Overview
Team
Business analyst
UI/UX designer
QA engineer
Full-stack developer
Front-end developer
Solution
Web application
Country
Italy
Industry
Environmental consulting, Carbon accounting, Sustainability reporting, ESG
Services used
Discovery phase, UI/UX design, MVP development
Time
August, 2023 - ongoing
About the client
EcoSphera, an esteemed environmental consulting firm, offers superior services to companies and organizations striving to achieve and maintain exceptional management standards for environmental protection and workplace safety. By standing at the forefront of sustainable business transformation, EcoSphera possesses extensive knowledge in emerging technologies and the evolving demands faced by the firms they serve.Project idea
The EcoSphera team understands the pressing need for sustainable solutions in today's corporate landscape. As an environmental consultancy catering to companies of different sizes and fields, they have observed some significant gaps and challenges that hinder the net zero transition.
Many companies still rely on manual data processing to collect their environmental metrics, primarily due to the lack of immediate regulatory pressures to adopt more advanced practices. While this approach may serve as a temporary measure, it is not a consistent or future-proof strategy for the long run.
The recent regulations require mandatory ESG reporting for large enterprise companies. Similar requirements are being developed for small and medium-sized businesses, and are planned to be introduced in the nearest future.
To lay a solid foundation for a smooth and hassle-free sustainable transformation, it is essential to track, process, and analyze carbon emissions data properly. In order to maintain a data-driven approach, EcoSphera has taken the initiative to develop a Corporate Sustainability Management System. This ESG reporting software solution automates scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions tracking, reporting, and calculations.
Story
While companies might be slowly embracing sustainability, it's clear that ESG considerations will become significant for all business sectors. Our client's ESG reporting software idea emerged with the objective to solve major challenges:
- Transitioning from spreadsheets to a dedicated, centralized ESG data platform poses a significant challenge, demanding extensive coordination and management efforts from sustainability managers.
- A critical task for Sustainability Managers is pinpointing and managing all potential emission sources throughout the company’s operations.
- The collection of ESG data, both internally and externally, is demanding. The process is notably time-consuming, compounded by the high volume of data requests.
- For businesses, especially in the fast-moving consumer goods sector with complex supply chains, gathering ESG data from the supply chain and other Scope 3 areas is enormously challenging.
- Variability in ESG ratings, due to differing methodologies among ratings agencies, poses a concern. Despite these inconsistencies, organizations highly value ratings. However, a poor rating can detrimentally affect their reputation.
To mitigate risks and navigate through challenges, we opted for MVP development. This strategy allows our client to efficiently manage their budget, showcase their concept to potential clients, gather and analyze feedback, pinpoint and address issues promptly, and make necessary adjustments to prevent budget overruns.
Challenges & solutions during Treeple MVP development
- Market research analysis: In close collaboration with our client, we dived into market research findings to gain deep insights
- Core feature definition: Identified essential features of the product, laying the foundation for development
- Prototype and documentation development: Designed a clickable prototype and prepared detailed documentation to visualize ESG workflows, including emissions tracking, survey logic, and task scheduling
- Core feature implementation: Developed key modules such as ESG survey creation and management, emissions data tracking, automated reporting tasks, and dashboard analytics
- Scope and roadmap execution: Delivered a focused MVP within budget and timeline constraints, laying a foundation for full-scale development while validating market fit.
This structured process ensures that our client can wisely allocate their budget, effectively present their concept, gather crucial feedback early on, and make timely adjustments to steer clear of financial wastes.
What our client says
Check out what our clients think of usAt our company, where we specialize in providing environmental consultancy services to firms, we recognize the growing significance of carbon accounting and sustainable digitalization. Many companies currently rely on manual data collection, as there are no immediate regulatory pressures driving them to adopt more advanced practices.
However, we understand that regulations will likely necessitate reporting on sustainability data in the future. To proactively address this, we've initiated the development of a Corporate Sustainability Management System. Teaming up with Apiko, we first conducted a thorough Discovery process, leading to the creation of a beta version. Then, we presented our ESG reporting software to clients and investors, showcasing its potential to enhance sustainability practices. Most recently, we have created a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and plan to go forward with full-scale development.
Apiko is fully committed to our project on an emotional level, giving 100% at all times. Their technical expertise is truly exceptional. They not only excel in their role as contractors but genuinely care about the product and being an integral part of our team—something that's rare to find. What sets Apiko apart is their profound industry knowledge, particularly in sustainable digitalization. They proved themselves not just as technical partners but as true industry experts.
We found common ground easily, and their team often went beyond our expectations, presenting ideas and solutions that seemed to anticipate our thoughts. The Apiko team doesn't just create high-quality ESG compliance software; they craft solutions that not only meet but exceed the needs of our target audience. They have a knack for delivering software that resonates with and addresses the specific issues our audience faces, providing them with everything they need and a little extra.
Treeple MVP development: Custom ESG reporting software
- Create and manage surveys using reusable templates
- Use one of four available types of questions
- View, track progress, and edit surveys
- Use separate surveys for Social and Governance Pillars
- Enable comments, file attachments, and mandatory response settings
- Define start and end dates, templates, and recipients
- Send surveys to both internal users and external emails via token-based authentication.
- Monitor completion status for individual recipients and overall progress
- Access users' answers to survey questions in a structured format
- Download files uploaded by users during survey completion
- Preview or download documents to analyze responses effectively
- Gather and analyze emissions data from businesses and specific business units
- Record emissions across various categories such as water use,generator emissions, and transportation
- Track important factors like the number of jobs, employees, or vehicles that correlate with emissions but are not emissions themselves
- Select specific emission categories for tracking
- Categorize Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions for detailed analytics.
- Generate tasks for direct data collection
- Select an assignee responsible for reporting task data
- Set reporting to occur daily, monthly, yearly, or at custom intervals
- Create and refresh tasks automatically when the reporting date arrives
- Add comments and upload files during task submission
- View all tasks on a dedicated page, categorized by status
- Send automatic reminders to assigned users when a task is due.
- View data on task completion and results for the current month or year
- Create personalized charts to track key performance indicators and set targets
- Access general statistics on emissions for selected periods and categories
- View emissions data categorized by scope, total emissions, and specific asset types
- Display data in one of three chart formats for better visualization.
