Exploring Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management)

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management)

    The ServiceNow® Operational Sustainability Management application assists organizations in managing their sustainability commitments by providing a centralized system to track progress and enhance visibility into sustainability efforts. This application addresses the common challenges faced by organizations that lack an integrated approach to sustainability management.

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    Key Features

    • Interactive Dashboard: Manage operational sustainability activities effectively from the home page.
    • Material Topics: Identify and track essential sustainability topics like carbon emissions.
    • Goals and Targets: Establish measurable goals and specific targets to track progress.
    • Metrics: Define and measure performance metrics to assess sustainability goals.
    • Data Collection: Gather data for metrics either manually or through automated processes.
    • Disclosures: Generate disclosures for review, aiding transparency and compliance.

    Key Outcomes

    Implementing the Operational Sustainability Management application yields several business benefits:

    • Enhances brand reputation and competitive advantage.
    • Attracts investors and supports regulatory compliance.
    • Promotes ethical and transparent business practices.
    • Improves customer confidence and increases transparency regarding sustainability risks and opportunities.

    Familiarizing yourself with the key elements and workflows within the application ensures effective management of your sustainability initiatives and compliance with evolving regulations.

    The ServiceNow® ESG Management application helps you to manage your sustainability commitments.

    ESG Management overview

    While most organizations engage in sustainability initiatives, many lack a central tool to manage their operational sustainability programs. Without a centralized system, organizations lack visibility into sustainability efforts and struggle to track progress. The Operational Sustainability Management application addresses these challenges by enabling companies to manage their sustainability programs and communicate their goals and progress.

    The business benefits of sustainability reporting using the Operational Sustainability Management application are as follows:
    • Improves your brand reputation.
    • Creates a competitive advantage.
    • Attracts investors and more capital.
    • Enables you to comply with regulatory requirements.
    • Establishes strong corporate governance through ethical, transparent, and secure business practices.
    • Improves corporate reputation.
    • Improves customer confidence.
    • Promotes transparency about the risks and opportunities.

    ESG Management workflow

    The following diagram shows the workflow of ESG Management for each user role.

    Figure 1. Workflow of setting up and using the ESG Management application
    Infographic for setting up and using the Operational Sustainability Management application to create disclosures. For the text description, refer to the workflow steps that follow.
    Document material topics
    Determine the material topics you’d like to track, such as managing carbon emissions. See Create material topics to get started and review Material topic workflow and states for more details.
    Establish goals
    Goals are the outcomes you want to achieve, and targets are specific, measurable milestones that help you reach the goals. The Create an Operational Sustainability Management goal page explains how to enter your goals and includes links to useful information like how goal progress is calculated. See Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) goal for details.
    Create targets
    A target shows you how well you are doing against your goal. The Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) target page shows you how to do it.
    Associate entities with goals
    Associate the entities that must be tracked for the goals and subgoals. This association is created for tracking purposes. Entities that are associated with the goal are responsible for tracking the goal. See Associate entities to goals for more details.
    Define metrics
    Create metric definitions and metrics to measure performance and how the organization is progressing toward its goals and targets. To gain an in-depth understanding of what are metrics and how they’re useful in Operational Sustainability Management, refer to Exploring GRC: Metrics
    Add metrics to targets
    Optionally, after you create a target, you can add a source for the target. The source can be a metric or a metric definition that contributes to the target. See Add a source for a target for more details.
    Provide data for manual metrics or automatically collect data for automated metrics
    Collect data for metrics either manually or automatically. Data must be provided manually for manual metrics and is automatically collected at the scheduled time for automated metrics. See Provide data for a metric data task for more details.
    Generate disclosures
    The disclosure is sent for review to the ESG program manager and after approval, it can be downloaded to a spreadsheet for easier reporting. Using the Microsoft 365 for ServiceNow Reporting, you can create disclosures in a Microsoft Word document. See Integrating Microsoft 365 with ServiceNow reporting to get started and review Disclosures in Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) for details.

    Operational Sustainability Management benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Manage your operational sustainability activities from the interactive dashboard in the Home page. Operational Sustainability Workspace (formerly ESG Workspace) ESG program manager, disclosure manager.
    Monitor your individual and team tasks from a single dashboard in the My tasks view. My tasks page view ESG program manager
    Create material topics to determine your sustainability initiatives Create a material topic ESG program manager
    Establish operational sustainability goals to track your progress toward your chosen material topics. Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) goal ESG program manager
    Create a sustainability target to help track the progress towards your sustainability goal. Create an Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG Management) target ESG program manager
    Use GRC: Metrics to track goals and targets, collect data, and report data. Exploring GRC: Metrics Metrics manager
    Create disclosures for your organization. Disclosures enable investors to make informed decisions about companies, their risk posture, and sustainability standards. Create a narrative disclosure on remote storage Reporting disclosure manager, ESG program manager