Why Smiths Group chose Watershed for CSRD
The multinational engineering company is turning compliance into competitive advantage with Watershed
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Smiths Group—which manufactures everything from airport X-ray scanners to advanced electrical components for space missions—employs over 15,000 people with four subsidiaries in 50 countries across the globe. The company recently sought a sophisticated yet agile long-term partner that could help it meet its sustainability commitments and regulatory requirements with confidence and precision.
Challenges
Smiths Group was looking for a partner to help it address several challenges:
- Regulatory compliance and audit risk mitigation. Evolving climate regulations, especially the CSRD, require an agile and data-driven approach. Smiths Group wanted to de-risk its audit processes, as failed audits can be costly and reputationally damaging.
- Building a durable, resilient business. “We’re thinking seriously about climate risks and how that could impact the business long term. We want a durable, resilient business.”
- Expanding access to capital. “We want to be sustainable over time, but must be profitable. Sustainability helps us get access to better investors. With a stronger ESG program, we are a ‘prime’ investment, which is good for Smiths financially long term.”
Why Watershed
After an extensive evaluation process, which included large legacy tech platforms and newer start-ups, Smiths Group selected Watershed due to several key advantages:
- Audit-readiness. “Watershed allows us to segment the responsibility of CSRD very cleanly with our teams. We only need to involve small groups of people in each part of the work, which gives us the best chance of clearing an audit and avoiding long-term reputational damage.”
- Lower total cost of ownership. “Bringing down our total cost of ownership is critical, both by expediting implementation and reducing reliance on external services. Watershed gives us both. But even more importantly, we believe we’re taking on less risk by maintaining ownership from end-to-end—and the board needs to hear that.”
- Actionable scope 3 data. “Our ability to observe and make decisions about our global supply chain is the next frontier of our business. Watershed will help us understand the risks and opportunities in our supply chain faster than other platforms so we avoid risk and stay competitive.”
“IT departments are naturally inclined to want to reduce the number of software applications and simplify tech stacks. But, Watershed understands what the CSRD output needs to be, is plugged into the audit process, and helps us get our reporting right the first time at a lower total cost of ownership.”
Ben MacDonald,
VP of Sustainability, ESG and Indirect Procurement
