Exploring Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management)

The ServiceNow® ESG Management application helps you to manage your sustainability commitments.

ESG Management overview

While most organizations engage in sustainability initiatives, many lack a central tool to manage their operational sustainability programs. Without a centralized system, organizations lack visibility into sustainability efforts and struggle to track progress. The Operational Sustainability Management application addresses these challenges by enabling companies to manage their sustainability programs and communicate their goals and progress.

The business benefits of sustainability reporting using the Operational Sustainability Management application are as follows:

• Improves your brand reputation.
• Creates a competitive advantage.
• Attracts investors and more capital.
• Enables you to comply with regulatory requirements.
• Establishes strong corporate governance through ethical, transparent, and secure business practices.
• Improves corporate reputation.
• Improves customer confidence.
• Promotes transparency about the risks and opportunities.

Document material topics

Determine the material topics you’d like to track, such as managing carbon emissions. See Create material topics to get started and review Material topic workflow and states for more details.

Establish goals

Goals are the outcomes you want to achieve, and targets are specific, measurable milestones that help you reach the goals. The Create an Operational Sustainability Management goal page explains how to enter your goals and includes links to useful information like how goal progress is calculated. See Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) goal for details.

Create targets

A target shows you how well you are doing against your goal. The Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) target page shows you how to do it.

Associate entities with goals

Associate the entities that must be tracked for the goals and subgoals. This association is created for tracking purposes. Entities that are associated with the goal are responsible for tracking the goal. See Associate entities to goals for more details.

Define metrics

Create metric definitions and metrics to measure performance and how the organization is progressing toward its goals and targets. To gain an in-depth understanding of what are metrics and how they’re useful in Operational Sustainability Management, refer to Exploring GRC: Metrics

Add metrics to targets

Optionally, after you create a target, you can add a source for the target. The source can be a metric or a metric definition that contributes to the target. See Add a source for a target for more details.

Provide data for manual metrics or automatically collect data for automated metrics

Collect data for metrics either manually or automatically. Data must be provided manually for manual metrics and is automatically collected at the scheduled time for automated metrics. See Provide data for a metric data task for more details.

Generate disclosures

The disclosure is sent for review to the ESG program manager and after approval, it can be downloaded to a spreadsheet for easier reporting. Using the Microsoft 365 for ServiceNow Reporting, you can create disclosures in a Microsoft Word document. See Integrating Microsoft 365 with ServiceNow reporting to get started and review Disclosures in ESG Management for details.

Operational Sustainability Management benefits

Benefit	Feature	Users
Manage your operational sustainability activities from the interactive dashboard in the Home page.	Operational Sustainability Workspace (formerly ESG Workspace)	ESG program manager, disclosure manager.
Monitor your individual and team tasks from a single dashboard in the My tasks view.	My tasks page view	ESG program manager
Create material topics to determine your sustainability initiatives	Create a material topic	ESG program manager
Establish operational sustainability goals to track your progress toward your chosen material topics.	Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) goal	ESG program manager
Create a sustainability target to help track the progress towards your sustainability goal.	Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) target	ESG program manager
Use GRC: Metrics to track goals and targets, collect data, and report data.	Exploring GRC: Metrics	Metrics manager
Create disclosures for your organization. Disclosures enable investors to make informed decisions about companies, their risk posture, and sustainability standards.	Create a narrative disclosure on remote storage	Reporting disclosure manager, ESG program manager

• Elements of Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management)
  Before you start your sustainability initiatives, familiarize yourself with the key elements such as material topics, metrics, and disclosures that make up the Operational Sustainability Management application.
• Material topic workflow and states
  Material topics are the point of origin for sustainability initiatives. A material topic must be identified before it can be tracked and measured for success.The workflow states for a material topic depend on how the material topic was created.
• Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) use case
  The operational sustainability use case consists of multiple processes such as setting up your operational sustainability program, defining metrics, collecting data for metrics, adhering to regulatory frameworks, and generating disclosures.
• Operational Sustainability Workspace (formerly ESG Workspace)
  The Operational Sustainability Workspace is a simplified user interface designed for different users to perform their respective tasks. The home page of the Operational Sustainability Workspace displays various quick actions and reports.
• My tasks page view
  My tasks page displays a single-pane view of your pending tasks, and the tasks assigned to your user group.
• Operational Sustainability Workspace (formerly ESG Workspace) users
  The Operational Sustainability Workspace displays the relevant data for the environmental, social, and governance pillars and enables you to take appropriate actions according to your role. These roles include the ESG administrator, ESG program manager, ESG reporting and disclosure manager, ESG metrics manager, and ESG data owner.
• Managing Sustainable IT
  The Sustainable IT application enables you to effectively manage and monitor the emissions generated by your hardware assets. Additionally, it enables you to keep track of the energy consumption of your assets and their proper disposal after they reach the end of their lifespan.
• Scope 3 dashboard
  The Scope 3 dashboard helps you to calculate and track scope 3 emissions to gain a complete understanding of your organization's operational sustainability impact and ensure compliance with evolving regulations. Scope 3 emissions refer to indirect emissions in your value chain, for example, the emissions generated from procurement of equipment.
• ESG content accelerator
  The ESG content accelerator application is a centralized repository of frameworks, citations, metric definitions, and emission factors. Using this application accelerates the adoption of operational sustainability frameworks.
• Emission factor library
  Setting up your emission factor library is important for calculating your emissions accurately. An emission factor library consists of emission factors, emission activities and emission activity sources.
• Usage of emission factors in a calculated metric definition
  When using an emission factor in a calculated metric definition (CMD), follow the specified guidelines to confirm accurate results.
• Forecasting planning and analysis
  You can use the forecast planning and analysis feature to simulate various scenarios. The forecast planning and analysis tools enable for the creation, saving, visualization, and comparison of multiple analyses, enabling better planning.