The starting point.
The customer is a listed chemicals producer that had been running double materiality the way most large companies do, through an annual stakeholder workshop with a fixed topic list and a consensus score per topic. The exercise had become harder to justify to the board because between workshops nothing changed, even when the operating environment clearly did.
The team wanted a cadence that reflected reality without making materiality into a full-time job for a small group of people.
The brief.
Move materiality from an annual workshop to a quarterly refresh. Score every topic against impact and financial dimensions. Attach evidence to every change. Preserve human judgement where it matters, but stop pretending nothing happens between workshops.
How we set it up.
1. Topics modelled with two dimensions.
Each of the fourteen topics is scored on impact materiality and financial materiality, with sub-dimensions defined under each. The scores are not opinions cast in a meeting room. They are weighted summaries of the signals the topic has received over the quarter, refined by named human reviewers.
2. Three feeds run continuously.
Noa watches three feeds for the team. Stakeholder signals from surveys, interviews and public engagements. Regulatory deltas from the jurisdictions the producer operates in. Peer movements from the disclosures of a chosen peer cohort. Each signal is tagged to one or more topics and to the sub-dimension it affects.
3. Quarterly review, not annual workshop.
At the end of each quarter, the materiality lead receives a draft refresh with proposed score changes and the evidence behind them. The lead reviews, accepts or rejects, and the matrix updates with a full audit trail. The annual workshop still happens, but as a calibration exercise rather than the only moment when scores change.
What runs on Noa today.
The producer’s double materiality matrix is refreshed every quarter inside Noa. Each change carries the signal that prompted it, the topic and sub-dimension it affected, and the human who approved the change. Outputs feed board reporting and the ESRS double materiality assessment without separate spreadsheets.
The outcome.
Before
- Annual workshop with a fixed topic list and consensus scores
- Limited evidence chain behind score changes
- Board reporting that lagged the operating environment by months
- Materiality treated as a disclosure deliverable rather than an operating signal
With Noa
- Quarterly refresh with sub-dimension scoring under both materiality lenses
- Every score change traces back to a tagged signal or document
- Board reporting that reflects what changed since last quarter
- Materiality used as an early-warning system, not only a disclosure artefact
A materiality matrix that updates once a year is a disclosure artefact. A matrix that updates every quarter, with evidence, is a planning tool.
Customer details have been generalised. Outcomes described reflect deployments as scoped and may not be representative of all engagements. References to third-party products are descriptive of prior states only.