Datamaran Is the First ‘ESG-Tech’ Company in the World to Secure a Patent on Unstructured Data Analysis

Innovative tech business Datamaran announced that its patent application (no. 10,733,382^[1]) was approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The patent covers the company’s flagship innovation – the analytical architecture capturing external risks, including ESG and others, in real-time.

CEO and Co-founder Marjella Lecourt-Alma says: “Back in 2014, when we set up this company, we wanted to help companies decipher which ESG issues mattered most. At the time, most companies had a hard time thinking of ESG as being strategically relevant. The space became prone to box-ticking. That was our opportunity. We had ideas for how we could prove ESG was actually strategic and do this in a way that would resonate with leadership. We figured out ways to derive meaningful insights from a lot of mainstream sources^[2] using previously untapped technologies.”

The technology, now trusted by blue-chip companies and top tier partners, is integrated in a SaaS analytics platform that provides company-specific analytics on external risks. Datamaran is the only company to fully automate and digitize ESG materiality analysis to enable dynamic monitoring of any risk or opportunity across the external landscape.

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Already before, but amplified by the Covid-19 crisis, companies needed to understand the external risk landscape in order to be successful. In today’s world, millennials run corporations, regulators institutionalize ESG, journalists expose corporate controversies, and investors move capital to ESG. According to Datamaran clients, the people influencing the success of their business are changing, as well as the issues themselves.

Lecourt-Alma continues: “We didn’t, and couldn’t, take the typical lean start-up approach. We knew the technology had to be advanced in order to be adopted by Fortune 500 companies, especially in this new domain. Big brands don’t try out prototypes. We invested substantially in the technology in order to really get it right. Today, this patent solidifies our position as a global innovator in this space. That’s why we are celebrating, again.”

CTO and Co-founder Jérôme Basdevant adds: “What makes me most proud about our R&D efforts is the fact that we’re solving a problem that is both complex and business-critical in nature. Utilizing Artificial Intelligence comes with a lot of responsibility. That’s why we’ve built the product in a completely transparent way to ensure trustworthiness. We built it collaboratively with experts in the field. We believe the application of AI needs to be expert-led and fully transparent.”

Earlier this year, Datamaran became a Fintech50 company, as its innovation was seen as most relevant to business today. The timing of Datamaran receiving these accolades coincides with a ramp-up in the regulatory and standard-setting space. In Europe, the European Commission leads through its EU non-financial reporting directive and the EU taxonomy. On a global level, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will soon provide guidance on how to integrate ESG disclosures making the fragmented voluntary space a situation of the past.

Datamaran’s VP of Brand and Business Development Susanne Katus adds: “I joined this company a few weeks after it was founded. We’ve always been listening to our clients’ demands realizing that corporate ownership of these issues would be a moving target. We now work with CFOs and Boards, and we thank our growing client community for helping us move ESG up the corporate ladder.”

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Datamaran client and Hexion CEO Craig Rogerson says: “With Datamaran’s data-driven approach to external risk analysis and input from key stakeholders, Hexion is now better positioned with a robust strategy to drive results and systematically monitor our success against ESG risks and opportunities.”

Datamaran is excited about the future. Its teams of ESG experts and data scientists are working on various new innovations as C-suite and Boards of Directors are becoming important users of the information. Datamaran insights ensure that a company’s risk management and reporting process, all the way up to the Board, are consistent and include the most material ESG risks and opportunities. Datamaran’s growing partnership network is an illustration of the many different use cases that the technology can serve.

Katus hints: “What we haven’t mentioned yet is that we never filed for ‘an ESG patent’. The patent covers a broad scope and could therefore be applied to other unstructured data sets as well. Although we do not know exactly what this has in store for us, we trust that our creativity will lead the way.”

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