Why traceable sustainability data matters to Saudi boards

Boards in the Kingdom are asked for sustainability information by lenders and investors, by large customers in their supply chains, and by their own strategies. The figures reach the board through many hands: meter readings, invoices, spreadsheets and consultants' reports.

A number without a trail is a risk

When a figure cannot be traced, three things go wrong. It cannot be checked, so an error in a unit, a meter or a factor travels all the way to a disclosure. It cannot be repeated, so next year's figure is calculated differently and the trend means little. And it cannot be defended when an assurance provider, a lender or a regulator asks how it was made.

What traceable means in practice

Every figure links to its evidence: the reading, the invoice or the document it came from.

Every calculation uses an approved, versioned method, so the same input always gives the same result, and a change of method is recorded.

Every figure that leaves the organisation is approved by a named person, and the approval is recorded.

Data stays where the organisation's obligations require it to be, which for many Saudi organisations means inside the Kingdom.

Where the trail usually breaks

The trail tends to break at a few familiar points: a meter replaced without its readings being joined to the old one; an emission factor updated in one spreadsheet and not in another; an estimated invoice treated as a measured one; and a figure retyped from a report instead of taken from its source. None of these is unusual, and each is easy to catch when every figure carries its evidence.

Four questions a board can ask

Can we trace this figure to its source? Which method produced it, and has the method changed since last year? Who approved it? Where is the data held? A management team with clear answers to these four questions has data a board can rely on.

How GH works

This is how we run every engagement, and how SIP™, our platform, is designed: figures traced to their source, approved methods, a person approving every result, and data kept in the Kingdom. The board sees one picture, and every number in it can be followed back to where it began.