FAQ
Frequently asked questions about score4more explore
You use the score4more platform and services to register and create an account. As with other online platforms, the legal basis is regulated by score4more’s General Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, e.g. the technical availability of the services or due diligence and data protection issues.
The score4more explore database is available to all companies, organizations and interested parties who want to gain deeper insights into the sustainability strategies of companies in their industry and along the value chain. It doesn’t matter whether your company is large, medium-sized or small – anyone can use the platform to gain valuable information about the competition, market leaders and suppliers.
To access our new score4more explore service, you need to create a new account on the domain https://database.score4more.eu/. You can use the same email address for this as for your “succeed” account at https://app.score4more.eu.
Payment is made via Stripe as the payment service provider by credit card in an annual payment method. You also enter your billing details in the payment process. You will receive a payment receipt and an invoice by email immediately after completion.
Especially in larger companies, payment options are often restricted for suppliers, e.g. via settings in ERP systems. For simple processing in purchasing, please classify score4more internally as a software provider, as credit card payment is generally possible in purchasing for software providers and SaaS solutions.
You can change all subscription and billing data in your account in the “Settings” area under the tabs “My subscription”, “Addresses” and “Payment methods”.
The score4more explore database contains detailed information on the sustainability actions and solutions of leading companies in 100 different industries. This includes sustainability strategies, best practices and industry-specific solutions from sustainability market leaders, and industry-specific information on sustainability fields and material topics in the 100 industries. This data will help you to get a comprehensive picture of the sustainability practice in your market.
The main difference between ”score4more explore” and “score4more succeed” ist the perspective on an entire industry vs. an individual company.
score4more explore covers the industry perspective and is suited for business users that want to better understand sustainability strategies in an industry and value chain including related industry leaders and best practices. It provides access to a database with comprehensive information on the sustainability strategies of market leaders, peers, suppliers and customers. This offering makes it possible to analyze industries and markets in more detail in order to gain valuable insights into sustainability industry developments.
score4more succeed, on the other hand, focuses on the individual company. It offers features for profiling, scoring, benchmarking and detailed analysis to improve sustainability of the individual company. It also enables participation in the German Sustainability Award (DNP). This offering is available in different plans, from a free basic plan to a paid pro plan with analytics for companies that want deeper insights into their sustainability performance.
In short, score4more explore is designed to analyze industries and markets in terms of sustainability, while score4more succeed is aimed at improving a company’s own sustainability performance.
Yes, you can use both score4more explore and score4more succeed. score4more explore offers you in-depth insights into sustainability strategies in specific industries, while score4more succeed helps you to analyze and improve your own company sustainability performance. Both offerings complement each other, as you can use explore to better understand the industry and succeed to strategically develop your own company. Please note that the accesses work separately from each other and you must register for both offers individually.
With the free Discovery plan you can use basic functionalities of our database. You can get to know the leading companies in the industry as peer orientation, as well as explore industry-specific sustainability fields.
Upgrade to the “Industry” plan to gain insights into the sustainability strategies via the sustainability summaries, and reporting sources of the leading companies in an industry of your choice via the “Company Cards”. Select an industry from 20 sectors and 100 industries and gain insights into the best practices of the pioneers, sorted by industry-specific fields, topics and criteria. You will also benefit from the sustainable solutions, i.e. products, services and systems, from and for the industry. You can also find out about industry-specific topics (ESRS) and criteria and view the average scoring for the industry (coming soon).
With the “Value Chain” plan, you can analyze an entire value chain with e.g. customer and supplier industries. You get all the benefits of the “Industry” plan for five industries instead of one of your choice.
Here you will find an overview of the score4more pricing plans.
score4more comprises sustainability data from 3,000 companies in 100 industries, structured in sustainability profiles. The database comprises 1,000 solutions and 50,000 measures in industry-specific, key criteria, based on the ESRS. To make this data usable for companies, research institutes, consultants and individuals, we apply AI-powered analytics to summarize best practices and score company sustainability data in each criterion according to our 5-level scoring methodology. This results is the company’s overall score. Industry leaders shown are then the top 10 in each industry according to score.
