Toda empresa que presente informes de conformidad con la CSRD debe realizar un análisis de doble materialidad (DMA) como paso obligatorio para definir el alcance del informe. Este análisis requiere que las empresas evalúen los aspectos de sostenibilidad desde dos perspectivas: cómo afectan a su rendimiento financiero (materialidad financiera) y cómo sus actividades comerciales impactan en el medio ambiente y la sociedad (materialidad de impacto). Esto garantiza una evaluación integral que abarca todo el espectro de la huella de sostenibilidad de una empresa. El resultado del DMA es una lista de temas de sostenibilidad y su nivel de materialidad asociado, que determina qué información y datos deben reportarse de acuerdo con el ESRS.
En Daato, el análisis de doble materialidad se realiza como parte del módulo ESRS. Aquí puede ver cómo acceder:
Respecto a la creación del análisis de materialidad en Daato, hay dos opciones: o lo realizas íntegramente utilizando Daato, o importas los resultados de un análisis de materialidad realizado externamente.
Importación de análisis de materialidad externa (resultados):
Si realizó un análisis de materialidad fuera de Daato, puede importar los resultados y toda la documentación de la siguiente manera:
Después de hacer clic en Nuevo informe en la vista de análisis de materialidad, seleccione Importar informe .
Funcionalidad de importación de informes:
Al seleccionar la opción Importar informe se abre una barra lateral.
Los usuarios pueden descargar una plantilla con las siguientes columnas:
- Estándar: Lista de estándares con su categoría (Ambiental/Social/Gobernanza), p. ej., Ambiental: Clima. Opciones adicionales:
- Medioambiental: Específico de la empresa
- Social: Específico de la empresa
- Gobernanza: específica de la empresa
- Tema de Sostenibilidad
- Materialidad del impacto: No material | Muy baja | Baja | Media | Alta | Muy alta
- Explicación de la materialidad del impacto
- Materialidad financiera: No material | Muy baja | Baja | Media | Alta | Muy alta
- Explicación de la materialidad financiera
The template comes pre-filled with all standard sustainability topics (only the first two columns are filled).
Language Support:
If your tool's language is set to German, the template will be downloaded with all column names, choices, and pre-selected sustainability topics in German.
Spreadsheet Validation:
When uploading, the spreadsheet is validated. If rows contain errors, an error message will display the row numbers with validation issues. Upon successful validation, users can submit the file.
Additional Documentation:
Users can upload additional documents via the Upload Documentation field.
Report Creation:
Once the spreadsheet is completed, and both it and any additional documents are uploaded, a new materiality analysis will be created for the year specified in the year selection dropdown of the import template.
The materiality analysis includes:
- All sustainability topics marked as relevant in Step 1.
- Company-specific topics created by users and assigned to the correct category.
- No IROs.
- Assessments of sustainability topics overwritten based on spreadsheet values, as if manually entered via the existing drawer (table view in Step 4).
- All additional documents saved with the report.
Post-Import Processing:
After successfully processing the import:
- A success message will display: "Report successfully imported" (or translation).
- The report overview will be updated in the frontend.
- If additional documents are included, they will be added, and a Download Documentation option will appear in the Download dropdown menu in Step 4. The button label for Download will change to Actions.
Completion:
Once the report is created, all steps are completed.
Process of double materiality analysis
The ESRS and EFRAG DMA Implementation Guidance prescribe specific steps that need to be taken to determine impact and financial materiality. At Daato, we have integrated these steps into a simple workflow. First, relevant sustainability topics are identified. These are then assessed for their impact and financial materiality by documenting and evaluating impacts, risks and opportunities (IROs).
The process on Daato works as follows:
You can see what this looks like on the software in the following video:
Involving stakeholders
Before we dive into the different steps of the materiality analysis, you should create your stakeholders in Daato to involve them during the materiality analysis. Stakeholder engagement is highly recommended in the ESRS. It is crucial for accuracy and relevance when assessing impacts and financial materiality.
For the materiality of impacts, consulting directly affected stakeholders ensures that the real impacts on people and the environment are taken into account. This improves the accuracy of the assessment, verifies sustainability data and strengthens community trust. For financial materiality, engaging users of sustainability reports (investors and regulators) ensures compliance with regulations and alignment of sustainability practices with market expectations, which helps to manage risk and maintain competitiveness.
You can see how to create stakeholders in the software here:
In the following process steps, we will point out when which stakeholders need to be involved.
Step 1: Determining relevant sustainability topics
The starting point for the materiality assessment is to define the list of relevant sustainability topics for the double materiality analysis. To do this, you identify sustainability topics relevant to your company through research, reviewing competitors' sustainability reports or consulting widely recognised sustainability data providers or standard setters, such as MSCI Materiality Maps or SASB Materiality Finder. It is important that you consider all your own entities and locations as well as all relevant value chain partners, such as suppliers, consumers, etc.
To support reporting companies, the ESRS (ESRS 1 AR 16) propose a comprehensive list of potentially relevant sustainability topics:
You can also involve relevant stakeholders in this step to provide support. This works via a survey function that allows stakeholders to rate the topics on a scale from very low to very high, while also suggesting topics to be excluded. They can also suggest further company-specific topics. You can see how this works here:
Stakeholders you should involve are as follows:
Internal:
Own workforce: Provides insights into social factors such as working conditions, equal treatment, opportunities and sustainability issues.
External:
Workers in the value chain: Help define environmental and social issues along the value chain, such as material waste, emissions, child labour and forced labour.
