How we helped Groupe Up digitize its non-financial reporting

Since July 2019, major French companies have been subject to the Extra-Financial Performance Declaration (EPOS), which ensures greater transparency regarding ESG (economic, social and governance) and CSR (corporate social responsibility) performance. This exercise requires time and resources as it is a cumbersome and complex process.

As processes, tools and labor standards become increasingly digital, digitizing CSR reporting is a logical step.

In the aim of optimizing the sustainability reporting process and further anchoring CSR in its corporate strategy, Groupe Up has decided to digitize all of its extra-financial process. Metrio has accompanied Groupe Up throughout this process. We supported them by centralizing all the reporting steps in our integrated SaaS solution: data collection, generation of performance indicators, remote data audit by Groupe Y Nexia, and communication of their 100% digital and dynamic EPOS.

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What is reporting digitization? 

Reporting digitization is defined by the automatization of the process, from data centralization to data verification and consolidation, thus allowing the transition from a paper EPAS report to an interactive and digital public version. This last option was chosen by Groupe Up through the creation of a Metrio platform microsite accessible from their corporate website

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Why digitize your extra-financial reporting process? 

Groupe Up represents 3,750 employees in 26 countries across 4 continents. The data collection process for a company of this size can be convoluted. Also, it involves managing, defining and the relevance of numerous KPIs. Optimizing the process by acquiring an online tool to centralize and automate the data collection process is essential.

To facilitate its extra-financial reporting process, Groupe Up has prepared its transition.

• Firstly, they needed a tool accessible to all its employees around the world, each of which would be able to have a tailor-made role according to his role and scope. 
• Secondly, a tool able to centralize data collection, and ensure data verification in an efficient, reliable and therefore traceable manner, on the following themes: governance/risks, economic, social, societal and environmental. 
• Thirdly, Groupe Up wanted to be able to automatically generate performance monitoring dashboards to regularly monitor the Group’s KPIs. The cooperative, the parent company, wanted to be able to respond to these stakeholders and produce the Group’s CSR deliverables and those of the subsidiaries, the Carbon Footprint and the social balance sheets and those of the Up Foundation.
  

Digitizing the External Audit Process

Looking to simplify their reporting process and multiply their impact, Groupe Up has also digitized the audit of its non-financial data. Groupe Y Nexia, Groupe Up’s auditor, has had temporary access to all data entered and calculated in their Metrio account. This gave them simple access to the raw data, calculations made between data collection forms, and all the information relating to their traceability (supporting documents, source, time stamp, variation threshold, etc.). 

Results From Digitizing the Extra-Financial Reporting Process

Thanks to the use of the solution offered by Metrio, Groupe Up has optimized its extra-financial reporting process and fully digitized it (from data collection to communication and analysis). To meet the needs of the cooperative and to obtain the most granular data possible, the data was collected from each of its subsidiaries. The data was then consolidated at the group level to have an overall view of the Up Group’s extra-financial performance. 

To meet Groupe Up’s needs, Metrio proposed an agile solution that let it save time and resources, while helping them make decisions more strategically and efficiently. Our solution also allowed Groupe Up’s extra-financial reporting team and the CSR community to focus on each other’s expertise and not on the hassles caused by manual data collection and management.