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Open-es, the open alliance for the sustainable growth of companies

A digital platform to measure and improve ESG performance.

by Eni Staff
7 min read
by Eni Staff
7 min read

Open-es is a system initiative, bringing together the industrial, financial and institutional worlds through a digital platform that involves and supports all companies in their process of measuring and growing from a sustainability perspective.

Because it is open to all companies, and thanks in particular to the involvement of its value chain partners, Open-es already numbers more than 11,200 companies. A true community, based on discussion, collaboration and identifying priority action, thus contributing to the sustainable development of an open and collaborative ecosystem.

This alliance, started up by Eni with the Boston Consulting Group and Google Cloud in early 2021, has seen significant Italian and international partners joining, such as Snam, Accenture, IVECO Group, Saipem, Autostrade per l'Italia, Unicredit, KPMG, Baker Hughes, Engineering, Rina, WeBuild, illimity Bank, Techedge, ESG European Institute, Luiss Business School e SDA Bocconi.

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An ecosystem effect and practical responses for industrial supply chains

The initiative represents a significant step towards creating strong business system synergy, an opportunity to see all industrial and financial players, in Italy and worldwide, collaborate to involve and support their respective suppliers and customers, on a common process aimed at improving and enhancing the sustainability of our productive fabric.

Focusing on business growth plans and creating synergies and opportunities for the entire business system, Open-es also ensures that all these benefits are distributed and shared across the entire value chain. The creation of this ecosystem without technological or knowledge barriers, makes it possible for all players to concentrate their efforts and investments on sustainable development initiatives and improve the ESG performance of the industrial and financial systems.

Within the scope of this context and to strengthen the systemic spirit and open basis for the initiative, a collaboration agreement was recently signed between Open-es and the Cerved Rating Agency, an Italian rating agency specializing in assessing the creditworthiness of Italian non-financial companies and issuance of debt securities. Sharing in the initiative’s approach, the Cerved Rating Agency will make its experience available, by integrating the collection of ESG data with independent evaluations aimed at monitoring the sustainability performance of production chains.

This agreement aims to improve the ESG data reporting and evaluation experience, enabling companies and their relevant stakeholders to securely exchange their sustainability information and create and update their ESG profiles, without having to replicate the measurement and data sharing process several times over.

This represents a clear advantage that will help minimise the bureaucratic aspects that companies currently face when responding to various requests from different stakeholders. It also provides lead value-chain companies and banking institutions with an opportunity to integrate their value chain with economic-financial variables, ESG data and recognised ratings, thus obtaining an overall assessment of companies' performance.

Companies’ sustainable development follows a simple and practical route

The simple and free registration on the Open-es platform provides companies with access to a transparent evaluation model, based on standard and versatile metrics covering all sectors and business models (the Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics, defined by the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum in September 2020). Following the prompts, companies can create and update their ESG profiles without duplication, share their data and sustainability information with customers and other stakeholders, access sector benchmarks to compare themselves with similar companies and identify the priority measures needed to grow and improve their positioning.

Furthermore, Open-es involves suppliers, analysing their sustainability performance with an incentive to improve, providing statistics and detailed reports where they can compare ESG performance along their value chain and integrate these aspects within their decision-making processes.

In line with the values distinguishing the platform, namely sharing, collaboration and sustainable growth, companies can participate in "Open-es ESG Skills", a series of free events aimed at fostering ESG knowledge among companies and their employees.

Events are open to the entire Community and provide an opportunity for discussion with sector experts on specific aspects of ESG issues, such as the Calculation of CO₂ Emissions, the Sustainability Report, ESG Certifications, Opportunities and Objectives of the PNRR, ESG and relationships between Banks and Companies, Social and Governance Sustainability, Supplier Management and many other key issues for a modern company.

An open invitation to all companies

In order to accelerate the energy transition and counter climate change, we believe that a pragmatic approach is needed, involving the entire production system working towards common, practical and achievable goals. It is therefore essential that companies like Eni act as a catalyst for change, motivating, inspiring and guiding their supply chains in the transformation process.

With Open-es we wanted to create a virtuous ecosystem, which aims to involve small and medium enterprises right through to the larger lead companies in various industrial sectors. The initiative is based on the idea of an open and collaborative coming together of all the companies that want to be protagonists in the sustainable development of the industrial ecosystem in Italy and around the world.

We firmly believe in this initiative, which we hope will become a system that includes as many companies as possible, a place for everyone, so that we can achieve a mutual process of continuous improvement in operational and technological terms for the sustainability of the industry.

With increasing public awareness on the issue and impetus from institutions, many companies are committed to improving their ESG performance. These efforts, especially in the case of small and medium-sized enterprises, risk becoming ineffective over the long term, if they are not included in a shared and coordinated supply chain process. It is therefore very important to firstly understand the positioning of your company, the strengths and areas for improvement that can become a point of departure for defining a strategy that combines environmental, social and economic goals.

With Open-es, we have made a tool available to all supply chains in various industrial sectors, that can analyse the gaps, provide a personalized development plan and support services, in addition to measuring performance. The objective is to promote a widespread consciousness of sustainability along the entire value chain, adopting a perspective that runs along the lines of different industrial chains, to create synergies and opportunities for the entire business system.

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