16 IMPACT: Going beyond the numbers Can you explain how you organized your finance team for the group’s first-ever Integrated Report? The project started back in mid-2021, when the HQ finance team approached the ESG reporting work shadowing the Communication team, which until then had been responsible for ESG data collection and reporting. Our finance team firstly acted as “internal consultant” by mapping the high-level processes related to how people in charge of ESG data collection handled their job. The goal was to better understand the process, identify key control areas and eventually how to improve it altogether without altering the way we prepared the 2021 annual report. We continued the process in 2022 conducting a series of indepth interviews to explore the finance and sustainability functions and the various computing functions responsible for reporting some of these KPIs. For example, HR is in charge of reporting headcount, gender balance and other information. We interviewed colleagues in these functions to understand and map their reporting procedures. We realized that on many occasions there were no formalized written procedures. So, the following step was to formalize them, and look at how to improve them by introducing controls. Another improvement area introduced was the increased accountability of some ESG kpi’s (mainly in the area of HE&S) across the entire organization starting from the source of such data: from the plants to the region structures and finally HQ. It was possible to increase the accountability of reported data by clarifying the procedure on the collection and reporting of this data and clearly defining roles and responsibility matrixes over it with the identification of all control owners in a system traced approval workflow. We finally used a software platform called ESGeo to centralize the various steams of non-financial data to be integrated with our financial data reporting. What sort of challenges did you face during this process? We had to break down the silos between our function and the ones handling non-financial reporting, creating important synergies. Breaking the silos enabled us to transfer some of the financial reporting know-how to non-finance functions such as the formalization of procedures, settling deadlines, and the importance of data accuracy. This was an important cultural element that allowed us to make great strides. IN-DEPTH EXPLORATION All this allowed us to make data collection procedures traceable and verifiable. The most difficult part was to find a common way of working between functions that don't normally work together, and the ability to identify the best practices of each department.
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