The ISO Show #236 Taking Data Complexity From Spreadsheets To Supply Chains With Pulsora
Watch the video interview here
One of the common pain points when calculating your carbon emissions is simply gathering the data. When collating data from different departments and suppliers, it can be easy to get overwhelmed.
The struggle doesn't stop there, as after obtaining all that data you have to find the best way to capture and display it in a way that's useable for the necessary number crunching. Many will turn to an old favourite, spreadsheets, but these can quickly become very unwieldy and impractical if you've got a lot of data to process. Thankfully, there's a lot of new tech and tools available to help make this task both approachable and integrated within your business.
In this episode, Mel Blackmore is joined by Jessica Matthys, Lead Product Manager at Pulsora, to discuss how you can take data complexity from spreadsheets to supply chains, diving into data fragmentation, optimisation and how this can all be balanced for practicality.
You'll learn
· Who is Jessica Matthys?
· Who are Pulsora?
· What does data complexity mean in the context of carbon accounting?
· What are the requirements for CSRD in California?
· What are the biggest pain points relating to data collection?
· How can you prevent data fragmentation across your business?
· What does 'Comprehensive data' mean in the context of sustainability?
· How can Pulsora help a business take their carbon data from spreadsheets to integrated data systems?
· How can you make you carbon data more auditable and traceable?
· How can new carbon focused technology, such as AI tools, help with seeking investment?
· How can you get information from your supply chain to cover scope 3 emissions?
Resources
· Pulsora
· CSRD – California Regulations
In this episode, we talk about:
[00:25] Episode Summary – Mel Blackmore is joined by Jessica Matthys, Lead Product Manager at Pulsora, to explore how you can take data complexity from spreadsheets to supply chains, diving into data fragmentation, optimisation and how this can all be balanced for practicality.
[01:40] Who is Jessica Matthys: Is the Lead Product Manager for carbon solutions at Pulsora. She's been with Pulsora for a year and a half, but has worked within the ESG / carbon / sustainability space for over 8 years in total.
Something that people might not know about Jessica is that her passion for sustainability started much earlier than her working career, starting in high school where she opted to live on a farm for one semester. That unique experience of working closely with nature and animals set her on the path that she still walks today.
[02:30] Who are Pulsora? Pulsora is an end to end sustainability management AI powered platform. They can manage anything from data collection and carbon accounting all the way towards ESG reporting and audit support.
The focus of their platform is auditability and transparency .
[04:40] What does data complexity mean in the context of carbon accounting? Jessica breaks this down into three main elements:
Disparate nature of data – When compiling data for greenhouse gas accounting, you have to take a lot into consideration including your own production and consumption in addition to all the upstream and downstream relationships across your value chain. The data for all of this will be scattered and will need to be brought together in order to get a full comprehensive view of your emissions data.
Missing primary data – Some data may be very difficult to obtain, say from a supplier in a remote region, so in those cases you may need to make estimations to fill those gaps. However, you need to establish a proven and trusted methodology that can be repeated for such instances.
Auditability and transparency – Your data needs to be robust enough to hold up to scrutiny in an audit. New and upcoming regulatory requirements will have stricter rules around how you collect and report your emissions. We can see this in regulations such as SB 253 and 261 within CSRD that will affect businesses in California. There's a new focus on mandatory reporting as opposed to voluntary, so you will need to ensure your data is in a good place to be audited when this starts to effect other organisations globally.
[07:30] What are the requirements for CSRD in California? There are two main climate bills coming into effect in California in 2026, these are SB-253 and SB-261, which are supported by CARB (California Air Resources Board).
These two regulations affect businesses who are either doing business in, have employees located in, or selling products over a certain revenue threshold in California. Affected businesses will be required to report on their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
There isn't anything new in these regulations that we haven't already seen in other European focused requirements, aside from the mandatory element.
The first deadline for this reporting is expected to be due by June 2026, and this first year they will only be expecting reports for your scope 1 and 2 data.
SB-261 has a slightly different focus, with it requiring climate risk reporting. This is similar to existing frameworks like ISSB or TCFD. This report can be published publicly and you just need to submit a link to that report to the appropriate bodies in California. The deadline for this one is fast approaching, with it being set at 1st January 2026.
[11:10] What are the biggest pain points relating to data collection?: Jessica shares an example of a company that came to Pulsora with a spreadsheet that they dubbed 'the monster spreadsheet' that contained 100+ tabs with hundreds of people adding to it.
It got to the point where it was always crashing and simply became a burden to use. It's a fairly common story, though maybe not to this extreme, that companies find they quickly outgrow spreadsheets as a form of manual data collection.
There is also the question of the quality of data provided, how can they trust the insights gained from the data provided from so many different sources?
At Pulsora, they've made use of AI within their platform that can help bring all that data together and analyse it to identify any anomalies and duplicated data.
They've also focused on creating collaborative workflows, so all communications regarding collection of emissions data can be kept under one roof, meaning you have a fully traceable and auditable trail for all data collected.
[15:10] How can you prevent data fragmentation across your business? Pulsora have made use of AI to prevent data fragmentation, they have achieved this with agentic AI, which is AI that can coordinate between different paths and can make decisions without a human in the loop.
