Every organization with sustainability commitments faces the same challenge: proving them. Customers want to see ethical sourcing, regulators demand transparency on materials and emissions, investors expect ESG data, and supply chain partners need traceability for circular flows. The apparent solution is clear: implement a sustainability platform – digital product passports, mass balance tracking, supply chain traceability from raw material to end‑of‑life.
There are tailored platforms in the market such as Circularise and Osapiens that can support this, and the use cases are compelling. Yet implementations consistently struggle. After working with these types of platforms at Accenture to connect mass balance and digital product passport solutions to ERP and legacy systems, one pattern stands out to me: it is not the sustainability platform that is difficult to find, but everything around it.
Sustainability Platforms Don’t Live in a Vacuum
Once a platform is selected, reality sets in. The platform needs data from everywhere: ERP for materials, suppliers, production and inventory; PIM for product compositions and declarations; logistics and warehousing for transport and distribution; supplier portals for origins and certifications; quality systems for testing and compliance; and legacy systems for historical data. None of this was originally designed for sustainability reporting, so it exists in different formats, systems, and quality levels.
A sustainability platform cannot create transparency if the operational data feeding it is fragmented, inconsistent, or incomplete. Instead of a clean digital product passport, you get a digital mirror of scattered operational data.
Why Integration Is Harder Than Expected
First, sustainability is highly industry‑specific. A chemical company needs compliance, safety data sheets, mass balance for recycled content, and process emissions; manufacturers need product composition transparency, due diligence, lifecycle data, and circular design proof; consumer goods companies need supply chain transparency, packaging and recycled content tracking, carbon per product, and often social and labour data. Each industry comes with its own regulations, data standards, traceability depth, and verification rules that must be understood before configuration starts.
Second, “standard integrations” with ERP are rarely standard in practice. Different ERP systems (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, IFS, custom) are configured uniquely, and the data needed for sustainability – recycled content, origins, emissions, waste – often does not exist in clean, structured form. Integration then becomes a data architecture exercise: mapping where sustainability‑relevant data lives, identifying gaps, defining transformations, building connectors, enforcing data quality, and putting governance in place.
Multi‑Party Complexity and Vendor Lock‑In
Sustainability platforms live in a complex ecosystem. Internally, sustainability, operations, IT, procurement, and legal all have different expertise and priorities. Externally, platform vendors, ERP integrators, standards bodies, suppliers, and certifiers all play a role. Projects fail when each party works in its own tunnel: sustainability does not see technical realities, IT does not see regulatory detail, vendors do not see data quality, suppliers are unprepared to deliver required data, and nobody owns the end‑to‑end flow.
At the same time, there is a real risk of vendor lock‑in. If all sustainability data lives only in the platform’s proprietary format, integrations are platform‑specific, supplier onboarding is tied to one ecosystem, and contracts are long and rigid, switching later becomes very difficult. Organizations that do this lose control over their own sustainability data architecture.
Ecosystem Data Exchange Is More Than Technology
Supply chain sustainability also depends on data moving across organizational boundaries: suppliers providing origin and emissions data, manufacturers tracking transformations and waste, downstream partners maintaining traceability, and recyclers reporting circular flows. This is not just an integration issue; it is conscious ecosystem coordination. Suppliers may not have the data in the required format, may worry about who sees what, and have different levels of digital maturity.
What works is a phased, value‑driven approach: start with willing partners, prioritize critical materials and categories, provide templates and support, keep initial data requirements small, and expand over time while building verification through audits, cross‑checks, and, where justified, technologies like blockchain.
A More Pragmatic Path Forward with Twin Transformations
For organizations implementing supply chain sustainability platforms, a more pragmatic path looks like this.
- Start with regulatory reality
Clarify which regulations apply in your industry, which standards and formats they require, how deep traceability must go, and by when. This defines your real requirements instead of letting platform features drive the agenda. - Assess data readiness and design architecture first
Map where sustainability‑relevant data is stored today, what quality it has, what is missing, and which systems must connect. Then design your data architecture: where sustainability master data will live (ERP, PIM, data lake), how data will flow, which standards you will use, and how you will govern quality. - Build cross‑functional teams with clear ownership
Form small teams around regulatory and standards expertise, data architecture, ERP integration, and supplier enablement, each with clear responsibilities and weekly coordination. This is where a twin transformation mindset helps: digital, sustainability, and operations all represented in one team instead of separate tracks. - Prove value before scaling and avoid lock‑in
Start with one product category or business unit, onboard strategic suppliers, and prove that the platform can deliver the required compliance and transparency. Own your data architecture, use standard formats where possible, negotiate flexible contracts, and build internal capability, so you can adapt as technology evolves.
Supply chain sustainability is moving from optional to mandatory, driven by regulations like the EU Digital Product Passport, CSRD, deforestation rules, and extended producer responsibility. Platforms are essential enablers, but they only work when strategy, architecture, and collaboration turn them into part of a broader twin transformation: digital solutions, sustainable outcomes, and human teams working together on a shared change.