Value-chain emissions reporting sounds like a sustainability initiative. In practice it is an integration project, and a complicated one. The data sits in procurement systems, logistics platforms, supplier portals, and often a handful of spreadsheets maintained by someone who left last year. Pulling it together in a way auditors will accept requires the same skills companies use for any large-scale data consolidation: master data governance, cross-system reconciliation, and a clear ownership model.
A Munich-based industrial client recently asked us for someone who could map their existing S/4HANA procurement data to emissions calculations and build the reporting logic for their upcoming CSRD submissions. The sustainability team had defined what they needed to report. They lacked someone who understood how the underlying data flowed, where the gaps were, and how to close them without rebuilding the entire landscape.
The role requires SAP functional knowledge, data architecture fluency, and enough regulatory awareness to know which numbers will be challenged. Most candidates come from either the sustainability consulting side, where they know the reporting frameworks but lack deep SAP experience, or the technical side, where they can build the integrations but struggle to connect their work to the compliance requirements driving it. Finding someone who covers all of that extends the search timeline considerably.
Companies in the DACH region facing CSRD deadlines should treat Scope 3 as a data project and staff it accordingly. The sustainability strategy can wait until the plumbing works. Candidates with SAP integration experience who want to move into this space should learn which data elements matter to auditors and why the current reporting stacks fail to deliver them. The entry point is understanding the gap between what the systems hold and what the regulations require.
Prompted by reporting from ERP Today.