A wholesaler typically produces little itself. The largest part of revenue comes from goods that are purchased, stored, and resold. That completely changes the nature of sustainability data compared to a factory. There is no production process to measure, no machine fleet with energy consumption that forms the core of reporting. Instead, it comes down to two things: what moves through the premises (transport, storage, packaging) and what happens in the chain before the door (production at suppliers, often in other countries). For a wholesaler, the heaviest emissions almost always lie with the purchased products themselves, not with the company's own operations. That makes its own scope 1 and 2 relatively limited, and scope 3 proportionally all the larger and harder to fill in.
The physical footprint of a wholesaler is concentrated in the distribution center: energy consumption of cooling, lighting, charging points for the vehicle fleet, and the fuel consumption of owned or hired trucks. That data can often be found, but not always in one place. Facilities management handles the energy bills for the premises, the transport department manages kilometers and fuel receipts (or leaves that to a logistics service provider), and the fleet manager in turn has a separate record for lease contracts and consumption. Anyone wanting to report on their own transport and storage must therefore consult at least three departments, each keeping track of a part of the same picture, without there being one overview of which trips, which vehicles, and which energy flows belong where.
The largest part of a wholesaler's sustainability data does not sit within the company itself, but with its suppliers. That can be hundreds of parties, spread across different countries, each with a different level of reporting maturity. Some suppliers provide a CO2 figure per product, others give only a weight and a country of origin, and yet others give nothing. That information comes in through purchasing contracts, order confirmations, emails, and sometimes a loose Excel file that a supplier once sent over. There is rarely a system that records, per product or per supplier, which sustainability data is available, who supplied it, and how old it is. Without that overview, it is impossible to see which part of the procurement is actually covered with usable figures and which part has to fall back on an estimate or a generic sector factor.
The WMS (warehouse management system) and the ERP system of a wholesaler are set up for volumes, locations, and lead times, not for sustainability characteristics. An article has an SKU, a weight, and a supplier in there, but rarely a linked CO2 figure or a material composition. Anyone wanting to combine that information has to link the product file from the ERP system to a separate file with supplier data, which in turn is regularly updated without it being clear which version is the latest. At wholesalers with a broad assortment, that quickly adds up to thousands of article lines that have to be pasted together manually or through a fragile link, every time again for each reporting period.
Wholesalers that purchase internationally have an extra layer of data on top: import and customs data on origin and transport modality (sea freight, air freight, road transport), which is relevant for calculating transport emissions but is usually managed by a logistics or customs department that is not used to sustainability questions. In addition, packaging is a recurring point: the material and weight of boxes, pallets, and film are often tracked for cost calculation, not for environmental reporting, so the units and definitions do not match what a sustainability report needs. And at wholesalers with their own delivery service, the last mile to the customer comes on top of that, with its own route and vehicle data that is separate from the rest.
The combination of a limited own operation and a heavy, fragmented chain outside it is what distinguishes a wholesaler from, for example, sustainability data in manufacturing, where the company's own production processes form the bulk, or from sustainability data in retail, where the shop floor and the consumer add an extra layer. Wholesalers that also organize transport themselves will additionally recognize a lot in sustainability data in the transport sector, where kilometers, fuel, and vehicle data are likewise spread across multiple systems and parties. A good starting point, then, is not a tool that is supposed to collect everything, but a register that records, per data point, where it comes from, who is responsible for it, and how current it is, so that it becomes clear which part of the chain is already covered and which part is still an estimate.
Once that overview exists, a picture also emerges of how much of this collecting and linking work happens repeatedly and manually, from combing through supplier emails to merging Excel files. That is exactly the type of work for which the work scan of FTE TO AI calculates, per task, which part of it can be taken over by AI, so that it becomes clear where people spend time on work that could be organized more systematically.
Vraag maar waar een datapunt vandaan komt. Dat is meestal de hele vraag.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.