ABOUT THE COMPANY
A global technology company with approximately 7,000 employees, managing science-based targets and compliance requirements including California SB 253/261 and CSRD across a complex multi-stakeholder environment.
SUMMARY
When this company's tech operations team mandated consolidation from 400+ applications and pressured the sustainability team to switch from Watershed to Workiva Carbon, the team conducted a thorough evaluation and built a business case showing Watershed delivered 75% lower total cost of ownership through platform simplicity, holistic service, and capabilities purpose-built for lean sustainability teams managing complex scope 3 measurement.
CHALLENGE
The company's sustainability team had been successfully using Watershed for ESG measurement, management, and carbon credit purchases when tech operations launched a mandate: reduce the company's 400+ software applications by 50%. Because the company already used Workiva for financial reporting and CSRD disclosure, tech ops asked the sustainability team to evaluate migrating from Watershed to Workiva Carbon to consolidate vendors. The team needed to build a business case, not just on pricing, but on value, effort, implementation costs, and long-term ROI, to defend keeping a platform that actually worked for their multi-stakeholder workflow against pressure to consolidate into a tool built for a different purpose.
SOLUTION
The sustainability team used Watershed as the baseline "gold standard" and systematically evaluated Workiva Carbon across every dimension that mattered: pricing, usability, UI, auditability, backend infrastructure, and assurance support. They also drew on their existing experience implementing Workiva's CSRD module to calculate real-world total cost of ownership — not just software fees, but consultant costs, team time, and operational complexity.
That real-world data told a clear story. The company had spent approximately 4x more on the Workiva CSRD module — including software, consultants, and internal time — than Watershed's equivalent offering would have cost, translating to roughly 75% lower total cost of ownership with Watershed. The team concluded that migrating to Workiva Carbon would carry a similar implementation burden, given its complex multi-step workflows, limited scope 3 capabilities, and lack of integrated services like carbon credit procurement and audit support — none of which were included out of the box.
Rather than consolidating into a tool that required significant effort to replicate what Watershed already delivered seamlessly, the team built a business case showing the true cost of switching, and the true value of staying.
RESULTS
75% lower total cost of ownership with Watershed: "When you compare Workiva's software and implementation costs against Watershed's total offering, Watershed delivers significantly stronger return on investment — it's not even close," says the company's sustainability lead, who oversees sustainability, AI governance, and legal operations.
Platform simplicity enabled multi-stakeholder participation without extensive training: "It's just not user friendly. It's not really built for multiple stakeholders," the sustainability lead explains about Workiva Carbon. "I am an engineer... I like complicated stuff... But when I was looking at this, I said, this is just not for me out of the box." Watershed's simple workflows meant workplace teams, HR, marketing, and cloud engineers could upload data without becoming carbon accounting experts.
Integrated service model — advisory, marketplace, and assurance — delivered unique value: "Watershed is always involved, always on, answers all my questions... I didn't believe Workiva would have anywhere near that level of support on any of those three fronts," the sustainability lead says. The combination of expert advisory, seamless carbon credit procurement, and hands-on audit support created a complete package that couldn't be matched by a platform-only approach.
Building the business case for a specialized platform vs. consolidation
When the company's sustainability lead joined the team two and a half years ago, Watershed was already in place and working well. The platform could handle ESG measurement, carbon credit and renewable energy certificate purchases, and provided advisory support for the team's science-based targets and compliance requirements.
Then tech operations launched a consolidation initiative: reduce the company's 400+ applications by 50%. Because the company already used Workiva for financial reporting and had implemented Workiva's CSRD disclosure module — a 4-to-5-month effort involving external consultants — tech ops saw an opportunity to consolidate. They asked the company’s sustainability lead to evaluate switching from Watershed to Workiva Carbon.
"The only reason people would move from Watershed to Workiva is because of an internal mandate to consolidate the stack," the sustainability lead explains. "A lot of companies may use Workiva for their financial modules. So that's the only reason we're having this conversation with them in the first place. It's not like their product is superior to Watershed. It's not."
The sustainability lead knew the evaluation needed to go deeper than a feature comparison. The company's sustainability program served multiple stakeholders: workplace teams uploading facility data, HR managing commute information, marketing tracking events, and cloud engineers inputting data center metrics. The team was lean, as sustainability teams often are, and any platform switch would impact not just the sustainability team but everyone who touched carbon data.
The Workiva Carbon demo revealed fundamental differences in how each platform approached carbon accounting. Where Watershed offered simple workflows, for example, upload data for scope 3 category 11 and you're done, Workiva required building backend infrastructure in Excel data rooms outside the platform, then linking those data rooms back to the Carbon module.
"For the average Joe, you'd say, 'What am I doing here?’" the sustainability lead says. "You have to build the backend of it in an Excel sheet data room somewhere. And then every year, you have to update that data room, which sits outside of the Workiva Carbon platform."
The complexity extended beyond setup. When the sustainability lead asked how to upload new category 11 data for 2027, the answer involved copying the previous year's database, updating an Excel sheet, and syncing queries — no simple upload button. "It makes no sense to me," they explain. "It's going to take my time and Workiva's time to train all the uploaders. And if those uploaders leave, I'll have to train them again."
Other gaps became apparent:
"It seemed to me that their target market [is California SB253]," the sustainability lead says, "which doesn't give me confidence in their scope 3 capabilities and how deep their calculations or methodologies or factors are."
The sustainability lead’s analysis included not just software costs but implementation effort, consultant fees, and ongoing operational complexity. "I believe this calculation would apply across many companies our size," the sustainability lead says. "That covers a huge market."
But the business case went beyond pure ROI to value that couldn't be easily quantified.
Advisory expertise: "One of the biggest things I didn't want to move away from with Watershed was the advisory team and the deep internal knowledge in terms of European vs. US vs. different continents when it comes to advisory. I think that's been really, really good."
Hands-on support: "Watershed is always involved, always on, answers all my questions... I didn't believe Workiva would have anywhere near that level of support on any of those three fronts."
End-to-end solution: "I thought the marketplace was great... The service Watershed offers is truly end to end. It's very seamless and it instantly applies to all of our emissions, which just makes my life a lot easier. Particularly for sustainability teams in the US, where a lot of these teams are lean, you often have one or two people looking after sustainability."
The sustainability lead's advice to other teams facing consolidation pressure: "Look at the longer picture in terms of value versus effort versus return on investment on your tech stack. A lot of people underestimate the value versus effort. If you take hours and hours of effort to get set up — it took us four or five months to set up the Workiva CSRD module — then compare that with the return on investment into what you're trying to achieve. All of that when you compare it to Watershed makes no sense."
For this technology company, the business case is clear: consolidation for consolidation's sake destroys value when the platform you're consolidating into wasn't built for the job you need it to do.