Define your dual materiality and CSR strategy
CSR strategy: a lever for anticipating risks and creating value
Companies operate in an unstable economic environment marked by geopolitical crises, fragile supply chains, and increased accountability requirements. Added to this are social and environmental crises that amplify traditional risks and create unprecedented challenges.
To remain competitive and sustainable, organizations must anticipate economic, social, and environmental changes. Ensuring sustainability and competitiveness is now a daily challenge.
What if CSR went far beyond regulatory compliance? What if CSR became a driver of resilience, responsible innovation, and sustainable economic performance?
At Axys, we transform CSR into a driver of responsible growth, capable of responding to current pressures, preserving the company’s natural and human capital, and creating long-term value.
Our CSR convictions
Double materiality, a strategic tool for a sustainable business
The changes required to ensure the resilience and sustainability of your business often take place over several years. Through double materiality analysis, you can identify across your entire value chain your impacts, vulnerabilities, risk areas, as well as your levers for innovation and resilience in the short, medium, and long term.
At Axys, we are convinced that double materiality is an essential tool for building your CSR strategy, while also ensuring long-term business viability and boosting responsible innovation in support of sustainable performance.
An informed and shared vision to set a meaningful and transformative direction
It is essential that the Executive Committee defines and embraces a clear and shared vision to guide the organization over time and drive real change. This trajectory must build on the company’s specific characteristics, its history and culture, in order to create a sense of collective pride capable of inspiring and uniting people.
At Axys, we believe that a shared strategic vision is the foundation of sustainable transformation: it sets a direction, establishes priorities, and identifies the levers needed to realign economic performance, positive impact, and resilience.
A CSR strategy
co-built with all business departments
For a CSR strategy to be truly transformative, it must be designed from the outset with the involvement of all business departments (Procurement, Finance, HR, etc.), taking into account their specific characteristics, level of maturity, and operational constraints. This approach ensures implementation that is aligned with on-the-ground realities.
At Axys, we are convinced that this collaborative approach is essential for embedding responsible strategy at the heart of business activities and turning it into a true driver of innovation, resilience, and collective engagement.
Our CSR supports
Map your value chain
and stakeholders
The first key step to successfully creating your double materiality matrix is to understand your ecosystem.
To do this, you need to map your value chain and stakeholders, which is essential for modeling your organizational and economic context.
At Axys, our methodology includes:
- Analysis of upstream and downstream activities in your value chain,
- Mapping of internal and external stakeholders,
Our added value :
- Onboarding of all your teams, from top management to operational teams, through collaborative workshops
Identify and prioritize
your ESG issues
The second step is to assess and prioritize all the material issues for your organization in order to understand your impact on society and the environment, as well as the risks and opportunities across your entire value chain.
Our approach involves several key steps:
- Stakeholder consultation: to identify material issues
- Analysis and prioritization: rating your impacts, risks, and opportunities (IROs)
- Restitution and appropriation: transforming complex issues into operational realities.
Our added value :
- An intelligible dual materiality matrix, a solid foundation for defining an impactful CSR strategy aligned with your business objectives.
- Customized tools to accelerate the identification of issues and IROs
Build your purpose
and your vision of CSR
After the double materiality analysis, we help you define your responsible mission and strategic vision to give your organization a clear, unifying, and sustainable direction. This step is crucial for embedding CSR at the heart of your strategy and inspiring all stakeholders.
To achieve this, we work with your teams to:
- Definition of the long-term CSR vision with the Executive Committee
- Involvement of business departments to validate the company’s target positioning.
Our added value :
- Recognized expertise in facilitating guided brainstorming workshops for company management and business departments
- A collaborative approach to transforming your vision into a lever for engagement and sustainable performance
Define the target and build the responsible trajectory
Depending on your ambition, your level of CSR maturity, and your priority issues, we support you in defining and implementing a CSR strategy aligned with your business objectives.
Our support consists of three key stages:
- Defining the responsible path forward: integrating your strategic challenges, organizational specificities, and the necessary skills and resources.
- Analysis of ESG issues in business lines: to identify and categorize impacts, risks, and opportunities by process.
- Co-construction of the roadmap: defining key objectives and results (OKRs) with all business departments.
Our added value :
- A concrete, jointly developed CSR strategy, to reduce your negative externalities and maximize your positive impacts.
- A collaborative approach to ensure buy-in from key stakeholders and guarantee the sustainability of your initiative.
Get your teams on board with CSR
To ensure that your responsible strategy is understood and adopted, it is essential to involve your teams from the outset. We support you in communicating your CSR ambitions and creating a collective movement.
To make this key moment a success, we support you in:
- Roadmap presentation : group meetings to explain the objectives and key milestones.
- Providing the “Why” : creating inspiring materials to set a unifying course and amplify your positive impact.
Our added value :
- Thanks to our Digital Change Factory,we deploy customized communication solutions
A 360° view of your ESG challenges for a high-performing and sustainable CSR strategy
Through double materiality analysis, you lay the foundations for a concrete CSR strategy capable of driving responsible and sustainable transformation. This powerful tool enables you to manage your ESG risks across your entire value chain, while revealing levers for responsible innovation to rethink your value proposition around sustainability.
With this approach, CSR becomes a true ally of your resilience and a driver of sustainable performance, supporting the ecological and social transition.
