{"id":103801,"date":"2025-08-13T15:03:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T19:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=103801"},"modified":"2025-08-14T13:29:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:29:52","slug":"research-partnership-brings-companies-performance-data-to-the-forefront","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/08\/research-partnership-brings-companies-performance-data-to-the-forefront\/","title":{"rendered":"Research partnership brings companies\u2019 performance data to the forefront"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knowing companies\u2019 approaches to environmental, social and governance issues is important for a well-functioning economy and society, says Leila Tahmooresnejad.<\/p>\n

But information on how companies perform in these areas is not always easily accessible or complete.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany small and medium-sized enterprises do not publish formal sustainability reports, which makes it difficult for others \u2014 such as investors, customers or regulators \u2014 to understand their environmental performance or responsible business practices,\u201d says the Assistant Professor in Information Systems at the Goodman School of Business.<\/p>\n

So, when the Niagara data analytics company Rel8ed \u2014 a Coface Company<\/a> approached the business school for a research partnership, Tahmooresnejad jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cRel8ed specializes in enriching business information on small to medium-sized enterprises that typically lack rich data presence in the market,\u201d says Rel8ed Data Research Programs and Projects Manager Ryan Hilimoniuk (BA \u201910, MBA \u201924), who is also a Brock graduate. \u201cThe research question was, how can we leverage artificial intelligence to gather sustainability information on such companies and make it accessible via retrieval augmented generation or a chat assistant for submitting queries?\u201d<\/p>\n

Tahmooresnejad quickly set to work. With Mitacs Accelerate<\/a> funding, she hired graduate students Milad Olad and Ehsan Khaksar to help build such an AI-driven system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data is out there, but it\u2019s not readily available to other companies to access,\u201d says Olad.<\/p>\n

He and the team created two tools to gather obtainable data on companies\u2019 environmental, social and governance performance.<\/p>\n

One tool is a data engine that constructs profiles of a company\u2019s environmental and social activities by collecting and organizing public information gleaned from company websites, press releases and other sources.<\/p>\n

The second tool uses a technique called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which blends document searches with language models so that the interactive chat assistant provides information that\u2019s more insightful and context-aware, says Tahmooresnejad.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, these tools help users get a clearer picture of a company\u2019s social and environmental performance, even when the company does not provide a full report,\u201d she says. \u201cThe system also lets users compare what companies say about themselves with external sources, helping to identify missing or inconsistent information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tahmooresnejad says the tools her team developed can boost:<\/p>\n