Climate Change Data

Environmental Metrics

ESG Focus Areas

• Our People
• Our Environment
• Our Communities

Environmental Achievements

• 24% reduction in energy usage emissions
• Consolidated Belfast office by one floor, reducing energy usage

Social Achievements

• Achieved Silver accreditation from Diversity Mark NI
• Increased proportion of women in the Group to 30%
• Sustainable employee engagement at 82%
• Over 81,600 hours of accredited learning undertaken
• £70,000 donated to charities supporting Ukraine (employee donations matched by the Group)

Governance Achievements

• Implementation of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system
• Renewed Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation
• Strengthened third-party management policy and procedures
• Established a charity policy

Climate Goals & Targets

Environmental Challenges

• MRP's performance was below expectations due to macroeconomic weakness
• Attrition and wage inflation pressures in First Derivative
• Gender diversity remains a challenge

Mitigation Strategies

• Aligned MRP's cost base to improve profitability
• Managed attrition and wage inflation effectively in First Derivative
• Implemented focused talent acquisition campaigns and initiatives to improve gender diversity (Strive Mentorship programme, Lean-In Foundation partnership, Women’s Network)

Supply Chain Management

Responsible Procurement

• Supplier sustainability requirements
• Streamlined payment processing procedures

Climate-Related Risks & Opportunities

Reporting Standards

Frameworks Used: TCFD

Certifications: Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 14001

Sustainable Products & Innovation

• KX technology enables customers to reduce waste, improve yield, and perform predictive maintenance

Awards & Recognition

• Silver accreditation from Diversity Mark NI

Environmental Metrics

ESG Focus Areas

• People
• Environment
• Communities

Environmental Achievements

• Provided our first disclosure report in accordance with the requirements of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
• Focused efforts on ensuring the environmental efficiency of our corporate real estate
• Further development of IT systems removing physical servers from office locations to cloud-based data storage reducing our overall carbon emissions
• Ongoing consolidation of office space due to our hybrid working model
• Rolled out environmental awareness training to all employees
• Set up of an environmental Sustainability Group chaired by the HR Director to ensure key stakeholders are working collaboratively on our aligned environmental goals.

Social Achievements

• Continued to drive and embed a winning culture across the business through strong leadership and supported by the development of key policies, procedures, systems and controls
• Rolled out mandatory diversity and inclusion training with unconscious bias training now a key requirement for all employees to undertake
• Retained our Silver accreditation from Diversity Mark NI
• Announced our corporate charity partnerships
• Donated £23,000 to our corporate charity partners
• Developed educational partnerships further by developing an Early Careers programme.

Governance Achievements

• Undertook a comprehensive review of the optimal structure of the Group
• Implemented a plan to deliver a pure play, high-growth software business in KX
• Established a Sustainability Group chaired by the Group HR Director to advise the Committee and support the wider business
• Reviewed the composition of our Board on an annual basis and have a well-defined process and skills matrix that is updated to support our strategic goals.

Climate Goals & Targets

Environmental Challenges

• Lower than expected growth in ARR bookings was primarily as a result of lower than expected pipeline conversation rates, particularly with respect to new offerings and new channels
• In the current macroeconomic environment customers are scrutinising their IT and cloud spends with renewed focus on operating costs. This is resulting in lengthening sales cycles for larger purchases
• First Derivative, in common with its peer group providing consulting services to capital markets, experienced difficult trading conditions as customers became more cautious on spending
• MRP experienced continued difficult market conditions through the year, driven by pressure on its customer budgets.

Mitigation Strategies

• Upgrading our sales and marketing leadership
• Increasing our sales capacity in those sectors where we see the highest near-term results
• Targeting newer markets through our channel partners
• Effective cost management mitigated the reduction in revenue and enabled First Derivative to maintain its adjusted EBITDA margin
• Following its merger with CONTENTgine, announced at the year end as part of the conclusion of our structure review, our 49% stake will be treated as an associate investment.

Supply Chain Management

Responsible Procurement

• We choose suppliers and contractors which we believe share our commitment.

Climate-Related Risks & Opportunities

Physical Risks

• Extreme weather events could impact upon business continuity due to damage to our office premises, restricting business travel, disrupting cloud and internet connectivity providers and causing regular interruption to power supply, or disruption to supply chains

Transition Risks

• We may experience reputational damage if we fail to meet our climate targets; or the increased cost for carbon offsetting programmes may result in additional business cost
• Inadequate and incorrect reporting disclosures are also a risk to our business in this transition phase.

Opportunities

• Products: our customers across industries typically use our proprietary software, KX, as an analytics platform to enable them to reduce waste and improve yield and for predictive maintenance.
• Reputation: enhanced reputation and business opportunity by becoming a sustainability leader in both the consulting and software sectors
• Attracting talent: ability to utilise our approach to climate-related issues to help recruit talent to join the business
• Greater operational resilience offers an opportunity to gain market share.

Reporting Standards

Frameworks Used: TCFD

Certifications: CyberEssentials Plus

Sustainable Products & Innovation

• KX

Awards & Recognition

• CIPD Awards NI - Best D&I Initiative
• Women in Business/Women in Tech - David Collins, Male Advocate of the Year
• Silver accreditation from Diversity Mark NI