If you have a company profile on score4fore, the individual data of the profile is not shown associated to your company in score4more explore. The best practices and solutions are not company-specific, but are sorted and aggregated according to industry-specific criteria. Measures and solutions are filtered for relevance with the help of AI and compiled in a different language. In addition, company and product names are removed. You can therefore be sure that you have control over the original content of your profile. As the profiles are based on public data and transparency and best practice transfer is an important lever in the transformation, the aim is to make public sustainability data easier and more structured to use for the transformation.
The key sustainability issues vary greatly from industry to industry. In energy-intensive industries, for example, the focus is on climate and energy aspects, while in other industries social or environmental issues are more relevant. score4more explore maps these industry-specifics in the database so that you can specifically analyze the sustainability strategies relevant to your industry. The selection of criteria is based on the initial specifications of the EU ESRS standard, giving you insights into industry-specific challenges, risks and opportunities (IRO topics) that are important for materiality analysis in accordance with the new EU reporting standard.
In our initial research, companies were assigned to the industry in which they primarily operate. Many companies now register themselves on our platform. Here, too, the allocation is based on the main business, i.e. the industry in which the majority of turnover or value added is generated is selected.
The Company Cards contain the basic data of each company (address, number of employees, turnover) and the main sustainability source on which the company profile on our platform is based. In addition, the Company Cards show the company’s sustainability summary, which briefly and concisely summarizes the company’s activities and its sustainability performance and strategy.
The best practices are not presented on a company-specific basis in our score4more explore service. In the benchmarking already available as part of score4more succeed, scores as well as selected and summarized best practices from pre-selected pioneers are aggregated and compared with your profile. The selection is based on the current scores. Here too, measures and solutions are filtered for relevance with the help of AI and compiled in a different language. Please contact us for an individual benchmarking with companies of your choice via hello@score4more.eu or using our contact form.
No, the best practices are a compilation of selected measures from the companies. They are filtered from the profiles of the pioneering companies according to their level of sustainability (based on the scores) and summarized linguistically using AI/ML so that they have a consistent length and form of wording. As all the information in the profiles comes from published sources, the best practices can also be found in public sources.
Solutions can include tangible products as well as services, systems, campaigns or initiatives that make a particular contribution to sustainable transformation in at least one of the following five areas:
- Climate
- Resources
- Nature
- Value chain
- Society
Solutions from the industry are solutions that come from the industry itself, i.e. they have been published in the profile of a company from the industry.
Solutions for the industry are solutions that companies from other industries offer to companies in the specific industry.
Frequently asked questions about score4more succeed
You use the score4more platform and services to register and create an account. As with other online platforms, the legal basis is regulated by score4more’s General Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, e.g. the technical availability of the services or due diligence and data protection issues.
Problems with registration: The error message “Company already exists” indicates that another employee of your company has already created a profile for your company. Each user can currently be assigned to exactly one company profile. Use a different e-mail address to create another profile, e.g. for an independent sub-company. Problems logging in: If you have forgotten your password, you can have a new password sent to you in the login area under “Forgot password”. If you have any further questions, please contact our support team via the chat function or hello@score4more.eu.
In the basic package, one user per company can work on score4more and on the sustainability profile. In the Pro package, you can work together as a team and invite four other users to join your team by email, who can then edit the sustainability profile together and also use all other Pro functionalities.
Especially in larger companies, contact persons, roles and responsibilities can change frequently. If the editing user for score4more and the profile has changed at your company, it is technically possible to implement this change using the team function in the Pro package. The original user sets up the team function and invites the transferring user as a team member by e-mail. The new user can then continue to edit the profile as normal.
Yes, you can also create an account on score4more and a sustainability profile on behalf of a company. To do this, enter the contact persons in the company on whose behalf you are working under Contact details in the profile. With a Pro account, you can also invite your contacts to the profile. Up to 5 team members can be set up in the Pro account via the team function.
