Watershed was named a leader in the 2026 Forrester Wave™: Sustainability Management Software report.
Watershed earned the highest possible scores in 9 of 17 criteria evaluated:
- Data collection and native integrations
- Data quality and standardization
- Reporting
- User experience and cross-functional dashboards
- Product lifecycle assessment
- ROI calculation
- Supporting services and offerings
- Vision
- Roadmap
Forrester’s report notes: “Customers praise ease of use, data lineage, auditability, automated reporting, climate expertise, partnership quality, and rapid product evolution.”
The state of sustainability work
Preparing a sustainability disclosure got faster over the last couple of years. AI can now perform traditionally manual tasks like pulling numbers out of source documents, cleaning and transforming data, and drafting a report.
Meanwhile, defending the result got harder. Assurance requirements tightened. Customers started asking for the footprint of a single product instead of a corporate total.
The same underlying data now has to hold up across several filings that often disagree with each other on scope and format. And when an AI system does part of the work, its outputs need to be reliable and transparent enough to hold up under scrutiny. Forrester's new report evaluates eight providers across 17 criteria covering current offering and strategy, along with customer feedback.
How Watershed meets this moment
The Forrester Wave evaluation is an assessment of the top vendors in the market. Watershed is best suited to large enterprises seeking an integrated partner for carbon footprint calculation, decarbonization, product footprint, and regulatory reporting with strong advisory support and a fast-moving product.
The Forrester Wave™: Sustainability Management Software, Q3 2026
Sustainability programs used to be built in pieces, with one tool for measurement, another for reporting, another for reductions. We believed early on that teams would need all of it in one place, on a shared data foundation flexible enough to handle whatever customers, regulators or auditors ask for next. That same foundation is what lets us bring sustainability AI into the workflow responsibly; every AI output is traceable, every calculation is auditable. We're proud of this recognition as a leader from Forrester, and are grateful to our customers whose work it reflects.
Taylor Francis, co-founder, Watershed
Forrester evaluated eight providers across 17 criteria through live demos, detailed briefings, and a rigorous review of sustainability management capabilities and customer outcomes. Watershed is proud to be named a leader in the market.
Read the report
For Forrester’s full evaluation of the eight providers, read the report.
Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. This report is part of a broader collection of Forrester resources, including interactive models, frameworks, tools, data, and access to analyst guidance. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here.
