Meet Alex, a PMO Director for a large multi-national manufacturing & engineering firm. They deliver engineer-to-order equipment to their customers in the construction industry.
Alex has a few problems which are causing a high amount of stress.
Number one: his company need to secure investment from private investors but they must provide evidence of committing to improving local communities through socially positive projects.
Number two: The regulator is due an audit of the firm’s governance and responsible environmental standards.
And number three: Alex doesn’t have time to collate data from various systems, people and project portfolios to assess their environmental and social impacts; while providing evidence of robust governance before the big investor presentation looming into view.
That’s why he’s turned to Cora. Thanks to Cora, each project is assessed through rigorous environmental, social and governance standards – or ESG reporting as Alex’s colleagues refer to it – to help produce suitability scores and ratings.
These ratings are created at project initiation and help the PMO decide the best portfolio investment strategy which features projects with higher ESG scores.
Now Alex can instantly see evidence and insight into his company’s ESG status before their major investor presentation. By using Cora’s interactive ESG dashboards, Alex’s peers on the senior management team can immediately see the list of projects they have in the portfolio and their ESG assessment ratings.
Alex can show this by graphical dashboards as well as by drill-down capabilities to see more information in real time from project teams.
The ESG Assessment dashboard shows which projects are categorized as IDEAL, IMPROVEMENT NEEDED & INADEQUATE, based on ESG scoring criteria. Furthermore, these ratings can be linked to other project metrics such as priority, budget, performance, status and categorization.
Using Cora’s single platform, Alex decides to compare the ESG ratings by project tier in just a couple of clicks. Alex notices a large tier 1 project is rated as inadequate based on their assessment. This would be a red flag for investors.
A tier 1 project is the largest that Alex’s company does and is linked to several strategies, funding sources and is subject to a high level of scrutiny from senior stakeholders, shareholders, investors and the media.
By spotting this early, Alex raises this with his chief operating officer and a plan is put in place to improve the ESG rating of this project, all thanks to the increased visibility Alex now has due to Cora.
It puts power in the hands of his chief operating officer, who can look at various ‘What if’ scenarios for portfolio delivery based on several factors but always showing which option would deliver the optimum ESG rating.
ESG assessment ratings are linked to a project’s KPIs and performance reporting structure. This ensures projects are kept on top of their commitments and their performance rolls up to PMO- and C-level dashboards.
Thanks to Cora, Alex’s firm secures that investment through the power of their evidence-based dashboards and audit trails. They also improve their environmental footprint and provide a positive impact on the local community as well as guaranteeing evidence of good governance business practices.
Great work Alex!