Bringing your purpose
to life to guide
your transformation
We help bring out the responsible vision your organization needs to embody real change in paradigm and address today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. This approach enables you to clarify your ambitions and define a medium- and long-term roadmap capable of guiding your company’s responsible transformation.
By laying the foundations for a clear and shared vision, you gain the keys to steer transformation and build a sustainable and resilient model that supports the ecological and social transition — as well as your overall performance.
A co-built CSR strategy
for sustainable
transformation
Throughout our support, we ensure your CSR strategy is co-built with business departments to guarantee a transformation aligned with operational realities and organizational processes. This collaborative approach ensures strategic consistency and encourages team engagement.
The result: a long-lasting, unifying and meaningful CSR strategy that strengthens collective commitment and accelerates the implementation of positive-impact initiatives, making CSR a true driver of transformation.
“We take an integrated approach based on dual materiality, considering both the environmental and social impacts, as well as the financial effects of climate and societal change on your organization. This approach allows us to identify, at the heart of your value chain, the capital to be preserved, vulnerabilities, and long-term strategic opportunities: an in-depth diagnosis gives you a real head start.
It is on this foundation that we work with all teams to define an operational CSR strategy, integrated into the overall strategy to combine the transition to responsible models, sustainable impact, and long-term economic activity.”
Finance Director, Sustainable Finance expert
Got a project for us? Contact our experts
Frédérique WINCKEL
Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Sustainability
Our support for Sustainable Transformation
Structure your
CSR function :
We put our expertise in organizational transformation at the service of your CSR function.
The goal? Master key topics, steer your strategy, and activate your ecosystem to make your CSR function a lever for a resilient and innovative organization committed to responsible transformation.
Implementing your CSR roadmap operationally :
We support you in aligning your CSR roadmap with your business strategy, mobilizing your managers, and equipping your business teams.
Our approach? To ensure that your operational teams become key players in the sustainable transition and contribute to responsible and innovative performance.
Shift your functions toward sustainability :
With Axys, a sustainable transformation consulting firm, turn your business lines into driving forces behind your CSR strategy.
The goal? To support the transformation of your Purchasing, HR, Finance, and CSR departments to strengthen sustainable performance and accelerate the transition to responsible business practices.
Engage and train your teams in CSR :
Qualiopi certified, we offer CSR training tailored to your level of maturity and strategic objectives.
From an introduction to CSR to advanced management and integration of CSR into business operations, we train your teams to transform your organization and strengthen your sustainable performance.
Got a project? Contact us!
Our experts will work with you to develop a tailor-made project that meets your challenges.
We answer your questions
What is double materiality and why is it mandatory with the CSRD?
Double materiality is an approach that analyzes both your company’s impact on the environment and society (impact materiality) and the influence of ESG issues on your financial performance (financial materiality), in the short, medium, and long term and across your entire value chain.
For companies subject to the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), this analysis is mandatory to ensure greater transparency and a CSR strategy that is aligned with regulatory and stakeholder expectations.
For those not subject to the CSRD, double materiality remains a powerful and highly useful diagnostic tool for defining CSR strategy, prioritizing actions to be taken, guiding corporate strategy, and communicating transparently with various stakeholders.
How does the double materiality matrix work?
The double materiality matrix combines two dimensions:
1° The importance of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) impacts for your stakeholders: this measures the perceptions and expectations of internal and external stakeholders in relation to your organization, concerning your positive and negative impacts on society and the environment.
2° The impact of these issues on your organization’s economic and financial performance: it assesses how sustainability-related risks and opportunities may affect your business model, revenues, and resilience.
By combining these two perspectives, the double materiality matrix makes it possible to categorize the most strategic CSR issues and represent them visually to facilitate decision-making. Double materiality thus becomes a foundation for building a CSR strategy focused on priority ESG issues.
How can stakeholders be involved in the analysis?
Stakeholder involvement is essential to ensure that the issues identified are relevant. Depending on your needs, this stakeholder consultation takes place through interviews, panels, questionnaires, and collaborative workshops, in order to gather their expectations, assess their level of influence, and validate priorities. This is a fundamental step in any CSR approach that aims to comply with international standards and to guarantee a roadmap that can effectively address your organization’s challenges. Furthermore, involving stakeholders in the analysis reinforces the legitimacy of your CSR strategy and promotes buy-in.
How can dual materiality be integrated into the overall CSR strategy?
For companies wishing to define a robust CSR strategy, dual materiality analysis is a fundamental step. It enables you to identify ESG issues, prioritize them to guide your actions, and avoid spreading your efforts too thinly in order to successfully transform your company in a responsible manner. From this stage onwards, you will be able to develop projects and objectives that will have a tangible impact on society and the environment. By integrating the results into your governance and business processes, you can transform CSR into a lever for sustainable performance and innovation.
What are the benefits for governance and economic performance?
Dual materiality provides a 360° view of risks and vulnerabilities, as well as opportunities, enabling you to anticipate future developments in a rapidly changing world. It is a concrete tool that gives your company a head start and allows you to take the necessary step back to guide your business strategy and ensure the resilience of your activity. It therefore enables you to adapt your company to meet current and future challenges. Dual materiality analysis reveals levers for innovation and improves your performance in a responsible and competitive business model.