Industry Voice: The price of progress: finding the value in sustainability reporting

Computacenter’s Clare Parry-Jones examines how navigating the complexities of ESG compliance might reveal hidden business value.

Regulation is rising – but it’s rising more slowly now, isn’t it? Stakeholders are scrutinising – but the gaze keeps shifting, doesn’t it? Customers are asking questions – but the questions are often very different, aren’t they?

For many organisations, what started as a few nicely-worded commitments on a website has now morphed into a full-scale operational undertaking with an end goal that remains slightly hazy and just out of reach.

What is clear is that sustainability reporting now feels like an industry in its own right; measured not in tonnes of carbon, but in people, tools, frameworks, words, worries, and hours.

Let’s drill into that a little.

Most large organisations now have sustainability teams, cross-functional task forces, external consultants, auditors, and legal and compliance oversight. A single regulatory report might run to somewhere between 120-180 pages, reference at least 9 frameworks or standards, require at least 11 stakeholder meetings, 3 board-level reviews, and a conservative 27 rounds of redrafting. By the time you’ve explained the difference between the GHG Protocol and EU Taxonomy to your colleagues for the fifth time, you might start to wonder if you're starring in a sustainability-themed version of Groundhog Day.

The tools? Endless. ESG platforms. Double materiality dashboards. Scope 3 calculators. Assurance workflows. Assessment portals. AI-based report generators (more on those shortly). All of them promise ease and accuracy for a respectable and escalating fee and the privilege of trying to make them talk to one another.

All of this runs the risk of creating duplication, misalignment, and rising internal fatigue. We find ourselves in danger of chasing disclosures that don’t quite match, producing parallel reports for investors, regulators, partners, and customers, and spending more time explaining the difference between an ESRS and an ISSB than actually reducing emissions!

And now, inevitably, we’re using AI to help us. It can draft, summarise, cross-reference, tag, and translate. It will even tell you if your double materiality assessment results are a bit light on biodiversity. But – ironically – the energy and water required to power the LLMs behind this magic is roughly equivalent to washing an elephant every time you generate a new paragraph.*

So… is it all worth it?

Well yes, of course it is! (Okay fine - with caveats.)

While there’s no denying that the cost of compliance is real, it doesn’t have to just fund a bureaucratic burden. Done well, the investment creates a strategic lever, contributing to sustainable growth.

We just need to strike that balance. But how?

Getting the basics under control is the most important first step, and that means both being proportionate, and starting to share the load across our ecosystems. To do this, we need to focus on making reasonable requests of suppliers and partners, and maybe even start asking them what’s working for everyone else and seeing if that might work for us, too.

We should try to standardise our outputs where we can. I’m sure our stakeholders are just as tired of receiving five variations of the same ESG update as we are of aggregating them!

Then we can start to look at strategic value. That means keeping the purpose front and centre – because this isn’t about ticking regulatory boxes. This is about building a resilient, future-proof organisation that’s equipped to navigate disruption, create long-term value, and remain competitive in a fast-changing world.

Sustainability disclosures should drive clarity, performance, and smarter decision-making. If they don’t, then we’re probably doing it wrong. I can say with confidence that getting a Double Materiality Assessment right gives you incredible insight that enriches decision-making and supports business goals.

So yes, it’s costly and it should (and could) cost less. That’s on us – let’s work better together.

And okay, some of our stakeholders might find it frustrating, and at times it feels like we’ve built a reporting machine that exists purely to feed itself.

But it’s also essential: For strategy. For resilience. For credibility. For competitiveness.

And, not to get too earnest about it – for the greater good.

*I don’t know what’s actually involved in washing an elephant. Let’s just say AI isn’t carbon neutral yet.

Read about Computacenter’s sustainability commitments and achievements here: https://computacenter.link/l7ojy

This article is sponsored by Computacenter.