Social and environmental metrics

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IBM® Envizi ESG Suite supports two primary methods for storing and aggregating data, which are environmental metric accounts and social metric accounts. While each method has benefits and limitations, you can combine the methods to refine your data for effective reporting in PowerReports.

Environmental metrics accounts

Environmental accounts are the primary reporting method that is used in Envizi ESG Suite. Environmental accounts contain a primary measure and a cost measure that are used in reporting and can contain optional secondary fields. The data from the accounts can be returned from any of the following tables:
  • Cost
  • Emissions
  • Energy
  • Native Units
  • Others
Primary measure
  • Used to provide calculated emissions, normalize data into different units of measure, or provide intensity metrics.
  • The unit of measure is determined by the data type that the account style belongs to, which is identified by a value at the end of the data type name. For example, Electricity [kWh] stores electricity data in kWh.
  • Data can be aggregated by using data type groups, and intensities can be calculated by using ratios or visual calculations.
  • Conversions between units of measure are stored within factors that are applied to the data type. If values are unavailable, review the energy and emission factors report.
Cost measure
  • Used to provide local or global currency values in PowerReports.
  • The cost field of each account is entered and stored in the local currency of the location that the account belongs to.
  • Data can be aggregated by using data type groups, and intensities can be calculated by using ratios or visual calculations.
  • Select the default global currency for your organization in the organization preferences page.
Secondary fields
  • Review values in the Envizi ESG Suite record grid or extract values through record-level extract reports.
  • The data is not available in PowerReports or normalized reporting.
  • You cannot use the data in data type groups or ratios.
  • No emissions or unit conversions are calculated on the measures.

Social metrics accounts

Social metrics accounts store data such as responses for disclosure reporting, KPI values for HR reporting, or other information that is not covered by environmental accounts.

Social metrics account styles can store up to 40 fields of data, and can either be returned as record level values or normalized to monthly values if they are stored numerically.

Data from the accounts is returned as entered in the record, and no conversion or emission factors are applied to the data.

Note: It is recommended that you do not use social metrics accounts styles to store intensity metrics, for example, metrics such as percentage of total or any calculated fields that use account style rules. Intensity metrics do not roll up correctly to totals in tables. If you require intensity metrics, use the Visual Calculations functionality that is available in PowerReports.

The data from social metrics accounts can be returned from the following tables:

Social Metric
  • Contains data in a tabular format with fixed data columns for all metrics and dimension data from social metrics accounts.
  • Use the reference, sub type, and record dates columns to aggregate or filter data at the record level.
  • Use the field name column o aggregate or filter data to specific social metric fields.
Social Metrics
  • Contains a separate column for each social metric field that you create.
  • Field names are based on the name that is specified in the account style and grouped in display folders that are labeled with the account style name.
  • Use the reference, sub type, and record dates columns to aggregate or filter data at the record level.
  • Because of database requirements, the following limitations apply:
    • The maximum field name length is 100 characters.
    • Each field must have a unique name compared to other fields in the same account style.
    • If the same field name exists in two account styles, it is suffixed with a unique identifier based on the account style ID.
    • The maximum number of fields that are returned in this table is typically up to 500 standard fields, but the number is reduced if large text fields are included.
    • If any of the previous conditions are not met, this Social Metrics table does not return results, but data is still available in the Social Metric table.