Workiva Overview

tl;dr

Workiva describes its platform as uniting financial and non-financial reporting with governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) measures. The result is the most comprehensive, thorough, and accurate reporting with audit-ready outputs and confident assurance.  A truly unique offering in the marketplace, Workiva Integrated Assured Reporting delivers tremendous value for its customers.

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Workiva Overview

Workiva provides financial, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) reporting in a unified platform.  At first blush, one might wonder how these reporting needs are related.  Let’s explore.  Every organization in the world needs to be able to report their financial performance whether it’s a sole proprietor or a multi-national publicly traded company.  Businesses always need to know how they are performing from a financial perspective because without money, the business ceases to exist.  

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When we start to think about how an organization manages itself, we’re talking about operations.  Organizations develop policies to specify how we expect the business to operate  and procedures to outline how the business should operate.  Those are great guideposts for a business but without monitoring and reporting, policies and procedures are of limited value.  Reporting how well the organization has aligned to a policy provides insight into how well the organization is functioning and assesses operational risks. 

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The rise of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) has compelled organizations to think about how they are managed and their contribution to the world.  Customers have begun to make buying decisions based on an organization's commitment to ESG initiatives.  Employees and candidates weigh an organization’s ESG initiatives when deciding to join, stay or leave.  Investors reward organizations that have sustained ESG efforts with additional capital.  And governments around the world are mandating new and expanded reporting requirements to ensure that there is transparency and accountability in an organization’s reporting of its ESG commitments.  

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These distinct and important reporting needs have a unique overlap.  Let’s consider an example for a company based in France.  A policy is created that outlines that the organization must increase female representation in senior leadership positions by 20% within 2 years.  At first blush this may seem like an ESG reporting need and it certainly is; however, it also encompasses GRC as well as financial reporting needs.  

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The organization needs to develop operational procedures to ensure that the policy is followed.  For example, a women in leadership program may be developed and offered to female employees with annual ratings of exceeds expectations or higher.  They also need to monitor (audit) compliance to the procedure.  These operational needs are serviced by the GRC solutions on the Workiva platform.  

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There is an important detail in our example; this company is based in France.  The European Union enacted the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in 2023.  Under CSRD annual reporting to the government extends beyond just financial, it now includes reporting requirements around an organization’s ESG initiatives.  

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Throughout this article we have been discussing various reporting needs.  But what is the foundation of all reporting?  Data.  Because the answer is so obvious, many forget to consider how we will manage the data. In our article Workiva’s Data Management Suite, we explore the powerful capabilities of the Workiva platform that enables data to be connected and automated across the entire Workiva platform and ensure that the promise of Assured Integrated Reporting is delivered.

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