The basic account includes free basic functionalities such as the sustainability profile, which enable simple and free participation in the German Sustainability Award. In the Pro account, you can use paid additional functionalities such as scoring, benchmarking and team functions. These are intended to provide assistance in the transformation process and facilitate teamwork. You can find out more about the differences between Basic and Pro on our website or in the Pro-Flyer-DE or Pro-Flyer EN
The Pro package currently costs 529 euros per account and year. This price is made possible by predominantly AI-supported automation. The aim is to give small and medium-sized companies or organizations with a limited budget access to sustainability data and scoring and benchmarking analyses so that they can make informed and targeted decisions.
score4more is constantly evolving as a platform to provide a wider range of analyses and applications. By taking out an annual subscription to score4more Pro, you can use future Pro functions directly as part of your subscription.
Yes, if your customer is already using Pro, they can simply invite you by email as an external team member via “Teams” from their account. Similarly, you can complete Pro and then invite your customer via the team function.
Payment is made via Stripe as the payment service provider by credit card using the annual payment method. You also enter your billing details in the payment process via Stripe. You will receive a payment receipt and an invoice by e-mail immediately after completion.
Especially in larger companies, payment options are often restricted for suppliers, e.g. via settings in ERP systems. For simple processing in purchasing, you should therefore classify score4more internally as a software provider, as credit card payment is generally possible in purchasing for software providers and SaaS solutions.
You can manage and change all subscription and billing data in Stripe, including canceling your annual subscription. To do this, go to your score4more account with Stripe using the user email for the account.
If you wish to carry out deletions (e.g. deleting team members, changing the admin user in the team), this may not always be possible via the platform, as the respective functionality is still under development. In this case, please contact our support team via the chat function or hello@score4more.eu.
If you wish to delete your score4more account, please send an informal email to hello@score4more.eu stating the company name and the email address with which the account was created. We will verify your request and confirm the deletion once it has been completed. After an account deletion, all data including the sustainability profile and possible scoring and benchmarking results will be deleted.
The company profile presents industry-specific measures, solutions and key figures for the company in a structured manner It summarizes the contents of the sustainability report or the published sustainability performance of the company in a simple way The profile is based on the European Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the current version consists of your company’s sustainability story, six industry-specific criteria and your carbon footprint
The processing time is 15 to 30 minutes on average, depending on the scope of the sustainability activities that a company has already implemented and published. The bullet-point list of measures and solutions in the profile has proven to be very time-efficient. If required, you can also use the optional team function in the Pro account to edit and coordinate the profile together as a team.
Key sustainability issues vary from sector to sector. In the social sector, for example, social sustainability aspects are material, while in energy-intensive industries, climate and energy issues are important. These industry specifics are mapped via your profile. It is a pre-selection of criteria based on the first sector specifications of the EU ESRS. The profile therefore also provides companies with starting points for so-called IRO topics (Impact, Risks, Opportunities), which are analyzed in materiality analyses in accordance with the new EU ESRS reporting standard.
You select the industry in which your company is predominantly active, i.e. where the majority of sales or value creation is generated. If you are unsure about the industry, please contact us via the chat function or use our 15-minute onboarding. At the same time, you will find examples of companies in our Top 100 pioneers list, which you can also use as a guide when selecting an industry.
If your company has independent sub-companies that are active in different sectors, a sub-company can also create its own profile in a different sector. The prerequisite is that there is a delimitable sub-company and that the sustainability performance of the sub-company is published independently, e.g. via its own sustainability report. The profile for the sub-company is created by a separate user and by specifying the sub-company’s own company name
To change your company to a different sector, please contact us using this form or the chat function.
score4more wants to make the database from sustainability reports and published information more usable. This information is validated internally and increasingly also externally by the company and has an official character. The quality and importance of data from sustainability reports will continue to increase with the EU regulation on more extensive reporting requirements (CSRD/ESRS).
Many companies do not yet have a sustainability report or a declaration on the German Sustainability Code (DNK). Companies without a report can still create a profile and alternatively provide a link to the best possible published source(s) in which the information provided in the profile can be found. These can be, for example, sustainability descriptions on the company website.
