The #1 Lesson Sustainability Can Learn from Finance

Apr 27, 2026

There’s a $24B industry built around this problem. Sustainability hasn’t caught up yet.

Investors are demanding higher-quality sustainability data. They can earn a higher return if they include sustainability data in investment selection. Investors want to see audited data prepared with standard IT controls, as these two factors vastly increase data consistency and reliability.

As sustainability teams respond to these demands, they often collaborate with financial data ops teams, IT teams and controllers. All of these folks have been working in finance for decades; finance is their go-to model of how to get the job done. Sounds good, right?

But sustainability teams are missing a key part of the picture. Take a look at this financial accounting ecosystem map, prepared by NYCA, a venture capital firm. Notice that the AP and ERP systems are in the top middle area. To the right are all of the reporting, tax, and audit software vendors. To the left are all the accounting and financial data preparation vendors.

A listing of company logos from 200+ established, growth-stage, and early-stage companies, showing that audit and accounting tech primarily falls into three categories: accounting, ERP & general ledgers, and tax & audit

Map Source

The map is striking — dozens of specialized vendors exist purely to prepare data before it ever reaches the core accounting systems.

The point: Many, many companies use the products that come before and after the AP and ERP software. Accounting data does not simply flow into AP and ERP, it must be carefully prepared. And the data preparation challenge is so big that entire industries have been built around it.

In fact, a quick internet search shows that there is a $24B market for accounting data preparation services and software. That’s a lot of spending to avoid pain and to get more accurate data. Sustainability teams should not ignore this lesson from finance: Data preparation does not just happen, it is a hard problem that needs specialized tools and workflows.

In fact, sustainability has a bigger data preparation challenge than finance because of incredibly varied data sources, a higher rate of change, noisy real-world data and the lack of built-in systems.

The #1 lesson from financial accounting is that data preparation is critically important, quite painful and requires purpose-built tools and methods. There is no shortcut.

Are you surprised? Or just delighted to see your pain validated?

Let’s get sustainability teams on the right data quality footing — with tools and systems built for the job.

GLYNT.AI helps sustainability and finance teams build the data foundation that makes reporting and business decisions credible and actionable — automating primary data collection, standardizing fragmented inputs, and delivering audit-ready outputs at 99.5% accuracy.

Ready to see how it works? Talk to GLYNT.AI