Talk to an ESG Expert about how Presgo can help you!
Our ESG Experts are on-hand to understand your ESG Reporting needs and cater our solution to you. Get in touch to discuss how we can help.
Talk to an ESG ExpertContents
As global business ecosystems become increasingly complex, organisations in Southeast Asia are put under growing pressure to elevate their approach to governance, risk, and compliance (GRC). Regulations are tightening, and stakeholders continue to demand more transparency. Traditional frameworks, often siloed and reactive, are no longer sufficient in a world where climate risk, social responsibility, and regulatory scrutiny intersect.
Enter ESG — environmental, social, and governance principles — which are no longer peripheral; they’re integral to future-proofing GRC strategies. By integrating ESG with GRC, organisations can build systems that meet compliance deadlines while scaling. At the heart of this transformation is technology. Early adopters in the region are already reaping the benefits of ESG software such as Presgo to streamline processes such as ESG reporting, manage non-financial risks, and unlock strategic advantages.
The Current State of GRC in Southeast Asia
Today, GRC practices across Southeast Asia are evolving but remain uneven. Regulators are tightening standards across the region:
- Singapore’s SGX started mandating climate-related disclosures for listed companies in FY 2022. Similarly, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) established new regulations designed to reduce the risk of greenwashing, including the disclosure of investment strategies, which took effect in January 2023.
- Bursa Malaysia recently introduced the Sustainability Accelerator (SA) Programme, designed to prepare Public Listed Companies (PLCs) in the country for the IFRS® Sustainability Disclosure Standards. The central bank of Malaysia, the BNM, recently issued key policy frameworks and documents to guide financial institutions in managing climate-related risks and promoting sustainability practices.
- In the Philippines, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires publicly listed companies to submit sustainability reports that cover economic, environmental, and social disclosures, including customer privacy and data security, to enhance investor confidence and align with regional trends. The SEC aims to implement this by 2026, relying on a phased approach to facilitate seamless transition.
With changing regulations and growing amounts of data, organisations need to formalise their GRC processes and move away from traditional methods such as spreadsheets and other siloed tools.
Why should you integrate ESG with GRC?
Across Southeast Asia, ESG-related disclosure requirements are becoming increasingly stringent. Whether through sustainability listing guidelines, carbon pricing mechanisms, or regional taxonomies for sustainable finance, companies are expected to go beyond financial compliance.
At the same time, stakeholders — from investors and regulators to supply chain partners — are demanding clear, data-driven proof of ESG performance. This creates both a burden and an opportunity: those who can embed ESG into their GRC processes gain visibility, credibility, and resilience.
Yet many companies still struggle with challenges such as:
- Disparate data sources across business units
- Manual reporting using spreadsheets
- Inconsistent metrics and KPIs
- Lack of audit-ready ESG documentation
These gaps make it harder to keep up with shifting regulations, expose organisations to risk, and weaken stakeholder trust. On the other hand, integrating ESG helps close these gaps. Organisations gain a single source of truth for sustainability data, making it easier to align with evolving regulations and stakeholder expectations. Beyond compliance, integration also offers improved risk visibility across environmental and social issues, faster and more accurate reporting cycles, and a clearer narrative for investors and customers.
How does ESG technology future-proof GRC?
Compared to traditional approaches like spreadsheets, platforms powered by ESG technology are feature-rich, offering automated workflows and data processing to help streamline the reporting process for GRC teams and professionals. Integrating ESG within GRC enables:
- Proactive risk identification, including climate and social risks
- Faster alignment with evolving disclosure frameworks
- Greater transparency and credibility with stakeholders
- More efficient, centralised reporting processes
Platforms like Presgo enable organisations to shift from fragmented reporting to integrated, proactive ESG governance. This allows your team to allocate time and resources to other valuable tasks. Here’s how:
Centralise ESG data management
Siloed data makes ESG reporting challenging, especially when multiple teams and sites are involved. A centralised platform solves this by consolidating ESG indicators, such as carbon emissions, energy use, supply chain practices, and workforce diversity, into a single dashboard. Track environmental, social, and governance indicators across teams, sites, and countries from a single dashboard.
This added visibility ensures GRC teams can track performance in real time rather than waiting for quarterly or annual updates. By reducing duplicate work and version-control issues, centralisation builds a single source of truth that is easier to manage, scale, and audit. A centralised platform also helps identify trends based on historic and present data, allowing teams to respond and strategise accordingly.
Align with global frameworks
The ESG regulatory landscape is constantly evolving. ESG software like Presgo supports key international sustainability standards, including frameworks from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB). This enables organisations to comply with both global benchmarks and local disclosure requirements.
In the long term, this allows companies to adapt quickly when regulators or investors shift their expectations. Instead of reworking entire processes, GRC teams can map existing data to multiple frameworks, ensuring consistency and comparability across markets.
Built-in risk identification
Traditional GRC systems often focus narrowly on financial risks, leaving environmental and social exposures overlooked until they escalate. By tagging ESG metrics to risk indicators, the platform flags performance gaps early — whether in emissions, labour practices, or board diversity.
This enables teams to spot issues and errors long before they appear in an annual report, putting organisations ahead of potential risks like rising energy consumption, labour compliance gaps, and governance imbalances. Early detection not only reduces regulatory penalties but also gives organisations more time to handle them accordingly.