Your profile is currently not public and other companies cannot see the profile in detail. In future, selected data such as the company name, sector, location or abstract can be activated for search functions. Companies will also be able to set the visibility of their profile themselves. As the profiles are based on public data and transparency and best practice transfer is an important lever in the transformation, the aim is to make public sustainability data easier and more structured to use for the transformation. The already available benchmarking is a first step here: in benchmarking, scorings as well as selected and summarized best practices of pre-selected pioneers are aggregated and compared with your profile. The content of the pioneering companies in each industry is thus used for benchmarks (selection via the current scores), with the measures and solutions being filtered for relevance with the help of AI and compiled in a different language. You can therefore be sure that you have control over the original content of your profile.
Do you already have a sustainability report or an integrated report? Then this is your reporting source. Enter the URL link to your current report here, as well as the year to which the information in the report refers. DNK users enter the link to the current declaration in the DNK database. If you do not yet have a report, enter an alternative URL link to published sustainability information, for example more detailed descriptions on your website. In this case, select the previous year as the last available, completed calendar year as the reference year.
You can now upload up to two sources as the basis for your information. It is important that these sources are publicly accessible, as only information that has already been published can be taken into account. This makes sense, for example, if there is another relevant source in addition to the sustainability report as the main source, such as a sustainability section on the website or a progress report.
es, please update your profile as soon as the sources you have stored are also updated, e.g. when your new sustainability report is published or website content has changed. The profile should always summarize the content of the current sources stored.
Previous versions of the profile are saved in the background as a technical backup. As a user, you will be able to view the profile versions from previous years in future. These will be saved for the respective year on December 31st and will be made available to the user as a separate annual version.
You can update the URL link to your (publicly available) source(s) via “Company details”. To do this, click on Edit in your company details and save the changes. You can also change the company name there.
Please only mention published measures and solutions. This creates the same data basis and conditions for all companies. In particular, please refrain from listing confidential information in your score4more profile.
In most cases, the logic results from the context, e.g. measures and solutions to improve energy efficiency are listed in the criterion of the same name. The most common errors in allocation occur with resource topics such as recycling measures, which are often listed under climate criteria instead of resources. If you are therefore unsure where your measure or solution fits, you can simply look it up in the criteria glossary. This contains all the criteria, a brief description and keywords that make it easier to differentiate between the criteria in terms of content and thus to assign them.
In the profile, greenhouse gas emissions of the companies of the last 3 years are queried as key figures for Scope 1, 2 and 3. If you have not yet measured certain years and/or scopes, this can be shown accordingly in the balance sheet. You can still complete your profile, have it scored or submit it later to the German Sustainability Award.
You are welcome to use our score4more Customer Support Chat and/or book a free 15-minute onboarding session. Our sustainability and development team will support you quickly and competently.
Your profile is currently not directly visible, i.e. if you want to make your profile accessible to other people or organizations, you can simply invite them via the Pro account as a team member using the “Teams” menu item. To do this, enter the e-mail address of the desired contact, who will then receive an invitation.
You can have your company profile scored directly online on a 6-level scale to identify strengths and potential for improvement in your sustainability performance. The scoring is created for each criterion in the profile and on average. With the scoring you are also directly benchmarkable and can compare your scoring in benchmarking with other pioneering companies in order to identify best practice measures and solutions for score improvement.
Companies still receive too little structured feedback on their sustainability performance. For example, companies sometimes publish sustainability reports or DNK declarations over several years without ever knowing exactly how well they are performing due to a lack of feedback or systematic evaluation methods. Until now, only large companies have been able to use ratings, but these are often expensive and extensive. With scoring, we want to give all companies the opportunity to receive a structured and comparable rating for their sustainability performance in specific areas and to be able to compare themselves with others. This can provide clarity as to where a company stands in the transformation process. It can facilitate communication within the company and especially with the management as to where priorities and new sustainability initiatives should be set. We have observed that companies with scoring over several years can develop in a much more targeted manner and demonstrably improve and transform faster.
You can use the scoring for your company profile as a paid Pro functionality. If you have upgraded to Pro, you can request the scoring in your profile. This is then created on the basis of the existing profile and then displayed online in the company profile. The creation of the scoring is currently still partially automated and takes up to 5 working days. You will be informed by e-mail when the scoring is available in the profile.
As part of the Pro annual subscription, you can be scored twice a year. It would be conceivable, for example, to have a scoring carried out at the beginning of the year for a company profile based on the previous year’s performance in order to identify areas for improvement. After implementing new measures, you can have the profile updated accordingly in the second half of the year in order to determine progress.
