ESG AI Research & Benchmarking

    Nasdaq Sustainability Solutions

    ESG AI Research & Benchmarking
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    ESG Benchmarking

    ESG Benchmarking Powered by AI

     

    ESG benchmarking allows your company to measure its sustainability performance against that of industry peers, providing comparative insights in the areas most relevant to you—whether it’s scope 3 emissions, net zero targets, or employee retention, to name a few. 

    While the insights that emerge from benchmarking typically prove invaluable, the process is often onerous. For any company professional in pursuit of high-quality benchmarks, there’s a staggering number of ESG documents to consider and a complex landscape of sustainability frameworks to navigate. 

    Thankfully, artificial intelligence (AI) can help. By applying the transformative power of AI technology through data intelligence solutions such as Nasdaq Sustainable Lens®, you can supercharge your search for meaningful ESG benchmarks. 

    Contents

    ESG Benchmarking: Best Practices to Consider ->

    A More Sustainable Approach to Benchmarking ->

    Which Teams Can Benefit from AI-Powered Benchmarking? ->

    AI for ESG Benchmarking: What are the Risks? ->

    Supercharge Your ESG Benchmarking ->

    Why Nasdaq Sustainable Lens? ->

     

    The Challenge of ESG Benchmarking

    Benchmarking is a numbers game. Getting an accurate measure of another company’s performance may involve comparing numerous ESG reports and corporate filings across several years, then extracting the relevant insights from each. It’s a near-impossible task for any one person to swiftly process the data. 

    Embracing your ESG Strategy

    Half the battle is deciding which benchmarks to track in the first place. That’s why aligning your benchmarks with your company’s ESG strategy is critical, helping you focus on those topics, goals, and standards that matter most to your organization. ESG benchmarking never takes place in a vacuum.

    Identifying the Relevant Data  

    Even once your frameworks are settled and your benchmarks are clear, hunting down the key information is no mean feat. When you’re dealing with potentially hundreds of documents, relying on CTRL+F searches quickly runs out of steam. You need to find a more powerful, sustainable approach.

    ESG Benchmarking: Best Practices to Consider

    An ESG AI assistant specialized in ESG benchmarking can help you query a document set and navigate among sustainability frameworks with confidence. Here are some best practices to consider when adopting AI-powered benchmarking: 

    • Control your Dataset. Navigate your knowledge base of ESG reports and filings across themes, document types, and frameworks by making effective use of filters. 
    • Build your Lists. Create unlimited peer lists for a snapshot of ESG performance across organizations, allowing you to drill into the most relevant data fast. 
    • Follow the Prompts: Explore suggested queries and recommended topics courtesy of your ESG AI assistant, as it dives deep into your document library on your behalf. 
    • Ensure Transparency in Sourcing. Pinpoint the source of your benchmark data with instant accuracy, giving you the confidence to cascade verifiable insights across your organization. 
    • Compare and Contrast. Extract relevant comparisons that help position your ESG performance relative to your peers and the sustainability frameworks they’re using. 

    A More Sustainable Approach to Benchmarking

    By harnessing the power of an ESG AI assistant, you can boost productivity and generate report-ready benchmarking with a few clicks. Automating those benchmarking tasks that are typically performed manually reduces repetitive, time-intensive work. 

    • Instant Benchmarking: Delegate the heavy lifting of document analysis to an ESG intelligence platform capable of assessing and ranking your industry benchmarks with near-instantaneous speed. 
    • Scalable Insights: Increase the size of your peer list for unlimited insights, supported by citations that reach deep below the waterline of your dataset.  
    • Automatic Rank Ordering: Visualize how your firm and its peers compare to one another within the industry, placing companies on an ESG maturity curve from beginner to advanced.  
    • Framework Comparison: Compare your peers’ ESG data disclosures across regulatory frameworks (SEC, TCFD, CSRD, ISSB, etc.), resulting in sophisticated benchmarks that align with your strategic goals. 
    • Human Supervision: Insist on high-quality sources carefully vetted by ESG experts, helping keep your sustainability benchmarks grounded in verifiable information. 
    • Trusted Architecture: Generate your benchmarks within a secure data environment, built according to top-tier standards with user privacy at its core.   

    Which Teams Can Benefit from AI-Powered Benchmarking?

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    Whether it’s benchmarking key governance metrics or comparing reporting requirements among frameworks, an ESG AI assistant supports the work of a multitude of teams across your organization. 

    Sustainability Teams

    Measure ESG progress, simplify gap analysis on high-priority topics, and gain a nuanced understanding of your company’s relative performance.

    Investor Relations

    Extract report-ready examples to keep investors and other stakeholders on the same page, while advancing your company’s sustainability story.

    Corporate Legal

    Stay ahead of risk while sharpening C-suite thinking by sharing comprehensive ESG insights on the state-of-play in your sector.

    Accounting (Financial Reporting)

    Contextualize peer benchmarks, understand key differences between reporting frameworks, and bring clarity to your compliance plans.

    Sustainability Teams

    Measure ESG progress, simplify gap analysis on high-priority topics, and gain a nuanced understanding of your company’s relative performance.

    Investor Relations

    Extract report-ready examples to keep investors and other stakeholders on the same page, while advancing your company’s sustainability story.

