Stop losing your week to customer questionnaires
The regulator stopped being your biggest correspondent. Your customers, your bank and your insurer took over, and none of them use the same form. Horizon ESG holds one evidenced dataset that answers all of them.
Answer once. Satisfy every framework that asks.
A buyer wants ESRS. Your lender wants TCFD. The SECR filing is due. Scope 1 is the same number in all three, so record it once and let the platform shape it.
1 answer → 0 frameworks satisfied
What it saves you. The same figure, correctly cited three different ways, without three separate hunts through last year’s folder.Framework Mapping
The requests went up when the rules went down
It is the reverse of what everyone expected. The Omnibus cut CSRD scope from around 50,000 companies to roughly 5,000 in March 2026, and the volume of ESG data requests landing on sustainability teams grew anyway. The obligation did not disappear, it got delegated.
Customers
The companies still in CSRD scope need value chain data, and they need it from you. A tender deadline is less negotiable than a reporting one.
Banks and insurers
Lending and underwriting decisions increasingly carry a sustainability data requirement, on the lender’s timetable and in the lender’s format.
Procurement portals
EcoVadis, CDP, sector schemes and bespoke buyer questionnaires, each asking similar things in incompatible shapes.
Investors and boards
The same numbers again, cut differently, usually at the least convenient point in the quarter.
The problem is not the questions, it is where the answers live
Most teams can answer any individual question. What breaks the week is that the answers live in a folder of last year’s spreadsheets, three inboxes and one person’s memory. Every new questionnaire becomes an archaeology exercise, and because the digging is redone each time, two answers to the same question end up inconsistent – which is exactly what a sceptical procurement team notices.
The fix is structural rather than clerical. Collect once, evidence it properly, and let each new request draw from the same dataset in whatever shape it needs.
Answering from documents
- Each questionnaire restarts the data hunt
- Answers drift apart between requests
- Evidence is a folder of attachments nobody can navigate
- The person who knows is on annual leave
- A rush job every time, and it shows
Answering from a dataset
- Each request draws on data you already hold
- One figure, used consistently everywhere
- Source document attached to the number itself
- Anyone on the team can produce the answer
- Minutes to assemble, hours to review
You are allowed to push back, and it helps to know exactly how far
This is the part most teams do not realise they have. The Omnibus introduced a value chain cap: a company inside CSRD scope cannot require more from a value chain partner with fewer than 1,000 employees than the voluntary VSME standard covers. A request that runs well past that can be answered to the cap, with a polite note explaining why.
The practical move is to build your dataset to VSME shape deliberately. It gives you a complete answer to most requests and a clean line to point at when one goes further. Our note on the value chain cap and supplier data requests sets out where the boundary sits.
What Horizon ESG does about it
- One dataset, many output shapes. Collect activity data, emissions and social metrics once, then answer CSRD-derived requests, EcoVadis, CDP, SECR and bespoke buyer questionnaires from the same source.
- Evidence attached to the figure. Every number carries its source document, method and factor version, so when a customer asks how you calculated something you answer in seconds rather than reopening the file.
- Nova does the assembly. Our built-in intelligence extracts data from invoices and utility bills, matches emission factors with the source visible, flags gaps, and drafts the narrative for you to edit. It shows its working on every suggestion.
- Live in two to four weeks. Guided onboarding rather than an implementation project, which matters when the next questionnaire has a date on it.
- Framework coverage that travels. ESRS, ISSB, UK SRS, TCFD, GRI, CDP, SECR and SFDR from the same data, so a new request rarely means new collection.
Where this sits alongside finance
If your CFO has started asking harder questions about how these numbers are controlled, that is not interference. Mandatory limited assurance has moved sustainability data into territory finance already knows how to govern, and their involvement usually makes your life easier rather than harder.
Reading this from the finance side? See the same platform from a CFO’s perspective, covering controls, assurance readiness and what it costs.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many ESG data requests should we expect a year?
It varies by sector and customer base, but the direction is consistent: requests rose through 2026 even as CSRD scope shrank, because the roughly 5,000 companies still in scope pass requirements down their supply chains, and banks, insurers and procurement teams ask independently. Companies selling into large corporates or the public sector commonly field these monthly rather than annually, in formats that rarely match each other.
Can we refuse a customer’s ESG data request?
You can push back on the scope of it. The Omnibus I Directive introduced a value chain cap: a company within CSRD scope cannot require more information from a value chain partner with fewer than 1,000 employees than the voluntary VSME standard covers. That gives you a clear, citable basis for declining requests that go well beyond it, without damaging the relationship. In practice a polite reference to the cap, together with a complete VSME-shaped answer, resolves most over-broad requests.
What is the VSME standard?
VSME is the voluntary sustainability reporting standard for small and medium-sized enterprises. It matters because the Omnibus uses it as the ceiling on what larger companies can demand from smaller value chain partners. Building your dataset to cover VSME gives you a defensible answer to most incoming requests and a clear line to point to when a request exceeds it.
How long should answering a questionnaire take?
The first one is genuinely slow because you are collecting data for the first time. Every one after that should be fast, because the answers should be drawn from a dataset you already hold rather than assembled from scratch. If your fifth questionnaire takes as long as your first, the problem is that answers are living in documents rather than in a system.
We are a small team. Do we need a consultant?
Not for the reporting itself, in most cases. Consultants earn their fee on strategy, materiality judgement and complex value chain modelling. Assembling data, matching emission factors and formatting disclosures is work software should absorb. Horizon ESG is designed so a one or two person team can run the reporting cycle, with Nova handling setup, factor matching and gap detection.
Bring one of the data requests currently sitting in your inbox to the demo. We will show you how it gets answered from the platform, using your own data rather than ours.
Get your week back
See how one evidenced dataset answers a customer questionnaire, a lender request and an SECR filing without starting over.
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