Business partners: Suppliers, distributors and partners provide information on sustainability goals and challenges.
NGOs: Provide expertise on environmental and social issues that are important to the organisation.
Affected communities: Share concerns and priorities related to sustainability issues.
Consumers/end users: Provide feedback on packaging, sustainable products and company practices.
Step 2: Identify IROs
Based on the medium list, impacts, risks and opportunities (IROs) are now identified and assigned to each of the topics. This is the starting point for assessing the impact (inside-out perspective) and financial materiality (outside-in perspective) of the sustainability topics from the previous step.
When identifying the IROs, their names and descriptions should be as precise as possible so that all stakeholders involved understand the full scope and consequences and can apply the same considerations to the assessment.
For example, instead of just listing the impact "Contribution to global warming", a company should be more specific and document the impact as "Contribution to global warming from CO2 emissions from steel production in the upstream value chain".
This is how the process works on Daato:
A list of generally relevant IROs is automatically suggested on Daato. These serve as a starting point, but must be adapted to the context of the reporting company.
Stakeholders you should involve are as follows:
Internal:
Own employees: Provides information about internal processes and their impact on society and the environment.
External:
Trade unions & social partners: Provide insights into labour-related opportunities and risks.
Investors: Provide feedback on ESG issues that are critical to long-term growth.
Business partners: Help to understand opportunities and risks along the value chain.
Step 3: Evaluate IROs
Before you start the materiality analysis of IROs, it is necessary to specify their type by providing more details on each of them. Here you can see what should be specified:
This is followed by the centrepiece of the DMA, namely the materiality analysis of each IRO. To perform this analysis, specific information must be provided for each IRO and a materiality level is calculated.
To carry out this assessment pragmatically using the software, open an IRO, specify further details about the type of IRO and then answer the assessment questions. You can see how this works in the following video:
If you are collaborating with colleagues on the assessment of IROs, Daato also offers the option of storing definitions for all users involved. This is done via the settings. For example, the assessment of financial materiality in particular, i.e. risks and opportunities, should be based on the company's internal risk management processes. So if certain sales thresholds are used as the basis for risk levels, these should also serve as the basis for assessing the expected financial impact. The following video shows you how to set up the definitions:
Step 4: Analysing the results
The end result of the double materiality analysis is a "short list" of sustainability topics that are considered material to your organisation, along with their associated materiality level. These are used to define the scope of ESRS reporting, but are also very useful to guide sustainability departments and help them determine a sustainability strategy.
After completing the assessment of all IROs, the materiality calculation runs automatically. To analyse the results, you can now jump to the last step "Report". There you can see the material sustainability topics and relevant IROs in various view options. You can see what this looks like in the following video:
You can also use the settings to define threshold values for materiality. These then define which topics are included in your ESRS report and determine which disclosure requirements and data points must be reported.
At the same time, you have the option of manually adjusting the materiality level of the sustainability topics. As you can see in the video, open the topics in the table and use the action menu to adjust the level of impact or financial materiality and leave a justification. This may be necessary if you have more information than our software because you may have consulted stakeholders outside the tool.
Consolidation in the context of the dual materiality analysis
The EFRAG Implementation Guidance on dual materiality analysis suggests that an organisation operating in different sectors must assess which impacts, risks and opportunities (IROs) are most material to the group as a whole, including all subsidiaries, sites, etc. However, neither the ESRS nor the guidance provide a standardised process for this, as different companies have different needs, but suggest two approaches.
This is how it works:
- Role of the parent company: The parent company assesses the material impacts, risks and opportunities for the entire group, regardless of its structure.
- Approaches:
- Top-down: the parent company assesses the entire group and consults the subsidiaries on specific issues.
- Bottom-up: Each subsidiary assesses its own impact and the results are summarised at Group level.
- Consistency and trade-offs: The parent company must balance different severity levels of impacts (e.g. a high severity issue from a small revenue source vs. a medium severity issue from a large revenue source). It must ensure consistent methodologies and thresholds across the group.
- Sector and location considerations: The company should consider common IROs for its sectors and locations and use sector standards to identify and assess these factors.
In summary, the parent company conducts a materiality analysis for the group, using either a top-down or bottom-up approach, ensures consistency and considers specific sector and location impacts.
Para encontrar el enfoque adecuado para su organización, Daato sugiere primero preguntarse: "¿Tenemos actividades comerciales en nuestro grupo que son muy diferentes entre sí, por ejemplo, hay diferentes subsidiarias o unidades de negocios que operan en sectores completamente diferentes?"
- Si la respuesta es no, el enfoque más simple es realizar un análisis de materialidad doble “de arriba hacia abajo”, teniendo en cuenta las opiniones de las subsidiarias cuando sea útil.
- Si la respuesta es sí, el enfoque más simple es realizar análisis de materialidad dual separados para las diferentes subsidiarias o unidades de negocio y luego agregar los resultados.
En este último caso, tenga en cuenta que el alcance del informe ESRS, por ejemplo, los requisitos de divulgación pertinentes y los puntos de datos, puede ser muy exhaustivo, pero no todos son reportables para todas las filiales. Si ciertos temas solo son relevantes para ciertas filiales o unidades de negocio, los datos sobre estos temas solo pueden ser reportados por dichas filiales o unidades de negocio.
Documentación para fines de auditoría
Una consideración importante que guía todo el proceso de DMA es la documentación adecuada. Este es un elemento esencial para garantizar la preparación para la auditoría. A continuación, se presenta un resumen de la documentación relevante que debe presentarse:
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