How Novisto's financial-grade data controls elevated Douglas Dynamics’ impact reporting and ESG ratings

As a public company with a long history of responsible business practices, the journey toward a more formalized ESG program was a natural evolution. With encouragement from its board and a desire to boost its ISS scores, the company set out to build a structured, repeatable reporting process.

Isabel Tarnowski, Director of Financial Reporting & Sustainability, leveraging her dual leadership of financial and non-financial reporting, applied the rigorous discipline of a CPA and the structural standards of SOX compliance to the effort. The first step: build a centralized ESG data infrastructure capable of mirroring the rigor and accountability of their existing accounting systems.

The Douglas Dynamics story - In a nutshell

1. THE CHALLENGE: Driven by its board and rising expectations from investors and customers to formalize ESG reporting, Douglas Dynamics faced a data challenge. To enhance its reporting, the company needed to evolve from manual collection processes to a more structured system across its more than 20 locations.
2. THE SOLUTION: The company sought a dedicated ESG platform with the audit rigour of a financial system. They chose Novisto for its deep expertise and highly-rated implementation team, launching their program by collecting two years of data to build a credible, multi-year foundation.
3. THE RESULTS: The new process significantly improved reporting efficiency and data completeness. This strengthened their external disclosures, contributing to an improved ISS score, and freed up the internal team to shift from reactive data gathering to proactive, forward-looking sustainability strategy.

Moving beyond manual ESG data processes

Following the publication of a CSR report in 2020 and a comprehensive Impact Report in 2022, Douglas Dynamics recognized that its evolving ESG reporting journey required a more structured foundation. Led by a CPA with experience in internal audit and SOX controls, the organization realized that managing data across more than 20 distinct locations through hundreds of emails and disconnected spreadsheets was simply no longer scalable.

The challenge was further intensified by external pressures. A primary driver for change was the Board of Directors’ focus on improving ESG ratings, which had stagnated due to incomplete data sets and a lack of comprehensive disclosure. Internally, the team was also hindered by a defunct utility management system that provided only rudimentary emissions reporting and was being sunsetted. These gaps meant previous impact reports were heavily reliant on footnotes and asterisks to explain data omissions, particularly at smaller sites.

Ultimately, the intensive manual effort required to collect historical data prevented the sustainability team from shifting toward forward-looking strategies. By spending the majority of time reacting to data requests and verifying accuracy, there was little capacity to tackle new requirements, such as emerging climate laws or the daunting task of Scope 3 emissions planning.

Implementing financial-grade ESG oversight with Novisto

When Douglas Dynamics began evaluating ESG software, they had specific criteria in mind. As a smaller-cap public company with a lean team, they needed something that could deliver without imposing a massive operational burden on the sustainability team and data contributors. 

Several platforms were on the table, but a few things set Novisto apart:

• A dedicated ESG platform, not an add-on. This mattered. Isabel and her team wanted a partner with deep ESG expertise—not a company that offered ESG as a secondary feature to their primary platform. Isabel shared, "Novisto was a company that we felt we could lean on since we're not necessarily experts internally."
• Strong data management and governance. Coming from financial reporting, Isabel needed clear traceability: who uploaded data, who changed it, who approved it. The ability to track and audit the entire data lifecycle wasn't a nice-to-have—it was essential.
• Framework alignment from the start. Douglas Dynamics reports against GRI, SASB, and TCFD. The platform needed to make framework mapping straightforward, especially as they looked ahead to emerging requirements, like California's climate disclosure laws.
• An implementation team that actually helps. "I've gone through other software implementations outside of ESG where on paper the software looks great and then the implementation team is horrible," Isabel shares. "Making sure that you're comfortable with that implementation team is very important. And with Novisto, it was excellent."

With a new data management and reporting system in place, the team made a strategic decision to collect both the current and prior year’s data concurrently, allowing them to immediately establish a multi-year baseline of credible, centralized data. Novisto’s platform made this dual data collection more manageable. As Isabel recalls, "Once people put in that first year and understood the narratives that were required, the second year was pretty simple."

"Before Novisto, our data tables were full of asterisks. For instance, noting that certain metrics only included three manufacturing facilities within a single business unit. Today, we have far fewer footnotes. I feel much more confident that our data is materially accurate and, most importantly, we have a clear understanding of exactly where that data is coming from."

-Isabel Tarnowski, Director of Financial Reporting & Sustainability, Douglas Dynamics

Improving ISS scores through strategic ESG rigor

Novisto’s centralized ESG reporting platform has helped Douglas Dynamics establish a single source of ESG truth, and transition from a manual scramble for data to an efficient operation that mirrors the discipline of financial accounting. This transformation was particularly evident in the company's latest reporting cycle, where the ability to disclose a broader range of metrics led to a two-to-three-point improvement in their ISS scores. 

"Following the release of our latest sustainability report, our ISS scores improved by two to three points. We saw the most significant gains in the environmental and social categories simply because we were now able to report on a much broader range of metrics required by the rating agencies."

— Isabel Tarnowski, Director of Financial Reporting & Sustainability, Douglas Dynamics

Beyond the scores, the transition significantly enhanced the organization’s operational efficiency and strategic capacity. This evolution has delivered several key value points across the business:

1. Operational time savings: Replaced a labor-intensive "scramble" involving hundreds of emails with a streamlined process that organizes all metrics in one place.
2. Enhanced data and disclosure quality: The platform’s governance features provided the financial-grade rigor the team required. This enhanced data quality and led to more complete disclosures.
3. Actionable insights across the business: Centralizing data in Novisto provided new visibility into operational trends, allowing teams to proactively identify and address potential issues at specific facilities.
4. Data-backed storytelling: Empowered the organization to produce high-quality, professional disclosures entirely in-house, enabling the business to more quickly align around the risks and opportunities tied to the data.
   

"The difference in our reporting process is night and day. Previously, we were hunting for random figures across a mountain of disconnected spreadsheets. With Novisto, all our metrics are organized in one place, allowing me to integrate them directly into the report. That part of the process has become significantly easier."

— Isabel Tarnowski, Director of Financial Reporting & Sustainability, Douglas Dynamics