Insights

Perspectives from the field.

Short, practical notes on what actually works in strategy execution, operations transformation, financial planning, and sustainability reporting.

Revised ESRS and the new Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard: from reporting to understanding

The revised ESRS cuts mandatory datapoints by more than 60%, and the new voluntary standard gives companies outside CSRD scope a proportional framework — moving from “what do we need to report?” to “what do we need to understand and manage?”.

The European Commission has adopted the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the new Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard (VS).

The revised ESRS significantly simplifies sustainability reporting: more than 60% fewer mandatory datapoints and more than 70% fewer datapoints overall.

The new VS provides a more proportional framework for companies outside mandatory CSRD reporting.

Used pragmatically, these standards can help companies:

  1. 01Identify the sustainability issues most relevant
  2. 02Better understand and manage related risks and opportunities
  3. 03Determine which data and indicators are useful to track progress
  4. 04Communicate consistently with customers, banks, and investors

The opportunity is to move from “What do we need to report?” to “What do we need to understand and manage?”. At Arctic Edge Consultants, we help companies turn sustainability frameworks into practical tools for strategy, risk management, and long-term resilience.

Terence Berkleef
SustainabilityESRSVSMEESG reportingVS

Three improvements to strengthen your annual strategy process

Strengthen your annual strategy process with a clear strategy storyline, simple standard templates, and formal gates for budgeting and forecasting — better resource allocation and better strategy communications.

C-team members in Iceland — looking to strengthen your annual strategy process, drive better planning conversations, and build higher board confidence? Consider three improvements, amongst others, to be more efficient and effective:

  1. 01Build a clear strategy storyline: Develop a narrative that ties your company vision, selected strategic priorities, and resulting major projects together with a clear rationale. This clarifies your strategy to teams, the board, and investors
  2. 02Use simple, standard templates: Invest in easy-to-use templates that enable teams to scope and present projects in a digestible way. This makes your strategy planning meetings more effective, and supports disciplined conversations
  3. 03Set budgeting and forecasting guidelines: Set clear guidelines for when projects can be promoted into the budget or forecast. This creates formal gates for major initiatives to be approved before funds are allocated

At its core the strategy process is a management tool to allocate limited resources (people and capital) to projects that move the company towards a vision and goals. Done poorly, it results in incoherent strategies and a disconnect from the P&L. Done well, it results in better resource allocation, and better strategy communications, both internally and externally.

Nikhilesh Mohanty
StrategyStrategy processGovernance

Have you been tasked with building a strategy?

Treat strategy development as a structured, repeatable process — not a black art. Six steps to convert strategy from a black box into a standard business process.

Treat your strategy development as a structured repeatable process. Not a black art.

Great strategies are built on a clear understanding of the market or problem at hand. Increase your rate of success by following these steps:

  1. 01Develop a vision or end state for your business, function, or major project
  2. 02Run a solid diagnostic to deepen your understanding of the facts
  3. 03Translate this understanding into judgement on what your strategic priority areas should be, e.g. new sales model, new operational capability, among others
  4. 04Break down your strategic priorities into programs and underlying projects
  5. 05Keep strategic priorities and programs stable. Key projects agile.
  6. 06Now having effectively allocated resources, shift your attention to strong execution management and governance

Follow these repeatable steps and you will have converted your strategy effort from a black box to a standard business process that can run at any level of the business. Leverage this in your upcoming strategy discussions for 2H 2026.

Nikhilesh Mohanty
StrategyStrategy developmentProcess

Exec-level support is the number one determinant of strategy implementation success

C-teams focused on strategy implementation: the support you give your senior program leaders will decide long-term project success more than any other factor.

C-teams focused on strategy implementation: your exec-level support will be the number one determinant of project success over the long term.

Set up the senior business leaders responsible for delivering major programs by:

  1. 01Giving them a clear mandate to solve the problem, and communicating that mandate to the organisation
  2. 02Unblocking their path
  3. 03Not bogging them down with a one-size-fits-all bureaucratic IT approval process for every small capability or feature they need to build
  4. 04Making sure they have the right resources allocated — the right cross-functional team members and the right funding
  5. 05Using your SteerCo to guide, review progress, and make the major decisions

Get this right, and you set your organisation up for success.

Nikhilesh Mohanty
StrategyImplementationLeadership

The Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard: turning sustainability into a competitive advantage for SMEs

On 3 July the European Commission adopted the VSME as part of the EU Omnibus simplification package — a practical, proportionate way for SMEs to answer customers, banks and investors without full CSRD complexity.

On 3 July, the European Commission officially adopted the Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for SMEs (VSME) as part of its sustainability reporting EU Omnibus simplification package.

If your customers, banks, investors, or other business partners are asking for sustainability information, the VSME provides a practical and proportionate way to respond, without the complexity of full Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) reporting.

The standard helps your business:

  1. 01Keep it simple. The Basic Module contains just 11 reporting disclosures. Unlike CSRD, the VSME requires no double materiality assessment and only asks for information where it applies to your business.
  2. 02Meet growing stakeholder expectations. Respond to banks, investors and larger customers with one recognised framework instead of completing multiple questionnaires.
  3. 03Win more business. Structured ESG information strengthens your position in tenders and supplier selection.
  4. 04Build a solid ESG foundation. Organise sustainability information, identify opportunities and risks, and prepare for future customer and regulatory expectations.