    Corporate Legal

    Stay ahead of risk while sharpening C-suite thinking by sharing comprehensive ESG insights on the state-of-play in your sector.

    Accounting (Financial Reporting)

    Contextualize peer benchmarks, understand key differences between reporting frameworks, and bring clarity to your compliance plans.

    AI for ESG Benchmarking: What Are the Risks?

    Any innovative technology has its potential pitfalls, and AI-powered ESG benchmarking is no different. For one, the results are only as good as the knowledge base that the technology is querying. If the dataset is poorly curated, this can result in information which is outdated or limited in relevance. 

    Moreover, context is key. An ESG AI assistant needs to minimize the risk of misinterpretation by presenting data points in a clear and helpful way, rather than leaving you to make sense of the information alone. It must help you source, rank, and compare sustainability data intuitively. 

    Supercharge your ESG Benchmarking

    Whatever your company’s key metrics, here are some additional ways an AI-powered ESG assistant can take your benchmarking from good to great by rapidly identifying the initiatives and disclosures where your company is leading the pack or lagging behind. 

    • Comparing ESG Initiatives. Review the range of sustainability commitments that your peers and competitors have undertaken, and closely compare your performance in these areas. By using a dedicated ESG copilot for benchmarking, improve your time-to-insight while deepening your understanding of the competitive landscape. 
    • Analyzing your Disclosures. Leverage AI-powered benchmarking to significantly ramp up your ability to monitor trends in ESG reporting across peers, sectors, and markets. Consider possible new disclosures based on what your peers are doing and identify potential compliance gaps. 
    • Looking Beyond Ratings. Build a more complex picture than that simply conveyed by ESG scores. While sustainability ratings from third-party agencies can provide a leading indicator, ESG benchmarking offers a more finely grained understanding of how your company’s performance stacks up against the pack. 

    Why Nasdaq Sustainable Lens?

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    Remove the guesswork with Nasdaq Sustainable Lens, an ESG intelligence platform powered by AI. Get chatting with its intuitive interface as it serves up dynamic insights designed to advance your approach to benchmarking.  

    Uncover Quality Data Fast

    Benchmark against a massive repository of carefully selected ESG documents sourced from more than 9,000 companies worldwide. Search according to frameworks, review your peers’ ESG commitments, and bring competitor metrics to the surface in the blink of an eye. 

    Drive Trust through Transparency

    Whether it’s nature conservation or the intricacies of CSRD, you’re only as good as the data you’re using to benchmark. With Nasdaq Sustainable Lens, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with a closely managed database built and operated by a global leader in ESG intelligence.

    Integrate your ESG Reporting

    If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Whether you’re comparing scope emissions or board oversight, use the AI-powered technology of Nasdaq Sustainable Lens to generate the benchmark data your organization needs to support its ESG strategy. Then hop across to Nasdaq Metrio™ for end-to-end tracking and reporting of your strategy in action. 

    Generate Value Creation

    ESG benchmarking, conducted intelligently, can not only shape a company’s sustainability strategy but drive operational efficiencies through competitive insights. Get crafting the right goals for your organization, then continuously get better at meeting them. 

    From regulatory compliance to investor communications, ESG benchmarking has never been more straightforward with Nasdaq Sustainable Lens. Climb into the captain’s seat as your AI-powered copilot helps you cover more ground, more deeply than you previously thought possible. 

    Uncover Quality Data Fast

    Benchmark against a massive repository of carefully selected ESG documents sourced from more than 9,000 companies worldwide. Search according to frameworks, review your peers’ ESG commitments, and bring competitor metrics to the surface in the blink of an eye. 

    Drive Trust through Transparency

    Whether it’s nature conservation or the intricacies of CSRD, you’re only as good as the data you’re using to benchmark. With Nasdaq Sustainable Lens, enjoy the peace of mind that comes with a closely managed database built and operated by a global leader in ESG intelligence.

    Integrate your ESG Reporting

    If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Whether you’re comparing scope emissions or board oversight, use the AI-powered technology of Nasdaq Sustainable Lens to generate the benchmark data your organization needs to support its ESG strategy. Then hop across to Nasdaq Metrio™ for end-to-end tracking and reporting of your strategy in action. 

    Generate Value Creation

    ESG benchmarking, conducted intelligently, can not only shape a company’s sustainability strategy but drive operational efficiencies through competitive insights. Get crafting the right goals for your organization, then continuously get better at meeting them. 

    From regulatory compliance to investor communications, ESG benchmarking has never been more straightforward with Nasdaq Sustainable Lens. Climb into the captain’s seat as your AI-powered copilot helps you cover more ground, more deeply than you previously thought possible. 

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    Solutions for Every Step

    Your Sustainability Reporting Journey with Nasdaq

    • Plan
    • Assess
    • Collect
    • Measure
    • Disclose
    • Communicate
    • Manage Impact

    Plan

    Define material ESG business drivers for your company

    Seek the expertise of world-class ESG consultants to understand the expectations and priorities of your key capital markets stakeholders.

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    Seek the expertise of world-class ESG consultants to understand the expectations and priorities of your key capital markets stakeholders.

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    ESG Journey - Phase 1 - Plan