Most logistics teams swear their freight and emissions numbers are "close enough." In reality, the average shipper can trust barely half of the data moving through their systems. Studies of freight bills, master-data audits and Scope 3 reporting show usable accuracy hovering between 30 and 60 percent. Every month, those gaps translate into lost tenders, shrinking margins and last-minute compliance fire-drills.
The Dangerous Myth of "Close Enough"
A quick assumption here, a little estimation there. On their own, assumptions and input errors may seem minor. Together, they quietly derail operations:
- Procurement awards lanes on distorted cost-per-kilometre figures
- Sales teams lose green tenders because Scope 3 totals can’t be verified
- Insurance premiums rise due to inconsistent incident reporting
- Auditors flag reporting gaps that lead to fines
A €3 error on one shipment sounds harmless. Multiply it across thousands of movements annually and you’re looking at a seven-figure leak, hidden in plain sight.
Death by Spreadsheets
If your team is copying figures from multiple carrier portals, 8-9 logistics systems, Excel files, and forwarding attachments between departments, data drift is unavoidable. Every manual copy-paste, every free-text field, pulls you further away from reality. By the time those figures reach senior leadership, they’re already misleading decisions.
Consider this:
- Fewer than 1 in 3 supply chain managers have real-time shipment visibility
- Just 6% of companies claim full end-to-end supply chain transparency
- Scope 3 data is the least considered but potentially highest emissions contributor in your business
The cost of poor data isn’t abstract, it’s built into every pricing error, every delayed decision, and every lost contract.
When Data Quality Equals Competitive Advantage
Companies that lift data accuracy above 90 percent don’t just fix problems. They gain a measurable edge:
- Freight costs drop by 4 to 12 percent through tighter benchmarks
- Admin time for compliance falls by 30 to 50 percent
- Tenders are won on verified sustainability credentials while others stall
If your accuracy sits around 50 percent and your competitor’s is above 90, that 40-point gulf is where profits, contracts and investor confidence are won and lost.
The Clock Is Ticking
CountEmissions EU, ISO 14083 and the CSRD Scope 3 regulations are now live or arriving within the next reporting cycle. These frameworks demand accurate, auditable, line-level data, not best-effort estimates.
The era of rough estimates and carbon as a "free externality" is over. Emissions are now priced, scored, and closely examined by regulators, customers and financial institutions.
What High-Performing Teams Are Doing Differently
Fixing this doesn’t necessarily mean installing a shiny new platform. It means connecting the systems you already have and closing the gaps in how they speak to one another.
- A unified infrastructure to bring together freight cost, carrier performance and emissions data
- Automated checks flagging duplicate entries, error driven costs and providing accurate emissions data
- Single source of truth information for finance, logistics and sustainability to see the same numbers, at the same time
Where Kinver Comes In
Kinver sits on top of your ERP, TMS or spreadsheet setup and provides the infrastructure to convert scattered data into one verified source of truth.
- Highly accurate emissions calculation on your global logistics footprint
- Instant customer and internal reports
- Lane-level cost and carbon visibility for procurement and sales teams
- Deployment in weeks, not months.
No disruption to services. No additional admin. No IT projects.
Don’t Let Bad Data Make Your Next Million-Euro Decision
Keeping your freight emissions data at 50 percent accuracy is like flipping a coin on every strategic call.
Let’s fix that.
Book a free 20-minute diagnostic with Kinver. We’ll show you where the leaks are and how to lock them down fast.
