The Case for Building Your Own LCA Tool

Developing an internal LCA platform can seem appealing, especially for companies with unique products or processes. Key advantages include:

- Customisation: Internal tools can be tailored precisely to your business processes, supply chains, and reporting standards.

- Adaptability: In-house platforms can evolve alongside your business. Whether you introduce new product lines or modify your production processes, your LCA system can be updated to reflect changes immediately.

- Control over data: Sensitive supplier or product data can be managed entirely within your organisation, which may be important for proprietary formulas or confidential processes.

However, building your own LCA software comes with significant challenges:

- Resource intensity: Developing a robust LCA platform requires expertise in environmental modelling, software development, and regulatory compliance. It also demands continuous maintenance as regulations, databases, and impact assessment methods evolve.

- Scalability limitations: Internal systems may struggle to handle growing data volumes or multiple product lines efficiently, particularly as your company expands into new markets or introduces more complex products.

- Compliance risk: Staying aligned with ISO 14040/44 standards, regional regulations, or industry-specific sustainability frameworks can be daunting without dedicated resources. Lagging updates of databases and latest impact associated to processes can lead to errors or non-compliant reporting.

- Data retrieval from suppliers: Having robust processes in place to collect, manage, and structure the data required for your LCA is essential. Developing your own tool often fails to provide the appropriate functionality needed to reliably gather consistent and high-quality data from suppliers.

In short, building in-house offers control and customisation but comes at a high cost in time, money, and ongoing maintenance.

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The Case for Buying LCA Software

Ready-made LCA software provides a faster, more scalable route to robust sustainability insights. Benefits include:

- Speed to value: Off-the-shelf solutions are immediately usable, allowing companies to start measuring impacts and generating reports without months of development.

- Regulatory alignment: Established software is typically updated regularly to reflect current LCA standards and industry regulations, reducing compliance risk.

- Database access: Many platforms come with extensive life-cycle inventory databases, saving companies the effort of sourcing and maintaining their own data.

- Efficiency and scalability: Modern software handles large data volumes and complex product portfolios, which is especially valuable for cosmetics, beverages, and packaging businesses with multiple SKUs or global operations.

- Ongoing support and innovation: Vendors continuously improve their tools, adding new impact categories, features, and integrations that would be costly to replicate internally.

On the downside, off-the-shelf solutions may:

- Lack full customisation: Some unique business processes or formulations may not fit perfectly into the software’s standard templates.

- Require user training and integration: Teams need to adapt existing workflows and ensure smooth data integration from ERP or procurement systems.

- Incur recurring costs: Subscription or licensing fees are ongoing, though typically still lower than the total cost of building and maintaining an internal platform

Balancing the Decision

For many companies, buying LCA software strikes the optimal balance between accuracy, speed, and compliance. Building in-house can make sense for organisations with highly specialised products or exceptional IT and sustainability resources, but these cases are often the exception rather than the rule.

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What to Consider Before Buying or Building LCA Software

1. Data complexity: How complex is your product portfolio? Do you have multiple formulations, packaging variants, or suppliers to track?

2. Regulatory requirements: What standards and frameworks must your company comply with, now and in the near future?

eg: The EU is introducing the Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR), which define exactly how to calculate the footprint for specific categories (e.g., batteries, apparel, packaging) to ensure comparability. Your software must be flexible enough to adopt these granular rule sets (like specific impact categories, cutoff rules, and mandatory datasets) rather than just generic LCA models. It must also support upcoming frameworks like the Digital Product Passport (DPP) and the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).

3. Internal resources: Do you have the technical expertise and bandwidth to develop and maintain a robust LCA system?

4. Scalability and future needs: Will the solution handle growth, new product lines, or expansion into new markets?

5. Integration: How will the software integrate with existing systems such as ERP, procurement, or sustainability reporting platforms?

6. Budget and ROI: Compare the upfront and ongoing costs of building versus buying, including hidden costs like maintenance and updates.

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The Best of Both Worlds: Why Pilario Stands Out

While the choice between building and buying often feels like a trade-off, Pilario effectively bridges this gap. By combining the immediate utility of off-the-shelf software with the flexibility typically reserved for custom-built tools, Pilario overcomes the major disadvantages of both approaches.

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How Pilario Overcomes the Build Disadvantages

- Eliminating Resource Intensity: Unlike building an in-house tool, which requires a dedicated team of developers and environmental scientists, Pilario provides an immediate, cloud-based infrastructure. This allows you to bypass the high upfront development costs and the burden of continuous maintenance.

- Scalability for Non-Experts: Internal tools often remain usable only by the experts who built them. Pilario is designed to "democratise" LCA, offering an intuitive interface that allows users to run complex scenarios and generate reports independently. Pilario grows with your business. We adapt to your needs as data volumes, product portfolios, and sustainability maturity increase. You can start with a broad Scope 3 analysis and gradually expand into detailed, product-level assessments, all within the same platform.

- Guaranteed Compliance: One of the biggest risks of building your own tool is keeping up with shifting regulations (such as CSRD, PEF, and ISO standards). Pilario manages this complexity for you, ensuring your methodology and databases are always up-to-date with the latest global standards without any effort from your team.

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How Pilario Overcomes the Buy Disadvantages

- Customisation Without the Code: The primary downside of buying software is often a lack of flexibility. Pilario addresses this with deep customisation capabilities. Its platform is powered by a robust calculation engine (RangeLCA) that allows for the creation of bespoke models. This is particularly vital for the cosmetics, beverage, and packaging industries, where standard templates often fail to capture complex formulations or specific packaging reuse cycles.

- Industry-Specific Precision: Rather than a generic "one-size-fits-all" approach, Pilario offers tailored solutions (such as our specific tool for the soft drinks industry). This ensures that unique business processes are reflected just as accurately as they would be in a custom-built tool.

- Intelligent Integrations & API Connectivity: Most "bought" tools operate as data silos, requiring manual data entry that kills efficiency. Pilario breaks this cycle with robust API capabilities and ERP integrations. It can pull primary data directly from your procurement systems, bill of materials, or energy monitoring software. This automation turns a static reporting tool into a dynamic operational asset, ensuring your sustainability insights are based on real-time production data rather than outdated averages.

By offering the control and adaptability of a custom build with the speed, compliance, and cost-efficiency of a SaaS platform, Pilario provides a strategic third option for businesses aiming to lead in sustainability.