Sweep: The Future of Sustainability Data Management

Please start by introducing yourself, your background and your journey to your current role.

I am Rachel Delacour, the CEO and Co-Founder of Sweep. I've been working at the crossroads of data, tech and SaaS businesses for more than 15 years now.

I started my first company, called BIME Analytics, which was all about business intelligence and was acquired by Zendesk six years later. What we learnt is that data is at the core of any kind of transformation for companies, from the smallest to the most important decision-making processes.

Sustainability is a data challenge, so with Sweep we aimed to apply what we learnt at BIME to non-financial data, extra-financial data and carbon/ESG data, so that our customers are equipped to make far better decisions at scale.

At the core of it, it's about collecting data and transforming it to accelerate the sustainability transformation.

Sweep recently celebrated its fifth anniversary – how is it going?

I am so proud of what we have created, of our committed team, of the great partnerships we have built and are continuing to build with some extremely large companies, ones which have the most complex sustainability programs and demands, like L’Oréal or the French railways company SNCF. 

It's never easy to start a business from scratch, and more importantly when you’re doing so in order to address a transformation within companies. Fifteen years ago we all experienced the digital transformation for companies, and the ones who managed to navigate it and transform themselves the right way are thriving today.

Fifteen years later, there are two transformations happening at the same time: one in which companies are embedding AI at the core of their business, and another in which they're transitioning to a low-carbon economy. It's very difficult for companies today, who have two transformations side by side to deal with.

Sweep’s role is to help businesses transition to the low-carbon economy so they are building their own future where they don't just survive but thrive in this new economy. We want them to embed sustainability at the core of their operations.

The transformation is a marathon, and Sweep is in this marathon with our clients.

At Sweep, we know that businesses don't have much time, but we also know that it's a transformation and it won't be easy. So we put our energy towards addressing those very big agents of change – the large corporations – despite the challenges of their scale and large value chains. We knew that we were really entering into a very meaningful, but difficult battle with lots of outcomes at scale.

Through data, our customers can see the ROI of the actions they are initiating to cut their emissions.

All this is very integrated, and at the core of it you need a monitoring, analysing and disclosing platform that is helping you to make the invisible visible, so that the whole chain of decision is clear and has the right governance.

How does data drive sustainability performance for these businesses?

First, you need assessments of what your data means in terms of carbon emissions. Once you start to have everything in one single place, this is when you start to analyse it.

We've seen customers challenge their R&D departments saying that they need a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) analysis, and at a much larger scale we are already seeing companies like L'Oréal working on their R&D because they need to decrease their emissions. They're working on things like the rinsability of the shampoo, because the less time you're spending under the shower, the less energy you are consuming, so the less CO₂ L'Oréal has to account for. The less emissions L'Oréal has in its Scope 3, the less risk it has on regulatory fines, and the more competitive it is.

We are also seeing lots of ROI coming from our customers’ audits. When auditing extra-financial emission reductions, auditors are telling the company: "If you were listed today, then because of how you are managing sustainability data and emissions initiatives, you would have gained 10% on your share price."

It means that any kind of employee who has interest in the company is living with 10% more in terms of share price. This is concrete money in the pockets of the people who are managing the company’s sustainability impacts.

It's important to have data to prove which is the right direction to take. We acknowledge that it's difficult to have enough historical data to show the real ROI of your sustainability programmes. What is unfair is that ROI is not being demanded for the AI transformation. Yes, AI is augmenting people, making them much more productive, but at some point there are also lots of costs in terms of usage of these technologies, plus the associated sustainability nightmare. But when it comes to sustainability, everyone is asking to know the ROI first. At Sweep we arm our customers with the tools to project, track, and prove the ROI of sustainability actions.

Can you talk to me a little bit more specifically about the Sweep platform?

At Sweep, we’re all about "load your data once, report everywhere," because regulatory frameworks are nothing more than empty boxes that you have to fill in. But if you don't have all the stack with the granular information at a very large scale, and able to handle very large volumes of data, you won't go far.

Sweep is one single place where you connect and collect your data from all sources and transform them into precise carbon emissions calculations. You can also connect your value chain and get consolidated information out of it, so that you can make your sustainability decisions based on this single source of truth. Out of that, you can report on any regulatory frameworks because you have the granularity of data to be able to fulfil all of the different requirements.

With the AI we have integrated into Sweep, we are able to eliminate a large amount of difficulties customers previously experienced in relation to connecting with all of their data sources, transforming the data, etc. We are also handling non-structured data that you must report on as well. Within Sweep, you can load all the historical files you had in your company, in any number of file formats, and quickly understand what has been said in terms of sustainability and get that information into the right boxes of the different regulatory frameworks

All this is accelerating time to value, improving auditability and above all, it's improving monitoring, and speeding up the process of acting on your transformation to a low-carbon economy through data.

We're seeing a lot of regulatory upheaval at the moment in Europe and the US in particular. How is Sweep reacting to that?

Well, Sweep is reacting, but actually the customers are reacting first, by telling us that no matter what happens with the regulations, sustainability is just smart business. 

With the potential overcorrection happening in the US, our customers are saying that they can't waste four years of data collection and that they're already seeing the ROI of what they've put in place.

When you are already seeing a return on initiatives you've already started in sustainability in your value chain, in more energy efficiency, lower costs and so on, why would you stop that?  You still want to monitor what you've done because it's good for your employees, customers, bottom line, cash access, insurance assessments, M&A assessments, etc. Why would you stop everything?

What does the next five years hold for Sweep?

The next five years for me is really about making sure that I am moving even faster to benchmark what's happening in terms of initiatives, because everyone is ramping up at the same time. Now that we have more data points, proof points about what's working and what's not, the question I ask myself is – how are we injecting this information into Sweep's knowledge base about the best practices to follow, in order to bring business value?

We’re also increasing the amount of risk management and AI capabilities in the platform to support wider decision-making.

For the next five years, I can tell you that I’m working on geographical expansion. The United States is an area of hyper-growth for Sweep right now. And there are still regulatory frameworks popping up all around the world, meaning there are still lots of companies in every region who need to monitor their data. In APAC for example, the ISSB framework is particularly significant, and so on. 

From a product standpoint, it's benchmarking AI risk at the same place. I think we will be a kind of SAP for extra-financials. Definitely, we are building this kind of empire.

To read the full story in the magazine, click HERE.