Alphabet soup, sustainability standards and the data lifecycle – this sounds like a low budget B-rated Hollywood film! However, these concepts are the foundation for common CFO pain points around the world. In virtually every meeting on the topic, we quickly observe enthusiastic head nodding acknowledging that the real sustainability information issues surround data collection and processing, rather than the reporting step itself.

It helps to understand this issue through an example. Imagine that, as the head of reporting, you need to figure out which sustainability standard or standards to choose to report on greenhouse gases (GHG). GHG is covered, in large part, by ISO14064, the Greenho...