The Challenge:
There’s only so much a person can do in a day. When Sauder Woodworking Co., one of the largest Ready-To-Assemble (RTA) furniture manufacturers in the U.S., approached us with an enormous pool of data and little time to process it, we knew exactly what needed to change.
The Solution:
Our proprietary platform ended up being the difference between an ineffective, piecemeal data management system and the finely tuned process the company is building today.
The Result:
With Tracera, Sauder can think bigger and do more — all without bogging down its employees with hundreds of hours of manual work. Now, CDP reporting is no longer a task the Sauder team dreads, and they’re positioned for even greater efficiency in the years ahead.
What happens when there’s just too much to do?
“There’s just no way we could keep up with the demand. It would be impossible otherwise.” — Tom Wise, Director of Product Safety and Compliance
With more than 20 years’ tenure with Sauder, Director of Product Safety and Compliance Tom Wise stresses that the brand’s founding commitment to sustainability has not changed even in a modernizing world. Still, some sustainability partners had become too difficult — and prohibitively expensive — to work with.
The time for change had come. But it was taking Sauder years to align the brand with evolving environmental standards and regulations, while Innovation and Sustainability Scientist Mike Zimmerman, also launched the brand’s first carbon footprint audit.
The combination had resulted in the company’s biggest pain point: the sheer volume of data the company worked with, which made it nearly impossible to work with and learn from – turn it into actionable data.
The difference a dedicated team can make
“When we had the opportunity to partner with Tracera, we realized that we could start checking more boxes, doing more things to support our sustainability journey without adding staff.” — Tom Wise, Director of Product Safety and Compliance
Once Tracera was brought in, the work began to intelligently facilitate ESG reporting on a site-by-site basis. Today, each of Sauder’s 20-plus sites can now contribute to the data tracking autonomously and all data is now available immediately.
Tracera’s platform also allows Sauder to track and compare trends and forecast future concerns. Shawn Najarian, customer compliance lead, is now using Sauder data to work towards setting sustainability goals that measure real impact and continue the company’s never-ending journey into a greener tomorrow — from scopes 1 and 2 and increasingly, scope 3 as well.
More time for what matters
“That’s the reason why we partnered up with Tracera. You guys said you’d be there every step of the way, and you haven’t let us down. We haven’t heard a ‘no’ yet.” — Tom Wise, Director of Product Safety and Compliance
Tracera is on track to save Sauder hundreds of hours of manual labor, data input and human-mediated auditing. This has been particularly evident in their approach to CDP reporting, where cross-functional teams are already seeing the software’s ability to deliver transparent and useful data quickly, confidently and effortlessly.
In his first year using the platform, Zimmerman noted the dramatic difference: “I recall telling my boss it took me 40 to 60 hours to do all [the data collection], and then probably another 40 hours to get the CDP done.”
With Tracera handling the heavy lifting, much of that manual work has been eliminated.
Moving forward, Najarian plans to use Tracera software to expand the Sauder Compliance team’s work, enabling a more extensive audit of the company’s externalities. With that insight will come the ability to engage in projects that are even more impactful on the company’s carbon footprint, not to mention the opportunity for potential business growth fueled by a more climate-friendly model.
The power of AI-native automation
From day one, Tracera software has worked to open the data bottleneck that blocked the view of key insights across Sauder’s value chain. Here’s how:
● Tracera’s in-house team of ESG reporting experts made onboarding fast and easy.
● High-level data extraction unified information previously managed manually.
● Sophisticated data visualization resulted in relevant, real-world solutions.
● Tracera software freed up time for each team member managing the tracking and reporting process.
With Tracera’s easy-to-use software and substantial support team, no stone is left unturned. Wise says that this partnership could not have come at a more pivotal time. In his words: it’s simply data they can trust.
Looking ahead
While Sauder is still in the early stages of its transformation — only 10 months into their Tracera journey — the foundation has been laid for significant long-term gains. As Zimmerman notes: “I really think 2025 will be really telling of how efficient all that goes.”
The team expects that by next year, what was once a dreaded annual process will become a streamlined, largely automated workflow that delivers the reliable, auditable data they need to meet growing customer demands and regulatory requirements.
Want to learn how Tracera can simplify and strengthen your company’s reporting across your value chain? Contact us today.