At Arctic Edge Consultants we help SMEs implement the VSME in a pragmatic, business-focused way — from identifying the right ESG information to preparing a concise, credible report.

Terence Berkleef
SustainabilityVSMEESG reporting

Two focus areas to strengthen board and investor confidence in your projections

Aligning operational planning across functions and tying those plans to financial forecasts helped an engineering firm secure its next round of growth funding.

If you are an SME looking to turn around or strengthen your board's and investors' confidence in your business projections, focus on two key areas: aligning operational planning between functions — distribution or delivery vs. manufacturing vs. procurement — and ensuring your operational plans and financial forecasts match up.

Over the last 18 months, Arctic Edge Consultants worked with an innovative engineering firm to strengthen operational planning routines — people, processes and tools — and tie those firmly into short-term financial plans: rolling three-month cash forecasts and full-year P&L forecasts.

The combination of improved operational planning and financial forecasting helped:

  1. 01Strengthen execution management
  2. 02Provide a clearer view of working capital needs
  3. 03Enable the exec team to increase board and investor confidence, and secure the next round of growth funding
Nikhilesh Mohanty
FP&AOperationsFunding

One finance cube. One version of truth. No exceptions.

Treat your semantic layer as the single version of truth for every measure, dimension and KPI — and you eliminate redundancy while cutting BI maintenance cost.

Finance teams looking to drive reporting efficiency — both external and internal — should leverage one version of truth across all analytical and management reporting processes.

Treat your semantic layer — your Microsoft cubes or equivalent — as your One Version of Truth (OVOT). Every measure, every dimension, every KPI flows from one place.

Three ways to make this work:

  1. 01Embed the cube into Accounting's and FP&A's ways of working. A cube at the centre of month-end close, quarterly reporting, rolling forecasts and management reporting is constantly validated and continuously improved.
  2. 02Govern the cube rigorously. Retire legacy cubes and eliminate multiple versions. Redundant analytical layers are an unnecessary cost to Finance and IT, and a risk to reporting quality.
  3. 03Build in continuous data quality checks across the full chain — ERP to data warehouse to cube. Define clear roles and responsibilities, set error alerts, and document the process visually.

Done well, this creates a high-quality, finance-owned data set that eliminates redundancy and reduces BI maintenance costs.

Nikhilesh Mohanty
FP&AReportingData governance

FP&A teams are likely not maximising their automation potential

Dig into ERP setup, data flow and every manual intervention with IT and Accounting — then aim for a hands-off reporting environment and spend the time saved on better forecasting and analytics.

Don't shy away from digging deep into your data flow processes with your IT and Accounting partners — understanding ERP setup, data flow, data transformation, and questioning every manual intervention.

Ultimately, aim for a completely hands-off and automated approach to data flow and business intelligence, with only highly select exceptions.

The outcome: a highly automated reporting environment, and your time moving to more complex opportunities — better forecasting, better analytics.

Nikhilesh Mohanty
FP&AAutomationReporting

Your BI or ERP implementation is a Finance transformation opportunity. Don't waste it.

A purely IT- or vendor-led implementation usually leaves a BI stack Finance never fully exploits. Co-develop the BI strategy instead.

Finance teams: do not treat your Business Intelligence (BI) or ERP implementation as an isolated project. It is a Finance transformation opportunity.

Avoid a purely IT- or vendor-led implementation, as it will likely result in a BI stack that is never fully exploited by Finance. Instead, invest in understanding and co-developing your BI strategy alongside your IT partner. That means getting three things right:

  1. 01Push automation to its limits — know what your data layers can do and fully exploit them, with built-in checks
  2. 02Govern your master data — map your critical hierarchies and keys, ensuring one version of the truth, not multiple competing dimensions
  3. 03Clarify your roles — define how FP&A, Accounting and IT roles need to evolve to own and sustain the new environment efficiently

Reporting and analytics are most successful when approached holistically — built around the needs of Finance and the broader organisation, not done piecemeal.

Nikhilesh Mohanty
Corporate FinanceBI strategyTransformation

Poor operational and financial planning creates funding risk

Integrating planning across sales, procurement, operations and finance improved execution at a fast-growing Icelandic industrial firm — and unlocked long-term funding.

For SMEs and fast-growing startups, integrated operational and financial planning is critical. Operating in silos results in unreliable cash forecasts, weaker operational execution and customer experience, builds cash management risk, and over time erodes investor confidence.

Arctic Edge Consultants recently helped a fast-growing industrial firm in Iceland integrate and strengthen its operational and financial planning processes, and secure long-term funding. The engagement covered reviewing the value stream map to identify planning failure points, implementing an integrated planning platform connecting sales, procurement, operations and finance, improving procurement and manufacturing data quality, and redesigning financial planning models.

The results:

  1. 01Cross-functional communication and planning improved materially — from daily standups on the shop floor to new sales contracting processes
  2. 02Procurement, manufacturing and installation execution improved
  3. 03Investor confidence in the financial plans increased, unlocking funding

Financial planning quality is a direct result of operational capability: procurement schedules, manufacturing master plans, delivery execution and organisational routines.

Nikhilesh Mohanty
OperationsFP&AFunding

Want to discuss how any of this applies to your organisation?

Start the conversation