The starting point.
The customer is a privately held Indian specialty chemicals producer with eleven plants. Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions were already calculated, with reasonable evidence in place. Scope 3, in particular Category 1 purchased goods and services, was the asterisk in every disclosure cycle. Supplier coverage was thin, the long tail was opaque, and the team had not yet found a way to close the loop with procurement.
BRSR Core and a forthcoming voluntary disclosure pushed the team to make Scope 3 a first-class part of the next cycle, with an evidence chain auditors could reasonably review.
The brief.
Bring Scope 3 across the eleven plants to audit-ready quickly. Use spend as the prioritisation signal, not gut feel. Get procurement involved in the workflow rather than around it. Leave a chain of custody auditors can follow.
How we rolled out.
1. Spend-weighted prioritisation, day one.
On the first day, Noa imported procurement spend from the customer’s ERP and grouped suppliers by spend tier and category. The team chose to invite roughly the top 80 percent of spend in the first wave. The remaining long tail was scoped for emission-factor reconciliation as a background workflow.
2. Supplier questionnaire that respects vendor reality.
Tier-1 vendors received a short questionnaire with the minimum fields needed for a defensible Category 1 calculation. The questionnaire ran in their inbox, with optional WhatsApp follow-ups where local preference made that work better. No vendor portal logins, no shared spreadsheets.
3. Procurement closes the long tail in the background.
For suppliers that did not respond in the first wave, Noa flagged spend-relevant gaps to the procurement team inside the workflow they already used. Emission-factor estimates filled the calculation in the meantime, with provenance attached so auditors knew which line was direct and which was modelled.
What runs on Noa today.
Scope 1, 2 and 3 across all eleven plants run on Noa with a unified evidence trail. The Category 1 supplier programme is now part of the procurement cadence, refreshed continuously rather than chased at year end. Internal review and external assurance read from the same vault, with the right scopes.
The outcome.
Before
- Scope 3 listed as a footnote with low confidence
- Supplier outreach handled by occasional email blasts
- Procurement involved late, only when figures had to be rebuilt
- No defensible chain of custody from spend to disclosed value
With Noa
- Scope 3 disclosed alongside Scope 1 and 2 with attached evidence
- A spend-weighted, continuously refreshed supplier programme
- Procurement working inside the same workflow that produces the disclosure
- Direct responses and modelled lines clearly distinguished for assurance
Scope 3 does not need to be the asterisk in the report. It needs to be the routine that procurement and sustainability share.
Customer details have been generalised. Outcomes described reflect deployments as scoped and may not be representative of all engagements. References to third-party products are descriptive of prior states only.