SLR x Position Green: The Latest Services-Software Partnership In The ESG And Sustainability Market

SLR x Position Green: The Latest Services-Software Partnership In The ESG And Sustainability Market

Pureplay sustainability consultancy SLR, which offers strategy, engineering and technical services, has partnered with Position Green, a provider of ESG management, reporting and carbon accounting software. The collaboration will focus on enabling firms to take measurable steps towards decarbonization, natural capital enhancement, responsible supply chains and regulatory compliance. As part of the partnership:

• SLR will offer its clients Position Green’s software for ESG reporting and data management, complementing SLR’s strategic advisory services.
• Position Green will leverage SLR’s technical, regulatory and sector expertise to support its clients with actionable insights on their sustainability journeys.

The announcement of this partnership rounds up a rather eventful – and momentous – month for SLR. In October, the consultancy made two significant acquisitions: Malk Partners, a pureplay sustainability consulting firm providing ESG advisory, due diligence and portfolio monitoring services to private market investors and their portfolio firms; and Wardell Armstrong, an environmental, engineering and mining consultancy. Notably, in 2024 alone, SLR has acquired as many firms as it did over the previous two years combined (see Verdantix Green Quadrant: ESG And Sustainability Consulting 2024), with eight new acquisitions across geoscience, ecology and biodiversity.

Position Green’s list of partnerships already spans implementation partners such as SustainX and Excitec, software providers such as Hitachi and Ideagen, and boutique sustainability consulting firms such as Nexio Projects. This breadth allows its customers to consolidate their ESG and sustainability ecosystems (see Verdantix Green Quadrant: Supply Chain Sustainability Software 2024). Position Green’s own advisory services benefitted from a 2022 merger with four boutique sustainability advisory firms, including ESG due diligence provider Kinkby Enge.

More generally in the ESG and sustainability market, service providers and software firms are interacting in three notable ways:

• Services firms are using third-party software internally to scale and increase insights for their clients (see Verdantix Green Quadrant: ESG And Sustainability Consulting 2024).
• Services firms are partnering with software firms to support end-to-end sustainability reporting transformation (see Verdantix Smart Innovators: Consulting Services For CSRD And ESG Regulation Readiness). Some examples of this are BCG’s partnership with Workiva for CSRD reporting, Deloitte’s partnership with Salesforce for global ESG reporting efforts and KPMG’s collaboration with Watershed to support climate disclosures for ESG reporting.
• Services firms and software firms are co-creating digital tools to leverage data and technological synergies.

Our interviews with 36 corporate decision-makers, undertaken as part of our 2024 Green Quadrant analysis of sustainability consulting providers, reveal that many firms rank partnerships with software providers as a key factor in their request for proposal (RFP) selection process for consulting firms (see Verdantix Strategic Focus: Customer Insights Into ESG & Sustainability Consulting Services). Services-software partnerships allow businesses to benefit from a cohesive value proposition that leverages the best of both worlds. This is especially critical for firms with elaborate digital ecosystems, multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or immature data management procedures.

To learn more about how software and services partnerships can deliver value to ESG reporting processes and operations, please read Verdantix Market Overview: The ESG & Sustainability Software And Services Partnership Ecosystem.