From invoices to impact: why ESG reporting starts in the supply chain

Sustainability reporting and decarbonization planning run on a growing amount of data. Much of it doesn't originate in your own systems: it sits with suppliers or in purchasing records. That slows down reporting and blocks steering on emission reduction. We spoke with Stefan Wirts of Intire and Jaap-Jan Nienhuis of 4CEE ahead of their breakout session at Future Foundry 2026.

1. Stefan, as a sustainability data and reporting software consultant at Intire, how have you seen the need for sustainability data change in recent years?

Stefan: Organizations measure far more than before, for example, on CO2 emissions. The last few years focused on the basics: what do I need to know, and how do I measure it? Now there's growing awareness that what suppliers deliver carries a lot of impact.

Procurement used to weigh mainly price and quality. Increasingly, it must now also weigh the sustainability impact of product A against product B in the same category, and whether that impact gets measured the same way for both. Developments in the PCR (Product Category Rules) within LCAs (Life Cycle Assessments) are increasingly defining how to quantify that. The bottleneck is usually the data on purchased goods: it's diverse, there's a lot of it, and there is currently a lack of high-quality sustainability data provided by suppliers.

2. What role does legislation and voluntary commitments, for example, to the SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative), play in the increasing need for sustainability data?

Stefan: European legislation goes well beyond the CSRD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. The EUDR, the EU Deforestation Regulation, requires proof that goods bought outside the EU involved no deforestation. And the PPWR, the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, sets its own requirements for packaging materials, covering how packaging must be designed and constructed.

Companies also commit to voluntary targets, for example through the SBTi. That's a global organization that lets companies set an official, science-based emission reduction target. A net-zero commitment there means a 90% absolute reduction in scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by 2050[1]. The SBTi's newly published V2.0 standard now treats that 90% long-term target as a recommendation rather than a requirement, but the target still only works with decarbonization planning built on reliable emission data that includes the supply chain.

3. Jaap-Jan, as Head of Portfolio Management at 4CEE, you're a specialist in Office of the CFO solutions. Where do you see that need show up first in practice?

Jaap-Jan: In our purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash solutions, we focus on the electronic exchange of data between suppliers and buyers. Today, that exchange mostly covers invoice data, order data, and delivery data. The next step raises an obvious question: if we already exchange an invoice, why not add CO2 data to it? Standardization bodies like NEN, the Royal Netherlands Standardization Institute, and CEN, the European Committee for Standardization, work on exactly that. Together with initiatives like the Digital Product Passport, they build ways to get emissions data onto the invoice that both sides can trust.

4. What does the growing need for sustainability data mean for the IT infrastructure as a whole?

Stefan: A lot of the data organizations need already sits somewhere in their systems. The goal is to rely less on manual collection and more on automation, which also strengthens workflow and governance.

That's the starting point for what we call a data readiness assessment, a five-step process. First, we look internally: what systems does the organization already have, and who are the key users? We sample the data to see what it looks like, which usually shows an organization already has more to work with than expected. We then connect the available data to ESG data points.

That produces an IT ESG data map, showing the systems, the people who know them, and the data available for each reporting point. Only then do we search for a fitting tool in the large pool of tools out there. A good fit connects easily to your existing IT infrastructure and transforms raw data into something meaningful, so finance and sustainability teams can report results and steer sustainability ambitions.

5. How do purchase-to-pay and e-invoicing solutions fit into that picture?

Jaap-Jan: Purchase-to-pay software manages how organizations buy and pay. Governance in that space runs entirely on euros today: someone gets a budget for a category and steers on that number. For reporting and steering on, for example, decarbonization, we have to add a “second currency” alongside it. In effect, you have a CO2 budget next to the euro budget. That's how an ambition set at board level translates into the purchasing decisions individual people make.

E-invoicing works for the same reason. That infrastructure already exists and already handles enormous transaction volumes. Sustainability data doesn't always need a new system, sometimes it needs a place inside the one that's already there.

You don't need to wait for branch-wide standards either. You can make one-to-one agreements with individual suppliers today about what goes on the invoice and build from there.

6. Why should people attend this breakout session at Future Foundry?

Stefan: The companies furthest ahead on sustainability already ask themselves how to get supply chain data under control. If your organization isn't there yet, this session shows you what's coming, and it's coming faster than most people expect.

Jaap-Jan: Come find out how to turn invoice and purchasing data into efficient ESG reporting and decarbonization planning.

Curious how you can optimize your ESG reporting and decarbonization planning? Join Stefan Wirts and Jaap-Jan Nienhuis at Future Foundry 2026, Swap Support's annual event for professionals in finance, BI, and ESG.

Join us at the Future Foundry