Duration: 23:27
PART 1 — Analytical Summary 🚀
Context 💼
This session spotlights how Norwegian cable manufacturer Norcable operationalized real-time carbon accounting using MyCompanyCO2, an open‑source app that’s fully embedded in Odoo. The conversation is led by the solution’s team, with Norcable’s CEO sharing the customer view and an external ESG consultant explaining implementation and organizational impact. The goal: show why embedding carbon accounting inside the ERP matters for speed, accuracy, governance, and day‑to‑day decision making.
Core ideas & innovations 🧠
Norcable started as many do: a manual, retrospective GHG Protocol inventory built in Excel from last year’s invoices. It provided answers, but too late to influence procurement choices, supplier negotiations, or sales commitments. With MyCompanyCO2 inside Odoo, carbon data now flows from the same sources that run the business—Purchasing, Expenses, Accounting, and Manufacturing—so emissions are computed automatically, in real time, as activities occur.
The app maps emission factors at supplier and product levels and rolls them up to dashboards that track year‑over‑year and month‑by‑month emissions. Users can drill from totals down to specific suppliers, products, and individual invoices, enabling grounded discussions with vendors and customers on Scope 3 drivers. Procurement sees emissions during RFQ and purchasing; HR logs commuting; manufacturing tracks scrap; logistics and accounting see their contributions too. The integration turns carbon accounting into an operational signal rather than a periodic report.
From the consulting side, the team emphasized that most market tools—whether point solutions or big‑vendor offerings—sit outside the ERP and still require manual data collection and expert services. By contrast, MyCompanyCO2 leverages Odoo’s native data model, so companies become largely autonomous after a short setup. The app is open source, which matters for transparency (buyers and auditors can review how metrics are computed) and community adoption.
Implementation at Norcable was deliberately fast—completed in a few days—to maintain momentum and replace manual reporting before another cycle began. This speed, paired with cross‑functional training (procurement, accounting, logistics, operations), fostered a cultural shift: sustainability moved from a specialist’s task to a shared operational practice.
Impact & takeaways ⚙️
Norcable shifted from lagging, annual views to real‑time carbon visibility. That change unlocked a few tangible outcomes:
- Better supplier conversations and sourcing choices where metals (aluminum, copper) dominate the footprint—85% of Norcable’s emissions come from raw materials.
- Greater credibility with investors and public‑sector buyers as CBAM and carbon border taxes enter the market. Norcable now models scenarios, calculates likely pricing effects, and commits to CO2 budgets with customers.
- Competitive differentiation: the company won a contract with a government‑owned TSO by committing to specific emission factors with invoice‑level traceability—and accepting penalties if they exceed them.
- Organizational adoption: sustainability metrics are rolling into weekly KPI dashboards; teams beyond ESG are trained to act on the data where they work (e.g., RFQs, inventory, transport).
- Reduced dependence on consultants: once configured, the company can close its carbon accounting and produce sustainability reports on its own.
Why it matters: Embedding carbon accounting into the ERP transforms it from a reporting obligation into a daily operating lever. When the data is integrated, automated, auditable, and open, teams can stop measuring yesterday’s impact and start steering today’s decisions. 💬
PART 2 — Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
Real integration beats interfaces. When sustainability lives in the same workflow as purchasing, manufacturing, and accounting, companies stop guessing and start improving. That’s the promise of Odoo: remove complexity so teams can focus on the work, not the admin.
I love that Norcable became autonomous so quickly. Open source ensures transparency and community trust, and the ERP backbone ensures speed and usability. Measurement should be automatic; the real value is enabling people across the company to act on the signal—every day, in every module.
PART 3 — Viewpoint: Competitors (SAP / Microsoft / Others)
Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Embedding carbon accounting directly in the ERP is a compelling approach—especially for mid‑market manufacturers who need fast time‑to‑value and practical UX. The invoice‑level traceability and supplier‑specific factors align with where real reductions happen: procurement and operations.
The challenges ahead are familiar: maintaining high‑quality emission factor data at scale, harmonizing methodologies across regions, and meeting evolving audit, assurance, and regulatory requirements (CSRD, CBAM, PCAF). Large enterprises often operate multi‑ERP landscapes, require robust internal controls, and integrate sustainability into broader data platforms. Odoo’s embedded model shows strong promise; long‑term success will hinge on data governance, verification workflows, and scalability across complex global organizations—areas where enterprise suites traditionally differentiate. Still, the speed and clarity of the integrated UX set a useful benchmark for the market.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.