Corporate Reporting Conference 2023: a summary

This year's event was officially the first CRC under the umbrella of RYZE Digital, under which the three agencies MPM Corporate Communication Solutions, Electronic Minds and VRM Digital Communications legally merged in May 2023. Coders Unlimited will follow later as the new number four. Since 2021, RYZE Digital has provided our annual report clients with a perfect 360-degree offering, from strategy consulting to reporting, accompanying communication and software to the go-live.

 

In line with our motto "What's next in corporate reporting", the conference focussed on the latest trends in reporting, or rather in reporting that is already digital in many places. We had put together an interesting package of four presentations:

 

• exclusive preliminary information on the study results from our "Trend Monitor 2023 DAX-40 Annual Reports",
• then "The sustainability report in the management report: how to deal with the new CRSD reporting obligation",
• plus everything about the efficient use of a disclosure management system including a live demo with the article "Workiva as a complete platform for digital reporting processes" and
• finally, Full HTML using an implemented example with "Creating a full HTML report using the Fraport best case".

 

All presented by equally interesting speakers:

 

• Philipp Mann (CEO, RYZE Digital)
• Jannis Benezeder (Senior Consultant Sustainability, RYZE Digital)
• Stephanie Mayer (Senior Media Designer, RYZE Digital)
• Matthias Frescha (Managing Director, RYZE Digital)
• Christian Ferrari (Alliances & Partnerships Director, Workiva)
• Dilyana Sirakova (Financial Reporting Manager, Fraport)

 

They brought a lot of expert knowledge to the people. Of course, it was never a one-way street - there was plenty of room for interaction: via chat, which participants could use to ask questions at any time, and also via interspersed small surveys. The result: three hours of crisp information with added value - timed to coincide with the punctual lunch break, of course.

 

CRC 2023: a few takeaways
What are the big players in the DAX 40 doing?

First things first: Germany's 40 largest public limited companies are imaginative when it comes to implementing their annual and sustainability reports. We have been analysing their reports in our trend monitor since 2014 and have come to the conclusion that they are: The diversity has never been so great, category boundaries are blurring. Originally, there were three defined categories: the realisation of the online report as full HTML, as partial HTML (hybrid) and as a short version, i.e. as a typical one-pager. However, companies are increasingly surprising us with numerous nuances during realisation:

 

• Munich Re takes the short version to the extreme with only a letter to shareholders and a few KPIs on the corporate website.
• The BMW report shows how to appear more digital than you actually are.
• And Continental presents an HTML short report for the "quick annual report craving in between", which contains almost everything except the notes.

 

To name just a few examples from the presentation ...

But where is the journey going? Our CEO Philipp Mann had the right answers. Printed reports are practically extinct. Instead, the online PDF remains an indispensable medium for report content. Image content also remains important in connection with reports, but these are no longer the preferred output format.

 

This is because image is looking for new locations and formats in separate magazines, in the corporate blog or in the newsroom. The figures indicate a slight decline in full HTML reports, but at the same time their potential is still far from being fully utilised. RYZE Digital is looking forward to companies with more willingness to experiment here.
When it comes to dealing with sustainability, the calm before the CSRD storm still prevails. The EU's new regulatory requirements will bring a lot of movement here. And finally, the diversity of the implemented expansion stages shows: Anything is possible! Even if there is still room for improvement in the full HTML report.

 

 

The sustainability report must be included in the management report

One thing is certain: a lot will be happening with the sustainability report in the coming reporting years. Up to now, we have been used to attractively prepared, separate reports with lots of storytelling and a strong focus on the optional rather than the mandatory. Now, new EU regulations will change this for the time being from the 2024 reporting year: mandatory instead of optional, as our Senior Consultant Sustainability Jannis Benezeder, a sustainability specialist, explained very clearly.

 

The EU's new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) provides the legislative framework and the new European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) the content. This means that

 

• The sustainability report changes its character and becomes a chapter of the management report, i.e. more standardised and compact, but also more comparable - and that was the EU objective.
• The report will be subject to audit.
• The report must be published electronically in the European Single Electronic Format (ESEF).

 

And now? Is this the death of sustainable storytelling? We say: no. It just needs to find new places for publication, for example in a separate publication, as we have implemented together with our customer Henkel, in the corporate newsroom or on the intranet. There, the stories are simply linked to the sustainability chapter in the management report, in which important figures are linked accordingly.

 

Due to the complexity of the subject matter, we regularly organise webinars on sustainability reporting and publish current topics on our blog.

 

"Yes" to the disclosure management system

Increasing complexity in sustainability reporting due to more requirements also means more demand for software that noticeably simplifies the entire reporting process . With its platform, our partner Workiva combines the handling of financial reporting, ESG, audit and risk - the only platform of its kind on the market. We took the opportunity to present the software in detail: Philipp Mann and Stephanie Mayer on the RYZE Digital side and Christian Ferrari on the Workiva side.

The presentation was not explicitly about presenting a single system as the mother of all solutions. RYZE Digital masters the workflow with a wide variety of software solutions that our customers use. Rather, the aim was to use the example of a leading system to show what such cloud-based software can do and how easy it is to use. And what better way to demonstrate this than in a detailed live demo? Because this kind of software makes wishes come true, for example the full HTML report directly from the system.

 

HTML reports made easy - it's possible!