Sage acquires carbon accounting firm Spherics
Accounting software giant says new acquisition will help SMB customers better understand their environmental impact
Business software specialist Sage has this week announced the acquisition of Spherics, a firm specialising in carbon accounting, in a move designed to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) more easily understand and reduce their environmental impact.
Spherics' solution automates the process of calculating emissions by ingesting data from a customer's accounting software and matching transactions to emission factors to create an initial estimate of their carbon footprint. The software then guides the customer to refine the estimate by submitting further data that can enable a more accurate calculation.
The analysis can also be applied to business' procurement categories, such as delivery, accommodation, electricity and travel, to estimate the associated carbon footprint of a transaction and help inform greener purchasing decisions.
"We know that SMBs care about the impact they have on the environment, and our research shows that they want to work with suppliers and partners that can help them understand and address it," said Amaya Souarez, executive vice president for cloud operations at Sage. "The acquisition of Spherics represents an important milestone in our sustainability strategy. By combining Spherics' innovative software with Sage's digital network, we are connecting businesses with their customer and supplier emissions data, enabling easy and collaborative climate action across value chains which helps to reduce carbon."
Financial details for the deal were not disclosed, but Sage did confirm that the Bristol-headquartered company would continue to provide its software as a market solution that integrates with Sage and other accounting software providers in the UK.
George Sandilands, CEO and co-founder at Spherics, said the company's vision and mission aligns "very much with Sage's core values, and we are excited to embark on this new journey to help SMBs knock down barriers to a more sustainable future".
"Global emissions are still rising fast, and we need immediate and meaningful climate action across the world," he said. "Together with Sage we can help make a global impact on greenhouse gas emissions by supporting SMBs on their journey to net zero."
Mickey North Rizza, group vice president for enterprise software at analyst firm IDC, said Spherics' offering was tapping into a fast-growing market.
"A company's ability to integrate sustainability metrics into its growth strategy and to demonstrate its sustainability credentials transparently is becoming a strong differentiator globally," he said. "We see companies moving towards more integrated, outcome-driven ways of incorporating sustainability into every step of the business life cycle, and our studies show that organisations are investing in many application areas directly related to sustainability and ESG initiatives. In particular, the applications of supply chain, finance and ERP are at the top of this investment with some of the largest benefits of elevated productivity, increased profitability, and decreased costs."
Sage said the deal would also help boost its own net zero strategy, which has seen it commit to halve its own emissions by 2030 before delivering net zero emissions by 2040.
A version of this story was first published on BusinessGreen.