A use case for this might be where you have a company with thousands of suppliers, but would only be able to get emissions data from the handful of long-term suppliers that are happy to work with them. AI can assist with the remaining suppliers by looking for any published information those suppliers have, and take that emissions and financial data to create an intensity factor for the supplier. This can then make an informed estimate for how many emissions equate from so much spend with that supplier.
The AI will of course keep a trail for all it's sourced data so a human can review this and ensure the information is correct if needed.
[18:45] What does 'Comprehensive data' mean in the context of sustainability? When gathering emissions data, a business has to consider what part of its operations creates the most emissions.
This will differ depending on the sector and nature of your business. Whether you're a B2B business or a manufacturer, you need to confirm where your largest emissions source. It's imperative that your emissions inventory is reflective of your business and its impact.
There will also be gaps in the data you want / need to collect. You still need to ensure that data in any reporting provided is reflective of your operations, you can't just leave that data out, especially as there are now tools to help fill those gaps. AI for example can identify representative data to help bridge those gaps to provide a comprehensive inventory.
[22:35] How can Pulsora help a business take their carbon data from spreadsheets to integrated data systems?: Jessica uses a company, Franklin Templeton, to explain the process.
In this case, the company is a global asset manager and they used Workday for a lot of their HR, procurement and financial data. When it came to collating emissions data, they didn't realise that 95% of the information needed was already stored in Workday.
For other companies that are quire energy intensive, there's a high chance that you already have a comprehensive system with most of the data required.
In Franklin Templeton's case, they helped them to transfer this over into the Pulsora system with an existing out-of-the-box migration tool for Workday. For the HR data Pulsora were able to assist with ESG reporting.
The Pulsora system was able to apply emissions factors to the transferred data automatically, which helped to create a comprehensive view of their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
Jessica give another example for a glass manufacturing company called Seagen who are based in Turkey. While they didn't have the monster spreadsheet situation, they had a fairly good system in place but it wasn't quite reaching the mark in terms of being able to report against multiple different carbon frameworks.
Pulsora's system help to quantify their data, quite a task in of itself due to how high their emissions were, and it also helped to apply all this gathered data to those carbon frameworks.
They also utilised Pulsora to help gather various metrics from 7 business units across 100 sites, that aided in audit preparation and insurance.
[29:00] How can you make you carbon data more auditable and traceable?: If you're just starting out on your emissions journey, we highly recommend looking to the GHG protocol for guidance on the scope 1,2 and 3 definitions and what's required of each for reporting.
The first step you should take is to determine what scopes and categories are relevant to your business according to the GHG protocol. There are a few different approaches including a percentage based approach or ones that include more detailed data analysis.
The second step is emission factors, which is essentially a process of taking your business activities and translating that into emissions. You need to establish a consistent approach to documenting these emission factors, and those emissions factors will be determined by your region.
UK for example use DEFRA factors, the US have EPA and Europe uses AIB. There are global data sets available as well, such as IEA.
The main key is establishing your methodology early on, and be consistent in your approach while documenting everything in line with that agreed methodology.
For a more structured approach to carbon emissions reporting, that includes auditability and traceability at it's core are ISO Standards such as ISO 14064 and ISO 14068.
[32:45] How can new carbon focused technology, such as AI tools, help with seeking investment? Jessica shares a sneak peak into a new feature that Pulsora have recently released to help with seeking investment, which is invoice reading.
This feature allows users to upload invoices to the Pulsora system, and it will extract the required data without the need for manual input. This aids in the auditability and traceability within the system as this data is displayed right alongside the evidence it was extracted from.
The system can also compare file content to spot and flag up any anomalies, so you can ensure your data is as accurate as possible before going through a formal audit process with a third-party such as Carbonology.
That stamp of approval from a successful third-party audit can then be used for raising capital and sharing with stakeholders.
[35:55] How can you get information from your supply chain to cover scope 3 emissions?: Jessica provides some helpful tips for scope 3 emissions, including:-
Don't worry about getting primary information from all of your suppliers. You only need enough data to identify your decarbonization plans and strategy to share with stakeholders with a high degree of confidence. You don't have to get it 100% perfect.
Prioritise your suppliers – Consider how much you spend with each supplier, how good are your relationships with them? What impact do your suppliers have on your emissions? You should target the ones that are the most impactful.
A lack of response doesn't always mean a lack of data - Some supplier just won't respond to your data requests, but there are ways you can still get some information, such as 10 based emission factors to get a baseline. With publicly available data about specific sectors and regions, you can get pretty close to the info you need.
Get creative – There are other ways to gather data, such as using similar more responsive suppliers as a baseline. You could hold an industry group meeting to talk about improving data transparency and data sharing. This process will be beneficial for all involved by driving both costs and emissions down through a collaborative effort. Create a sphere of influence, drive the change you want to see within your supply chain.
Create a Supplier Sustainability Strategy – Again, a consistent and planned approach will encourage engagement.
Lastly, don't sweat it if you can't always get the data you want. Making a start is more important than getting it perfect. A lot of frameworks are quite forgiving and allow you time to mature your systems to a level where reporting can be repeated on an annual basis.
[40:30] What book would Jessica recommend? A Costa Rica travel book. Jessica simply love the country and it's culture, it's also highly immersive in nature and mostly operates on renewable energy.
[40:30] What is Jessica's favourite quote? "If you were born with the weakness to fall, you were born with the strength to rise" Ruby Carr – extract from her poetry book 'Milk and Honey'
If you'd like to learn more about Pulsora, check out their website.
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