Episode 4: Seeing the bigger picture
Industry
Drilling services & sustainability management software
Challenge
How can companies turn complex operational and Scope 3 data into reliable insights for reporting and day-to-day management?
Key insights
The value of ESG data lies in how quickly it can inform action. By automating data collection and structuring information around GRI reporting, ECCO Sostenibile helps organizations monitor impacts, improve performance and set future targets — including in complex areas such as Scope 3.
“We have started talking to customers not just because they want to release a document but because they want to have under control important key indicators.
"The use of the ECCO platform is important to meet the clients’ demand for transparent reporting. It enables accurate checking of activities and consistent, well-structured documentation.
Context
For companies with complex operations, sustainability reporting can quickly become a data management challenge.
Pergemine, an Italian drilling contractor operating in the oil and gas sector, began monitoring sustainability-related information in 2021. As the volume of data and documentation increased, the company needed a more efficient way to manage the process and respond to growing client demand for precise, transparent reporting. Domenico Tamburo, Operations Manager, recalls:
“We needed a software to manage the big quantity of documentation and information about this field.”
INFOR, a GRI Licensed Software Partner, was seeing the same challenge across the market. Together with sustainability management expertise, the company developed ECCO Sostenibile to automate the collection of ESG data already held in company systems, and structure it around the GRI material topics.
The aim was to reduce time-consuming manual work and human error, while helping companies translate operational data into information that can feed into GRI reporting and impact assessment.
As Giuseppe Pizzatti, Consultant at INFOR, explains:
“Collecting data is very, very complex and time-consuming.”
That challenge is particularly acute for Scope 3, where large volumes of transport and supply chain data can make manual reporting difficult. For Pergemine, ECCO Sostenibile offered a way to manage that complexity more efficiently and use GRI-aligned information as a basis for monitoring performance and planning improvements.
The value is in what happens next
Once information was brought together in ECCO Sostenibile, INFOR saw that the software could support much more than disclosure. By covering areas such as procurement, labor, transport, energy, emissions, water, waste, health and safety, and financial performance, it gave companies a broader view of where sustainability impacts intersect with day-to-day operations.
That broader view opened up a different use for the data. Instead of looking at sustainability information only at the end of a reporting cycle, companies could use it to monitor key indicators, identify where performance was falling short, and plan improvements for the following year. In practice, this meant connecting environmental impacts with questions of cost, efficiency and business performance.
GRI’s verification process helped reinforce this approach by supporting INFOR in linking ECCO Sostenibile’s reporting areas with the relevant GRI topics. That gave the software a clearer structure for organizing impact information and strengthened how it could be applied by customers in practice.
For INFOR, the key lesson was that once companies can see their impacts more clearly, the reporting process becomes part of a wider management conversation. The same information used for disclosure can also help explain why certain activities are more costly or more impact-intensive, and where changes could improve both sustainability and operational performance.
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Better reporting rhymes with better data
The biggest reporting challenges are not only about disclosure, but also about managing large volumes of information consistently. Bringing data into one system made it easier to check activities, structure documentation and maintain a clearer view of performance.
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Scope 3 calls for efficiency
Transport and supply chain data can quickly become too complex for manual processes. ECCO Sostenibile helped Pergemine handle that complexity more efficiently, particularly where large volumes of logistics data were involved.
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Think beyond today's requirements
Once impacts are visible and timely, they can inform decisions on areas such as employee travel, transport routes and sourcing. For Pergemine, this included measures such as car-sharing, shuttle services and closer scrutiny of logistics-related emissions.
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Reporting must feed decisions
The strongest lesson from the case is that sustainability information should not stop at the report. For both INFOR and Pergemine, the real value lies in using the data to monitor key indicators, identify improvements and set priorities for the following year.
INFOR is a GRI Licensed Software Partner.
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