Benchmarking is another function in the Pro package. Benchmarking allows you to compare your company with up to 4 pioneering companies from your industry in terms of scoring and best practices in each individual criterion of the profile. The aim is to accelerate the transformation: Via best practice transfer and learning from the best, all companies should have the opportunity to quickly and easily identify additional measures and steps in the transformation for their own improvement. Benchmarking offers a pragmatic and clear starting point here. Further details on benchmarking can be found in the blog article.
In order to be benchmarked, you must have completed your own profile and have already requested and received a scoring. Once you have your scoring, you can request benchmarking in the next step.
Yes, experience shows that benchmarking provides valuable orientation, especially for companies that are supposedly still at the beginning. Companies discover that they may not be as bad as they always thought and have already implemented a number of measures. And the pioneering examples usually provide direct starting points for launching their own more comprehensive sustainability program.
The selected pioneering companies are predefined and represent pioneers in a sector on the basis of scoring results from the previous year and their performance at the German Sustainability Award as winners or finalists in a sector.
Once the scoring is available, you can simply request the benchmarking online. The creation takes up to 5 working days with partial automation. As soon as the benchmarking is available, you will be informed by e-mail. You can then use the benchmarking directly online.
No, the best practices in the benchmarking are a selection of measures chosen by the companies. They are filtered from the profiles of the pioneering companies according to their degree of sustainability (based on the scores) and summarized linguistically using AI/ML so that they have a consistent length and form of wording. As all the information in the profiles comes from published sources, the best practices can also be found in public sources.
A solution profile is a compilation of information about your solution, i.e. product or service, the description of the sustainability problem, the solution approach and the impact achieved. You can create and manage solution profiles from your existing score4more account.
The solution profile is intended to summarize sustainable products and services in a comprehensible way and make them visible to other companies on the platform. Solution profiles are always assigned to a company profile, although freelance designers are also permitted for the DNP Product Award, for example. Ultimately, the best solutions should be visible on score4more, whether through competitions or by addressing specific companies with the solution pro
Below you will find the structure of the first part of the solution profile, which includes a title, an image, the summary (abstract) and the selection of the relevant transformation fields as central components. You can define up to three transformation fields.
In the lower section you will find “Details” (consisting of solution, impact, goals/objectives, narrative) as well as resources and contact details for the solution.
The aim of the solution profiles is to make sustainable products and services more visible. This can be achieved through participation in product prizes or, in the long term, through the targeted display of the profiles to “needy” companies.
Yes, solutions are all market-oriented offerings, i.e. products, services and solution systems.
Yes, you can create solution profiles.
Currently, up to 3 solution profiles can be created. If you want to replace an existing one, you can edit each field and adapt it for the new solution.
In order to classify sustainable solutions, it is important to know the responsible company and to be able to categorize it from a sustainability perspective. Solution profiles should therefore only be created in conjunction with a company profile.
These fields are derived from the United Nations 2030 Agenda, the objectives of the EU Green Deal and the German government’s sustainability strategy. The sub-themes also reflect the requirements of the EU taxonomy and the new EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the corresponding European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS) as the new European reporting standard.
They form the categories for the solution profiles on score4more and are determined independently of the sector or industry to which the companies belong.
The transformation fields with sub-topics are (based on ESRS with ESRS ID):
– Climate (in particular climate protection and climate adaptation; E1),
– Resources (esp. circular economy and water; E5/E3),
– Nature (esp. pollutants and biodiversity; E2/E4),
– value chain (esp. employees and supply chain; S1/S2) and
– Society (esp. communities and consumers; S3/S4)
You can upload up to 2 links (to the solution website and another source) and 2 files (PDF, PNG or JPEG).
Your solution profile is currently being made visible at your request for competitions such as the DNP Product Award. In future, you will also be able to draw companies’ attention to your solutions.
Yes, creating a solution profile is free of charge. However, participation in competitions, such as the DNP Product Prize, may incur costs.
You can access edit mode in all fields of the solution profile using the pencil. This also allows you to remove content. There are currently no plans to delete the entire profile structure.
