Introduction: Getting started with KEY ESG
Welcome to KEY ESG! As a fund manager, KEY ESG gives you one place to run your own fund-level self-assessment and to collect, monitor, and report on ESG data across your entire portfolio. From automated data collection to real-time portfolio reporting and actionable insights, we help you stay on top of evolving regulations while driving ESG performance across your portfolio companies.
Simple steps to get started
Now that you've successfully logged in to the KEY ESG platform, here are the steps to take to get your fund manager portal ready for data collection:
Adding new users: Invite your internal team (Admins, Team Members) as well as contacts at your portfolio companies who will manage their own data collection. Navigate to "Users" under SETUP and assign a role based on the level of access you'd like to grant. See our article on user creation for more detail.
2. Creating Portfolio companies: Accurately setting these up is essential, since this is how data is collected and rolled up across your portfolio. Navigate to "Companies" under SETUP to add each portfolio company, enter its information, Investment details and assign a primary contact.
3. Creating custom metrics: If your fund tracks metrics beyond the standard frameworks- for example, fund-specific ESG KPIs you want applied consistently across the portfolio - use KEY ESG's custom metric maker to build and roll these out. See more info here
4. Connecting Service accounts: Service accounts are automated identities that applications and systems use to access your ESG data securely. They enable seamless integration with external tools, automated reporting workflows, and API access without requiring individual user credentials.
5. Set up your connectors: Connect Microsoft Excel, Power BI or the KEY ESG MCP to your account for seamless data flows and AI integration. Read more about our connectors below:
Excel and Power BI
6. Set up data validation rules for you or your portfolio companies: Instead of manually reviewing data for unusual changes or inconsistencies, these rules run continuously in the background and proactively flag potential issues. This helps ensure data accuracy, improve oversight, and create a clear audit trail of validation checks within the platform. More info here
Setting up your data request
As a fund manager, you'll typically be setting up two things: your own fund-level self-assessment, and the data request(s) you send out to your portfolio companies. The Data Request Setup button lets you manage this for either.
How to set up your data request
Please see the steps needed to set up your data requests here
Next steps
By following these steps, you'll have primed your KEY ESG portal for portfolio-wide data collection by adding users, setting up your portfolio companies as entities, and launching your data request. From here, you can track completion across your portfolio from the Reports tab, and view how each portfolio company is progressing. If you need further assistance, reach out via the in-platform chat function or email support@keyesg.com.