A HEAT MAP NOBODY CAN DEFEND
That's what a shallow double materiality workshop gets you.
We build the version your auditor will actually accept.
What double materiality means
Inside-out
Impact materiality
Your organisation's actual and potential impacts on people and the environment, across the value chain.
Outside-in
Financial materiality
How sustainability developments create risks and opportunities for your business — resource prices, market access, reputation, regulation.
A topic is material if it crosses the threshold from either perspective. The CSRD gives guidance, not answers: your organisation decides what is material — and must substantiate every call it makes. That substantiation is what assurance providers test.
Who needs this
In scope
Companies with over 1,000 employees and €450m turnover — reporting under the revised ESRS from FY2027, first reports published 2028 (wave-one reporters are already reporting).
Feeding a group
Subsidiaries whose data rolls up into a parent's ESRS report.
In the chain
Suppliers receiving VSME-shaped questionnaires from in-scope customers — the same materiality logic decides what you measure.
The seven steps
Each step has a way it is meant to be done — and a way it usually goes wrong. The difference between the two is what an assurance provider tests.
Identify and engage stakeholders
Map who your organisation affects and who affects it; under ESRS, stakeholders are asked about your most significant impacts, risks and opportunities — not which topics they 'find important'.
Where it goes wrong
Surveying opinions instead of gathering evidence, and skipping the stakeholders who cannot speak (future generations, nature) that experts must represent.
Build the long-list of sustainability matters
Start from the full ESRS topic list, add entity-specific matters from your sector, geography and value chain.
Where it goes wrong
Copying a peer's list and missing the entity-specific topics that make the report yours.
Define impacts, risks and opportunities
For each matter, articulate the actual IROs across your own operations and the value chain, upstream and downstream.
Where it goes wrong
IROs defined only inside the company gate — most circular-economy materiality sits in the chain.
Assess impacts (inside-out)
Score scale, scope, irremediability and likelihood with tailored guidance so different experts score consistently.
Where it goes wrong
Unanchored 1-to-5 scales that produce a consensus heat map instead of a finding.
Assess financial risks and opportunities (outside-in)
Magnitude and likelihood over short, medium and long horizons; finance and risk at the table, not just sustainability.
Where it goes wrong
The finance function sees the assessment for the first time when the auditor asks who signed off the financial materiality calls.
Draw up the materiality overview
Explicit thresholds, documented conclusions, and the topic-by-topic call: in or out, and why — including whether resource use and circular economy (E5) is material for you.
Where it goes wrong
Thresholds set after the scoring, to get the answer someone wanted.
Strategic implications
The outcome defines your reporting scope, your data plan and your gaps; it should redirect strategy and budget, not just fill a disclosure.
Where it goes wrong
The assessment ships as a PDF, is never embedded in decisions, and expires — ours is software-enabled and stays live.
Stage one of four
1. Double materiality
You are here.
2. Gap & data readiness
What is missing between what you must disclose and what you can prove.
3. Baseline & evidence build
The numbers behind the disclosures — material flows, secondary content, waste destinations.
See the baseline product →4. Assurance-ready reporting
The report the auditor signs off on.
You do not have to buy the path. You do have to walk it in this order.
Software-enabled, not software-dependent: your assessment stays live in a system you are not locked into.
Start where every obligation starts.
A scoping call tells you what depth your situation actually requires — and we will tell you honestly if a lighter assessment is enough.