In today's era of accelerated global climate governance, "carbon footprint" is no longer an exclusive term in the environmental protection field, but a "hard indicator" that profoundly affects enterprises' global layout. As the core source of corporate GHG emissions, the accuracy and completeness of supply chain carbon footprint data are directly related to whether enterprises can pass international compliance reviews and win green procurement orders. However, for most enterprises, supply chain carbon footprint data management remains a "tough nut to crack", which is inseparable from a series of industry-wide common problems and cognitive blind spots.

Driven by both global policies and market demands, supply chain carbon footprint management has transformed from a "bonus item" to a "must-answer question". From a policy perspective, many economies around the world have introduced carbon footprint accounting-related regulations, requiring enterprises to disclose the full-life-cycle carbon emissions of products. Enterprises that fail to meet the standards will face market access restrictions; carbon footprint reports have become the core basis for global green procurement, and products lacking standardized carbon footprint data are difficult to enter the high-end consumer market.

From a market perspective, consumers' preference for low-carbon products is becoming increasingly obvious. Major international brands have listed carbon footprint data as a key indicator for supplier selection, forcing upstream enterprises to complete carbon footprint accounting. At the same time, ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) investment has become mainstream, and investors are more inclined to choose enterprises with strong carbon management capabilities. The transparency of supply chain carbon footprint data directly affects enterprises' financing and valuation.

The complexity of the supply chain determines the high difficulty of carbon footprint data management, which is a common challenge faced by most enterprises:

1.Scattered full-life-cycle data is difficult to integrate: Carbon footprint covers the entire process from raw material extraction, production and processing, logistics and transportation, product use to waste disposal. Data is scattered among multiple upstream and downstream partners, lacking uniform collection standards, leading to fragmented and untraceable data.
2.Complex accounting logic and high professionalism: Carbon footprint accounting must follow specific quantitative methods, considering multiple variables such as energy consumption, raw material GHG emission factors, and transportation distance. It also needs to adapt to different standards such as ISO 14067 and PAS 2050. Enterprises lack professional talents internally, making accounting deviations likely.
3.Great resistance to obtaining Scope 3 data: Scope 3 (other indirect emissions) data, which accounts for more than 60% of the carbon footprint, needs to be provided through collaboration with upstream and downstream enterprises. However, the GHG management levels of different enterprises vary, and the willingness to share data is low, making it difficult to fully cover the accounting.
4.Inefficient manual processes with high errors: Traditional carbon footprint accounting relies on paper records and Excel statistics. It takes weeks or even months from data collection to report generation. Manual entry and verification are prone to errors, and the final data is difficult to pass third-party verification.

Faced with these challenges, digitalization has become the key path for enterprises to break through the bottleneck of supply chain carbon footprint management. Realizing the full-process automation of carbon footprint "Monitor-Report-Verify" (MRV) through digital tools can accurately solve problems such as scattered data, complex accounting, and low efficiency.

Digital platforms can integrate multi-source data such as ERP, IoT devices, and third-party databases through API interfaces to achieve automatic collection and real-time synchronization of supply chain carbon footprint data, avoiding manual entry errors. With the help of AI algorithms and self-developed LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) tools, it can quickly build a full-process carbon footprint accounting model, automatically adapt to mainstream international standards, and generate standardized reports with a deviation of less than 0.5%. To address the difficulty of obtaining Scope 3 data, supply chain carbon mapping technology can accurately locate key GHG emission links, link upstream and downstream to achieve data sharing, and reduce cross-enterprise collaboration costs.

For enterprises, choosing a digital solution that suits their own needs can save a lot of detours. A high-quality digital platform should have three core capabilities: first, full-process automation, minimizing manual intervention from data collection, accounting and analysis to report generation; second, multi-standard compatibility, which can flexibly adapt to carbon footprint accounting requirements of different regions and industries; third, industry adaptability, providing exclusive models and templates for the supply chain characteristics of different industries to reduce the threshold for use.

SKYCO2's all-in-one GHG management software is built based on this logic, and its core functions accurately respond to carbon footprint management needs: through AI-driven adaptive modeling, it quickly completes full-life-cycle carbon footprint accounting; with supply chain carbon mapping technology, it solves the problem of obtaining Scope 3 data; pre-installed 12 industry-specific report templates, shortening the original weeks-long accounting cycle by more than 60%. Practices from more than 2,000 enterprises around the world have proven that digital tools can transform supply chain carbon footprint management from "time-consuming and labor-intensive" to "efficient and accurate".

In the irreversible trend of global low-carbon transformation, supply chain carbon footprint data management is no longer a "choice" but a "required course" for enterprises' survival and development. Only by leveraging digital power to break down data barriers, standardize accounting processes, and improve data credibility can enterprises take the initiative in the increasingly strict global carbon regulation and green market competition.