Revaia automates ESG reporting with Apiday while improving portfolio company experience
Case Study
With almost €500 million of assets under management, Revaia is Europe’s leading investor in sustainable innovation. B Corp-certified, the firm partners with mission-driven entrepreneurs with global ambitions and sustainable leadership. Revaia has a highly resilient portfolio of European scaleups with a focus on B2B SaaS companies from series B to pre-IPO.
As a B Corp and sustainable investing leader, ESG has been embedded at every level of Revaia’s activities from the start. When Anaïs Blarel joined Revaia as its Sustainability Manager, the firm managed ESG reporting with manual processes and an external consulting team. However, with the recent deployment of its first fund and upcoming launch of its second, Revaia needed a software solution to manage ESG for their growing portfolio.
[.exergue]“It was becoming too complicated to handle with Excel sheets; we wanted to be able to analyse our data faster and with more granularity. We needed a software that would fit our budget and save us time while reducing the margin of error, which is something we observed while doing things manually.”[.exergue]
Revaia has extensive ESG requirements for its portfolio companies, and Anaïs wanted reporting to be a positive experience for them, not a time-consuming burden. It was a priority that each company would had the support they needed to fully understand the questions and identify the required documents.
[.exergue]“For many companies, ESG can seem like a tedious and time-consuming task that doesn't create a lot of value. Of course, we believe it can be a value creation effort and we wanted to improve the experience for our portfolio companies from the beginning, starting with data collection.”[.exergue]
Since its investments are focused on B2B SaaS, Revaia was looking for a modern, easy-to-use software to help portfolio companies with their reporting.
[.exergue]“As a tech investor, it was also important for us to show technical maturity and offer the best digital experience possible to our portfolio companies when we’re asking them to answer 70+ ESG questions.”[.exergue]
While searching for the right ESG management platform, Anaïs did a comprehensive benchmark of approximately twelve different software tools over a period of several months. After narrowing it down to her team’s top three, Anaïs turned to her network and a fellow impact investor recommended Apiday.
[.exergue]“When the time came to confirm our choice to use Apiday, we asked a fellow investor for feedback. They said Apiday is really fast at executing its product roadmap to meet investor needs and that their client support team is extremely responsive.”[.exergue]
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Revaia’s historic ESG data and ESG questionnaire were uploaded to its dashboard during onboarding, and the firm was ready to begin its first reporting campaign with Apiday. Once Revaia’s portfolio companies received the questionnaire, Apiday helped them gather the correct data, answer questions collaboratively, and store their data for future reporting.
[.exergue]“Apiday was able to integrate our ESG questionnaire into the platform very quickly. Helpful hints and explanations were added to the questions so they were easy for our portfolio companies to answer.”[.exergue]
Anaïs says Apiday’s client success team has been extremely supportive from the start and proactive in helping her achieve Revaia’s reporting goals. Anaïs has also worked with Apiday to provide feedback and suggest new features for Apiday’s product roadmap.
[.exergue]“The Apiday team is always fast to answer and really proactive in trying to help us; they’ve already delivered on the majority of our feature requests.”[.exergue]
I think for anyone in ESG, the goal is to make the process more meaningful and for it to lead to concrete action. We want to make it faster and more pleasant, and to bring purpose to it - that’s the challenge, and Apiday really helps us with that.
Apiday allowed Revaia to replace manual data collection and analysis with automated processes, helping the firm save time and reduce errors. Anaïs says Apiday’s dashboards have also enabled her to view trends in their portfolio’s ESG performance and identify areas where their companies can improve.
[.exergue]“Apiday saves us a lot of time on data consolidation and analysis. The data visualisation is helpful for seeing the trends in our portfolio performance really quickly. We’ll soon have three years of data in Apiday, and being able to see the trends in our dashboard will be extremely valuable.“[.exergue]
When Anaïs first joined Revaia, the firm had to report ESG data for four portfolio companies, and she could spend a lot of time with them one-on-one reviewing reporting requirements. Today, Revaia has fifteen portfolio companies and Apiday helps the firm continue providing high-quality support even as its portfolio grows.
[.exergue]“Depending on the portfolio company, sometimes there isn't much awareness on ESG topics and you need to be able to explain the questions. With Apiday, all of these explanations are integrated into the platform, which saves us a lot of time.“[.exergue]
Anaïs says she’s received positive feedback from portfolio companies about their experience using Apiday, which was one of her top priorities. The reporting experience has become simpler and more pleasant for Revaia’s companies, and Anaïs noted some have even expressed interest in using Apiday for their own ESG management.
[.exergue]“We've had positive feedback from our portfolio companies. They’ve said using Apiday has been a really nice experience, which was one of our main goals - to simplify reporting and minimise reporting fatigue. Some of our portfolio companies have also said they’d like to use Apiday for their own ESG processes, which I think is a really positive sign that we’ve made the right choice to use Apiday.”[.exergue]
Once Revaia’s portfolio companies complete their questionnaire with Apiday, their ESG data is safely stored and answers can be automatically filled in for future investor reports. Anaïs noted that Apiday could help alleviate the reporting burden on companies and become a collaborative hub for impact investors.
[.exergue]“As more investors use reporting tools like Apiday, it will become an industry best practice. We‘ll be able to create links between investors so we can exchange data and avoid oversoliciting portfolio companies.”[.exergue]
Next, Revaia is planning to use Apiday for its EU Taxonomy reporting and to support portfolio companies that must comply with CSRD. Anaïs is also looking forward to streamlining the firm’s LP reporting with increased automation and ready-to-go reports.
[.exergue]“Previously, how we collected portfolio companies’ ESG data wasn't connected at all to how we report for our LPs. Now we’re able to use the data we’ve collected to create a report for each type of LP requirement. We'll be able to consolidate data much faster and easily download reports for our LPs, resulting in a much smoother and faster process.“[.exergue]
Overall, Anaïs says she’s had a very positive experience with Apiday, and she’s planning to continue using it to support Revaia’s portfolio companies on their sustainability journeys.
[.exergue]“When we started using Apiday, it was early in the history of ESG software and we were one of the first French VC investors to use it. Since then, we've seen some of our peers start using or switch to Apiday as well. We look forward to continuing to use Apiday for our ESG reporting needs.“[.exergue]
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