July 31, 2026
Key Points
- Leading companies are embedding sustainability data into core business planning to drive performance, improve resource allocation and deliver measurable results.
- Trusted, high-quality data from platforms such as UL Solutions’ ULTRUS® UL 360 ESG and Sustainability Data Management software can provide greater supply chain transparency and earlier visibility into Scope 3 emissions and operational risks.
- Organizations that connect sustainability data with business strategy can strengthen resilience, improve efficiency and make smarter investment decisions.
As sustainability expectations evolve, organizations are operating in a more demanding economic environment, where capital is tighter, cost pressures persist and investment decisions undergo greater scrutiny. At top-performing companies, sustainability efforts are no longer evaluated in isolation; they are assessed alongside growth, margin and resilience as core drivers of business performance.
The shift reflects a key trend: A 2025 report found that 88% of companies view sustainability as a possible driver of long-term value, and more than 80% say they can measure return on investment for sustainability-related projects.
Additionally, volatility within global supply chains is reshaping priorities, with 74% of business leaders now prioritizing resilience as a driver of growth.
When UL Solutions recently convened sustainability leaders in London for the workshop Advancing Sustainability Strategies by Overcoming Operational and Economic Challenges, the discussion reflected a convergence of these factors.
During the conversation, several themes emerged: Sustainability data is becoming a core input to business planning, a tool for identifying risk earlier and a way to connect operational decisions with measurable business value.
Turning Fragmented Data into Early Warning Systems
For organizations in any industry, successful risk management depends on seeing exposure clearly enough and early enough to act.
That need has become more urgent as disruption becomes structural. A 2024 Maersk survey found that more than 76% of European businesses had experienced supply chain disruption that delayed operations in the previous 12 months, and 58% of the cargo owners said those disruptions cost much more than expected.
For many organizations, critical sustainability risk factors such as Scope 3 emissions, supplier-level data and product carbon footprint data remain fragmented across systems, creating blind spots that impair decision-making.
A recent analysis found that 69 of the top 100 FTSE companies made prior-year adjustments to their climate and sustainability metrics for 2025, underscoring the persistent challenges of collecting and calculating reliable data across complex value chains.
At the London workshop, UL Solutions learned how leading companies, including Experian, are using data-driven approaches to improve supply chain transparency and generate sustainability insights that support more effective operational risk management.
“We need to know where risk actually sits across a complex Scope 3 footprint, rather than relying on averages,” said Melissa Goncalves Ferreira, global head of sustainability at Experian. “This is where sustainability data becomes an early warning system, guiding intervention, protecting performance and strengthening resilience.”
This shift from portfolio averages to supplier-level insight can enable more disciplined intervention. It allows teams to prioritize risk mitigation, strengthen supplier engagement, allocate resources effectively and focus investment where it can deliver the greatest operational and financial impact.
From Annual Disclosure to Continuous Intelligence
A second theme from the workshop was the move away from treating sustainability data as a retrospective reporting exercise. Increasingly, organizations are integrating sustainability metrics into the same planning cycles as revenue, capital allocation and operations, enabling teams to evaluate trade‑offs dynamically and prioritize initiatives that balance cost, impact and return.
This approach reflects a growing expectation from finance leaders. EcoVadis reports that 83% of companies now measure sustainability returns with the same scrutiny that is applied to other core business investments, and some organizations are capturing up to 20% cost savings across energy, waste and supply chain efficiency initiatives.
Achieving such business outcomes typically requires more than robust data aggregation. Leveraging platforms like UL Solutions’ ULTRUS® UL 360 ESG and Sustainability Data Management software, which provides decision‑ready, verifiable data across global operations, helps organizations connect fragmented inputs to build a consistent, auditable system of record.
Combined with deep sustainability expertise, this enables teams to translate complex inputs into clear priorities, identify value drivers and shape financially grounded roadmaps for investment and operational improvement.
The result is a shift from static disclosure to continuous intelligence, with sustainability data becoming an essential factor for performance, resilience, capital allocation and enterprise value.
Sustainability Data as a Value Driver
Another emerging theme is the growing role of sustainability data in defining value at a more operational level. As organizations seek to improve performance, manage risk and direct capital more effectively, sustainability insight is becoming part of the same conversation as asset quality, efficiency, cost exposure and future growth potential.
This is especially important when decisions involve complex trade-offs. Energy performance, emissions exposure, regulatory readiness and operational resilience increasingly influence how organizations prioritize improvements, allocate investment and position operations for long-term performance.
In this context, sustainability data becomes a lens for identifying where business value may be protected, strengthened or created. The value of that insight depends on its quality and credibility. Data must be granular enough to support investment decisions, consistent enough to compare performance across portfolios and robust enough to withstand scrutiny from internal stakeholders, customers, investors and regulators.
This is where trusted digital infrastructure and sustainability expertise play an enabling role. UL Solutions’ ULTRUS® UL 360 ESG and Sustainability Data Management software is one tool that organizations can use to connect data across systems and translate complex inputs into clearer insight, supporting more confident decisions without reducing sustainability to a compliance exercise or a reporting output.
From Commitment to Execution
Drawing upon real-world insights gained by assisting dozens of global companies, UL Solutions has observed that at leading organizations, sustainability data is embedded in the operating model, shaping how companies conduct planning, manage risk, identify value drivers and create measurable business value.
This is the next phase of sustainability: moving beyond reporting progress to driving performance, using data to make fast, confident decisions that impact business outcomes. As market conditions evolve, operationalizing sustainability data consistently and credibly will increasingly define competitive advantage.
Additional information about the ways in which UL Solutions helps companies operationalize sustainability data is available on the ULTRUS Enterprise Sustainability page at UL.com.