HP ties sustainability data governance to business decisions in AI era

Kristen Siemen, a senior advisor at McKinsey, said accurate data is the starting point for action. "The data is critical, and having accurate data enables you to really understand where you're at and really to put plans in place to take action," she said. "Without having the data, it's really difficult to even get started."

Jen Huffstetler, senior vice president, chief sustainability officer and global market access at HP, described the challenge of managing sustainability data at global scale. HP sells in more than 180 countries, multiplying the reporting formats it must satisfy. Customer requests for granular product detail arrive alongside regulatory filings and ranking questionnaires, making a consistent internal dataset important for accurate AI-assisted responses, she said.

Huffstetler quoted HP's chief information officer: "Enterprise standardized data, and that includes sustainability data, it becomes just the rocket fuel for a company that's in transformation," she said. "If you're looking at data across the company, sustainability data is no different."

HP already faces requirements for limited assurance of sustainability data, according to Huffstetler. Both she and Siemen emphasized governance and controls while noting that reporting practices still differ across companies.

Siemen compared her experience at General Motors with financial reporting. "If I think back to my time at General Motors, we ran the exact same processes for sustainability data and reporting that we did for financial," she said. "So, internally, our reviews, our assurance, the process and the sign-offs were all consistent."

HP is also putting controlled sustainability data into customer-facing products. In June, the company fed data from its compliance intelligence platform into its Workforce Experience Platform, giving information technology decision-makers a dynamic carbon footprint for their PC fleets, Huffstetler explained.

"The other piece, I believe, in that human aspect is in the data quality and governance, really making sure that pipeline has clear traceability," she said. "Transparency is becoming foundational for market access."

Editor's Summary HP and McKinsey executives said sustainability data governance is critical as AI increases the use of environmental information. HP is applying controlled data to customer-facing carbon footprint tools and faces limited assurance requirements, while reporting practices vary across companies.