A good rule of thumb when you first get started is to think about your different Brightest goals, and specifically what you want people to do and then measure.
What is your overall goal for the next year or the next three months? What is your theory of change? Do you have specific ESG or sustainability reporting obligations? Do you want to raise money or increase involvement in a specific cause? Improve employee morale and get them involved in your events program? Measure and report on your environmental sustainability and ESG performance? What do you need to measure in order to judge success? How do you want to use your impact data and who do you need to share it with?
Below are some guiding questions and ideas for where / how to start building out your Brightest account.
â Determine a data collection method and process. Who will be responsible for collecting and entering data into Brightest?
To ensure data accuracy and traceability, you can assign colleagues the role of "data collaborator" and assign them to enter data for specific items within Brightest. They will only see the items they are assigned to.
Similarly, you can enable the auditing function for the ESG Reporting module. When a data collaborator completes a section of the report, they submit that section to an auditor (also an assigned role in Brightest).
â What is your baseline year? Do you want to enter historical data?
Account Settings -> ESG & Sustainability Settings -> : You can enter company-wide historical emissions data for Scope 1, 2, and 3 in your ESG & Sustainability Settings. The data can be raw data and entered into Brightest for carbon calculation. Or the data can be direct carbon data and entered as metric tons of CO2e.
Likewise, you can directly enter already calculated metric tons of CO2e data for assets and transit items.
â Reviewyour account settings page and ensure they match your company's reporting needs.
: Fill in company information like name, # of employees, website, social media handles etc.
ESG & Sustainability Settings: Ensure all of the default settings and measurement units for ESG & Sustainability Settings match your company's needs. Upload your preferred or select ones from the Brightest emissions factors library. Enable all relevant for your company.
Create or supplier / partner survey fields.
Create tags to represent core themes, categories or materiality pillars in your company.
â Does your company have any events, volunteer opportunities or projects you want to track the progress of or publicize?
These items can be added to and tracked in your to provide you an overview of these actions in your company.
Create an event, project, programs, volunteer or fundraiser actions.
â Does your company have overarching goals, environmental or emissions targets or materiality pillars?
Materiality themes or pillars are represented as tags - to add them, navigate to Settings and type the materiality theme in the Tags section.
â Enter company assets (offices, sites, vehicles, equipment) & carbon footprint data
Carbon accounting can be overwhelming which is why we recommend a step by step approach. If you are new to carbon accounting, we suggest to start collecting data that is easily available and in your control. This means your Scope 1 and 2 data related to company owned or controlled assets.
Once you've added your assets to your asset library, you can start to enter carbon footprint data e.g. electricity consumption, heating, waste, refrigeration etc. This will give you a calculation of your Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
From there, you can start to collect and track your Scope 3 emissions via the Transit, Spend and / or Products tabs.
*Assets can also represent Scope 3 emissions, depending on the asset information / asset type.
â Invite Colleagues
Once you feel your Brightest account is ready to be shared with your team, invite colleagues to join your Brightest account in the Manage Teams section.
*Team management is only available to users with the Administrator role.
These items can be represented in the and linked to custom KPIs.
To do this, navigate to your and the tab. Use the add tool or csv file importer to enter your company owned or controlled assets e.g. offices, sites, vehicles, equipment.
