Rating and boosting ESG within SMEs The Doorway Srl case study

Abstract

Stakeholders are paying more attention to the quality of products, trying to choose things not harmful to the environment and society. To convey the request of society, companies have to create products and services that can satisfy stakeholders demands. The thesis focuses on SMEs: that can no longer do their business without focusing on the ESG. As it is going to be seen, implementing ESG can bring advantages to companies: boost in revenues and profitability, strengthen brand awareness and reputation, creation of a better working environment, reduce the business risk and more. On the opposite there are some limitations: definition of the materiality concept applied to sustainability, limited involvement of stakeholders, bureaucracy problems and limit of knowledge to properly exploit the benefits of ESG. The core part of the thesis is to analyze the instruments and platforms available on the market, to rate and integrate sustainability, that can be exploited by SMEs to get full benefits from ESG integration, overcoming the initial costs. These instruments are rating platforms, actions a company can proactively implement, certification that might obtain, and public policies to be exploited. Through the support of the company Doorway Srl, two practical instruments are going to be explained: Sabi and Ecomate platforms. The non-financial rates given by the two platforms to Doorway Srl are going to be analyzed and compared showing the differences and similarities. As seen, each SMEs, in its ESG process, is going to choose the proper ESG rating platform according to their scope.The goal is to provide a full view of the ESG environment surrounding SMEs and demonstrate that if the proper instruments are exploited, the benefits of ESG can be caught.