ServiceNow : Activating ESG strategies and initiatives to improve business and the world

Around the world, more organizations are championing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives to help create a more sustainable, equitable, and ethical world, build stakeholder trust, and drive ESG impact and business value. There's a good reason: ESG drives better business outcomes-and it makes the world better.

For many, meeting ESG goals is a challenge. That's because ESG spans a lot of different types of activities across the enterprise. Creating the clarity and governance to go from goals to reality is extremely difficult.

Departments within an enterprise often use discrete tools to generate different types of ESG data and unique systems to manage specific ESG programs. In addition, the evolving regulatory landscape makes it incredibly challenging for companies to keep up with the changing global reporting requirements of their ESG progress.

As a result, companies up until now have had to navigate siloed, disconnected processes that can result in poor visibility, governance, management, and reporting of ESG programs across the enterprise.

Introducing a new, integrated solution

ServiceNow is committed to helping our customers positively impact their business, society, and the planet. That's why we're releasing a new integrated ESG solution that will enable companies to strategize, manage, govern, and report on all their ESG goals and activities-while providing complete transparency and control across these efforts.

Our ESG solution delivers an operational "control tower" to help bring companies' ESG goals to life. The integrated solution brings together three unique products:

• Newly introduced ServiceNow® ESG Management and Reporting enables companies to document material topics, establish goals and key performance indicators (KPIs), track performance, collect and validate audit-ready data, and create disclosures that align with major ESG reporting frameworks.
  

• ServiceNow Project and Portfolio Management helps build and maintain a company's ESG roadmap, including strategy, planning, and budgeting tools-plus ongoing tracking of costs, resources, and results. Companies gain visibility into their ESG investments and improve the scale and impact of their ESG efforts.

• ServiceNow Integrated Risk Management provides core governance capabilities plus advanced risk assessments, continuous monitoring, AI, audits, privacy, automation, and more. It integrates ESG considerations and data into effective enterprise-wide risk and compliance management with a real-time view of ESG compliance and risk, as well as rich analytics that improve decision-making and business performance.

Harnessing the power of the Now Platform®, our solution seamlessly integrates with purpose-built ESG workflows by ServiceNow, our customers and partners, and other third parties. We believe this will enable firms to significantly improve their impact across business, social, and environmental issues.

The importance of ESG

This release reflects the growing importance of ESG initiatives across the enterprise and society. Today, nearly 60% of European organizations incorporate sustainability in their requests for proposal, according to a Channel Futures article. On the consumer side, people are four times more likely to trust and buy from companies that have a strong purpose versus those that don't, Zeno Group reports.

Likewise, around the world, governments are accelerating their oversight of firms' ESG efforts, creating new implications for risk and compliance departments.

For example, more than 170 proposed ESG regulatory measures have emerged since 2018, according to FT Adviser. This includes Germany's Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, which goes into effect in 2023 and will require companies to audit their supply chains to ensure they protect human rights and the environment, reports the US Library of Congress. This kind of regulation introduces new imperatives to develop company-wide ESG measurement and reporting systems.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, the European Union announced new "right to repair" laws that require electronics manufacturers to make their products repairable for at least a decade after they're introduced, Euronews reports. These regulations-and the many others across diversity and inclusion, emissions, and even data privacy-will have an increasing number of implications for firms everywhere.

Toward a better world

At ServiceNow, we believe we're uniquely positioned to help our customers in these efforts because the Now Platform already touches all parts of their business. In conversations with our customers, we hear time and again about the pain points preventing them from implementing their ESG strategies.

While many firms have ambitious corporate ESG goals, such as reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, many struggle to achieve those goals and to track their progress. With our integrated ESG solution, we're helping to convert customers' big-picture efforts into concrete strategies and processes that they can measure against and report on.

Further, to maximize the impact of this solution out of the gate, we're working with partners across our developer program to create ESG workflows for specific industry use cases.

I'm excited about the possibilities here. By helping our customers realize their ESG goals, we can, together, create a more sustainable, equitable, and ethical world. Let's go!

Learn more about how to workflow your ESG program.

Use of forward‑looking statements

This blog contains "forward‑looking statements" about the expectations, beliefs, plans, intentions and strategies relating to ServiceNow's integrated ESG solution and related products. Such forward‑looking statements include statements regarding future product capabilities and offerings and expected benefits to ServiceNow. Forward‑looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward‑looking statements. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward‑looking statements we make. We undertake no obligation, and do not intend, to update the forward‑looking statements. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward‑looking statements include, without limitation, (i) changes in the ESG regulatory landscape; and (ii) unexpected delays, difficulties, and expenses in making available the ESG solution or executing this strategy. Further information on factors that could affect our financial and other results is included in the filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.

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