and leverage the uncovered data to become more competitive. As PwC analysis shows, these regulations are unfolding value-creation opportunities—if leaders bring sustainability into their strategies and planning. Urgent action is required to meet the reporting needs—enhanced data and reporting are crucial for providing clearer decision-making insights.

“By integrating sustainability analytics into their operations, leaders can address environmental factors that affect their supply chain, boost business value, and advance sustainability initiatives. The companies that embrace agile sustainability strategies will set themselves up for long-term success in our evolving market.” Sammy Lakshmanan, Sustainability Leader, PwC US.

Tech-power your sustainability goals

What practices can your organisation take now to address the upcoming disclosure deadlines, meet compliance, and derive business value from your sustainability data? Based on our experience, sustainability success involves three elements: strategy, technology, and processes. Below are three important considerations:

Step one: Weave sustainability through your business strategy to achieve far-reaching benefits

To meet today's sustainability agenda and reporting needs, companies need more, better, and quickly available data spanning a wide range of functions and topics. Access to this granular information hinges on the ability to integrate reporting from several business functions, including Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, HR, etc. Sustainability must be integrated into the fabric of business functions and viewed through a broader strategic lens. PwC can help you evolve your business strategy to improve planning with predictive analytics to develop sustainable growth.

Step two: Automate data collection

Many organisations are now focused on sourcing and managing data to meet upcoming disclosures. Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite is a powerful integrated platform that stores a vast amount of data your sustainability team will need to comply with the new regulations—but data remains dispersed across applications. Even if your business relies solely on Oracle, your team still needs to collect, standardise and report data to meet annual disclosures.

To address this issue, PwC recently launched sustainability reporting capabilities for the Oracle Cloud Platform, enabling businesses to identify relevant European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) metrics, entity-specific disclosures, data availability gaps and automate data collection and reporting.

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Meet your sustainability goals with PwC and Oracle

Contact us and start streamlining sustainability reporting with our solution for Oracle Cloud.

“Meeting sustainability goals takes more than compliance rigor and tracking numbers. It requires leveraging technology to automate processes. If your organisation uses Oracle Cloud applications, you can streamline the reporting process with PwC’s sustainability capabilities for Oracle.” Paras Sachdeva, Partner, PwC US

Step three: Strengthen your data management program

Strategy and innovation are essential—but they’re not sufficient on their own. Without rigorous data management, even the most forward-thinking sustainability program may fall short. Assurance and materiality have never been more critical to compliance, and performance. PwC collaborates with Tax, Risk Assurance and Management Consulting teams to address these challenges with a holistic approach. We can evaluate your operating model success, enable new digital capabilities and enhanced business outcomes to drive growth.

PwC’s Oracle practice received the Oracle Partner Customer Success Award for two consecutive years, a statement of our dedication to helping businesses thrive with Oracle Cloud transformation.

“Sustainability is embedded in our program delivery methodology starting with global design.” Paras Sachdeva, partner, PwC US

Let PwC’s Oracle team help your organisation build a thorough data strategy, tech-enable your team to meet reporting requirements, and accelerate your sustainability journey.

Contact

Paras Sachdeva

Partner, PwC United States

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