Role-based accountability
Without clear accountability, ESG efforts often stall or become fragmented across departments. Role-based features in platforms like Presgo assign specific tasks, deadlines, and approval workflows to relevant stakeholders, ensuring ownership at every level. This includes a view of timelines, reminders, and approval flows built in for easier tracking.
Having a more structured approach to accountability can help strengthen governance by making ESG progress measurable and traceable. It also improves collaboration, since departments understand how their contributions feed into the organisation’s broader GRC strategy.
AI capabilities
AI enhances ESG management by streamlining repetitive tasks and surfacing insights hidden in large datasets. For example, optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP) can automatically extract ESG data from reports or supplier documents, standardising inputs that would otherwise require manual entry. Other valuable AI features include anomaly detection, predictive insights and reporting recommendations, and reporting narratives instantly.
By embedding AI into ESG workflows, organisations can move from reactive compliance to proactive strategy, ensuring that GRC frameworks remain resilient as expectations grow.
Audit-ready, always
One of the biggest challenges in ESG reporting is proving the integrity of data. Presgo addresses this by providing version control, traceable data sources, and compliance logs that can withstand scrutiny from investors, auditors, and regulators.
Being audit-ready helps reduce the stress of dealing with reporting deadlines and regulatory reviews. More importantly, it builds trust with stakeholders by showing that ESG disclosures are supported by verifiable and transparent data.
Strategies for Integrating ESG: Case Studies from the SEA Region
In response to changes in regulatory requirements, organisations across Southeast Asia are already proving the value of integrating ESG with GRC. The following case studies highlight how different sectors are using technology to turn compliance pressures into operational and strategic advantages.
Case Study 1: Jason Marine Group
Sector: Marine electronics
Challenge: Growing corporate responsibility and ESG demands in Singapore.
Solution: Partnered with Convene ESG (now Presgo) to reduce manual input through OCR-powered data entry, reduce errors in data and formatting, and benefit from automated and centralised workflows.
Outcome: Significantly enhanced data accuracy and efficiency, as well as increased reliability and credibility in the organisation’s sustainability reports.
Lesson: ESG technology can improve overall operational efficiency for future-proofing by turning GRC from a manual overhead into a resilient, tech-enabled process.
Case Study 2: TEHO International Inc.
Sector: Marine, offshore oil & gas, construction, and real estate
Challenge: Difficulty in keeping up with evolving ESG reporting requirements, and experienced challenges using ESG platforms that are too complex.
Solution: Used Presgo to strengthen the integrity and auditability of ESG data for compliance purposes.
Outcome: Completed the onboarding and ESG report within two months, avoiding additional consulting costs while ensuring accurate data.
Lesson: ESG platforms with fast onboarding and strong support help GRC teams stay compliant even under tight reporting deadlines.
Case Study 3: Nickel Asia Corporation
Sector: Mining
Challenge: Relied on manual, spreadsheet-based reporting, leading to inconsistencies, scalability issues, and difficulties tracking environmental metrics such as energy use and GHG emissions.
Solution: Implemented Presgo to automate data collection, consolidation, visualisation, and archiving, ensuring compliance with global and local mining standards.
Outcome: Gained real-time dashboards for accurate ESG insights, simplified carbon accounting (Scopes 1, 2, and 3), and improved compliance with mining industry frameworks for transparent and scalable reporting.
Lesson: ESG technology that automates multi-source data integration and provides real-time oversight equips GRC teams with scalable, auditable reporting systems tailored for complex processes.
How can organisations stay adaptable for future regulations?
Future-proofing isn’t just about staying compliant today; it’s about being prepared for tomorrow’s risks, disclosures, and investor demands. Digital ESG-GRC platforms make this possible by offering organisations a flexible foundation along with increased efficiency. Key features that support adaptability include:
- Configurable data models to add new metrics or frameworks without rebuilding entire reporting systems
- Modular workflows to adjust approval flows, reporting times, or responsibilities as regulations change
- Multi-framework mapping to align data with different global and regional standards, reducing duplication of effort
- Automatic updates to ensure that compliance templates and reporting structures remain aligned with evolving disclosure requirements
- Scalable architecture to support growth in data volume from new business units, geographies, or supply chain reporting
As new regulations or frameworks emerge, data models, metrics, and workflows can be updated without overhauling entire systems. Investing in this adaptability ensures that GRC teams spend less time scrambling and more time focusing on long-term strategy.
Presgo: The Solution for Today’s ESG-GRC Challenges
Unlike generic solutions, Presgo combines practical features with proven outcomes from early adopters in Southeast Asia. Centralised data management, AI-first capabilities, and built-in accountability boost visibility, reduce manual work, and support faster, more accurate reporting. This is reinforced through real-world outcomes, including Jason Marine Group’s improved reporting accuracy and efficiency, TEHO International’s accelerated onboarding and compliance under tight deadlines, and Nickel Asia’s scaling of complex ESG processes, such as carbon accounting.
Together, these cases highlight how technology can bolster organisations through evolving ESG standards in the Asia-Pacific region, with support for global frameworks and regional disclosures. It empowers organisations to shift from box-ticking to impact-driven governance and long-term resilience.
Whether you’re just starting your ESG journey or scaling your impact, platforms like Presgo can turn compliance challenges into strategic wins.
Schedule a demo today to see how the platform’s audit-ready workflows can transform your reporting process ahead of challenges and deadlines.
