Case study

ESG-ONE: creating effective middleware

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics are increasingly important to the way investors value companies. They cover a range of areas, from the amount of carbon operations produce to the percentage of women at board level.

ESG-ONE wanted to develop a product to help its corporate clients better analyse, benchmark, monitor and act on their ESG data. Learn how we built a middleware solution to meet these needs.

ESG-ONE works with corporations and financial service organisations to help them better identify, gather and make sense of ESG metrics. The company collects data via the GRC-1 tool - sorting, filtering, calculating, and delivering it to dashboards for reporting and analysis.

It needed a middleware solution to join GRC-1 to the dashboards. Flexibility was key; the solution had to be able to accommodate new regulations, data sources, or additional standards.

ESG-ONE needed a minimum viable product (MVP) that was fully functional in terms of sourcing live data from GRC-1.

To scope out the development activity, we combined our knowledge of the GRC-1 platform with existing dashboard source code. We also ran workshops with the ESG-ONE team.

This produced a solution design document (SDD), including a detailed project plan covering requirements and milestones. A key milestone was to develop a working, testable version of the integration tool for ESG-ONE to begin trialling.

We worked with ESG-ONE to define the data model and its requirements, design the database, and create a user-friendly interface. Our team used the Connections integration platform to unite the ESG-1 dashboard with the GRC-1 platform.

Back and front-end development work included configuring the system to retrieve base data, facilitate transformation, and other calculations. Connections runs on the Microsoft stack, which ESG-ONE already used and was keen to incorporate into the solution.

The benefits

Working closely with ESG-ONE, we developed a flexible database capable of processing and comparing data from different sources. It’s easily customisable and transmits data effectively both ways between back and front-end systems.

The team at ESG-ONE now has a stronger foundation from which to advise clients and to help them drive opportunities.

“This middleware solution has enabled us to take ESG reporting to the next level. Cocoon demonstrated a thorough approach, taking on board our needs to deliver a future-proof platform. We have complete confidence in its abilities to help us assist our C-suite clients in better managing ESG issues and standards.”

ESG-ONE