Case study
How Finago put a euro value on sustainability risks – and found emissions weren't the lead issue
Finago, a Nordic financial and HR software company, used Upright's financial effects quantification to translate ESRS-aligned sustainability risks and opportunities into euros on the P&L. The exercise reframed the company's strategic priorities: the largest financial exposures sat in human capital and data security, not greenhouse gas emissions.
Nadja Huotari
Head of Marketing, Upright
Published Mar 10, 2026·Updated May 28, 2026
Key takeaways
- A Nordic software company assumed emissions would be its biggest material risk. Financial effects quantification showed human capital and data security mattered more in euro terms.
- When CSRD scope changed under the Omnibus Directive, Finago kept the analysis. The financial framing made it useful for strategy regardless of regulatory obligation.
- Translating sustainability risks into euros gave the sustainability team a language the board could act on – without changing the underlying ESRS-aligned methodology.
Starting point: Scaling sustainability insights beyond CSRD reporting
Finago originally sought a data-driven approach to double materiality to fulfil CSRD requirements with a lean in-house team. When the Omnibus Directive subsequently moved them out of mandatory scope, they found the assessment too valuable to shelve.
Quantifying which sustainability factors actually drive financial risk and opportunity – and building strategy around that – remained essential with or without a regulatory deadline.
In a tech company, just bringing another Excel sheet wouldn't do the job when trying to preach sustainability to the board. We turned to Upright’s financial effects quantification as we needed a strategy that actually works – not one that just sits in PowerPoints.
Solution: Translating sustainability into the language of leadership
To do this with rigour, Finago used Upright's real-time financial effects quantification.
The solution takes company-specific inputs – revenue and product splits, financial statements, and geographic footprint – and runs them through Upright's proprietary data engine to produce quantified financial exposures across the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flows, visible at the level of individual products and services.
The analysis covers full ESRS-aligned sustainability impacts, risks, and opportunities – figures that integrate directly into ERM and strategic decision-making.
I have 4–5 presentations I use to explain materiality to different people, but only money is something that all people understand.
Results: What the data showed – human capital and data security outranked emissions
For a software company, there's often an assumption that greenhouse gas emissions are the lead issue. Finago's data said otherwise – environmental factors registered as financially minor compared to critical social and governance dimensions:
- Human Capital emerged as a leading financial risk driver. Upright's model identified unpredictable working hours as a structural vulnerability in high-growth tech. Chronic fatigue and burnout translate directly into elevated absenteeism and turnover – with measurable downstream impact on productivity, recruitment costs, and delivery capacity.
- Data security can hit the P&L in multiple ways. For a financial and HR software provider, data security is an obvious material issue. Upright’s model surfaced something less obvious for Finago: how a single system failure hits the business across multiple dimensions at once: recurring revenue loss from customer churn, increased operating costs from GDPR-related fines, and a higher cost of capital as investors reprice governance risk.
Upright's financial effects quantification really gave us clarity on the sustainability topics that move the needle for our business. We now have a credible way to decide where we should focus on beyond compliance.
Want to see what financial effects quantification surfaces for your business?
Nadja Huotari
Head of Marketing, Upright
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