Perspectives of where stands within the corporate reporting landscape

In 2011 EnBW embarked on a journey towards Integrated Reporting. The direction of this journey is already known, but the path has still to be determined together with its internal and external stakeholders.

In order to do justice to future markets, political and society demands, EnBW has set a clear focus on its strategic targets. Long-term oriented and responsible thinking, and action, including economic, ecological and social aspects thereby constitute a necessary prerequisite. EnBWs path is signposted by a continual convergence process including many internal stakeholders’ contributions in different working groups.

EnBWs integrated report is adapted on a homoeopathic dosage level in order to not overstrain the reader with this new form of reporting – this forms a challenge for reporters and readers. As an interim result EnBW has published combined reports for the fiscal years 2012 and 2013. EnBW consciously uses the term combined report – in other words a combination of the sustainability and business reports – because not all central concepts of Integrated Reporting, set out by the International Framework, have been implemented yet. The report included a revised strategic focus and was developed based upon an optimised sustainability strategy. To a large extent, it already combines key aspects of the business and sustainability reports. In addition, first steps were made to diminish the amount of facts provided to limit the report to the most crucial information, which again reduces the number of pages of the entire report.

The EnBW path encompasses, at its heart, a company-wide project which has been set up by the EnBW board of directors to implement the idea of Integrated Reporting across business units. The project is under the leadership of one employee from the finance branch and one employee from the sustainability branch (both authors of this blog). This step is an important signal for a change from internal silo thinking“ to an integrated approach. For achieving the project goals a close mesh of all relevant business units is crucial, therefore they are all integrated into the overall project team, and again operating in different cross-unit working groups. This means that various representatives from the fields of strategy, communications, investor relations, corporate accounting, legal affairs, controlling, environmental protection, human resources and sustainability are involved throughout the process of the project.

In conclusion, Integrated Reporting, as set out by the final version of the Framework, constitutes – at least from EnBW perspective – a new approach for company reporting as well as for corporate governance. Based on our belief and experiences this new approach has the potential, and will therefore lead even more companies in the near future to alter their approach to collecting, linking and preparing financial and non-financial information, and publishing a combined and later an integrated report in a more readable and informative format. In comparison to compliance, with its rule-based approaches it has the potential, and the current increasingly intense discussion with investors, analysts and NGOs shows that it entails the promise that in the future corporations can gain more trust and confidence in reporting from its stakeholders through more clarity, conciseness and transparency in their main communication tool.