January 13, 2026 How Maintenance Drives U.S. Manufacturing Performance

Supply chain shocks, retirements, and rising costs have now made preventive maintenance a critical driver of U.S. manufacturing performance.

By Nick Haase

As ESG regulations have evolved, the integration between sustainability reporting and financial reporting has accelerated. This shift places the CFO at the center of ESG compliance. Because CFOs report directly to the board of directors and its audit committee, this convergence elevates ESG from an operational concern to a board-level responsibility. Boards are increasingly tasked with setting the sustainability vision, overseeing strategy, and ensuring accountability for outcomes.

In Europe, for example, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) directly links sustainability disclosures to financial statements and requires comparable levels of audit assurance, internal controls, and publication verification. This convergence means ESG data must now meet the same standards of accuracy, governance, and defensibility as financial data. These responsibilities have traditionally sat with the CFO and the audit function.

Beyond regulatory alignment, CFOs increasingly recognize that climate-related risks are material financial risks that must be actively managed. Reporting frameworks such as the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) have highlighted the growing exposure of facilities, operations, supply chains, and customers to climate-driven disruptions. As a result, CFOs are now accountable for incorporating these risks into enterprise risk management, financial planning, and capital allocation decisions. This includes determining where to build not only operational resilience, but also financial safeguards to protect the long-term viability and going concern of the business.

How Finance and IT Teams Collaborate on ESG Data, Reporting, and Audits

One of the biggest challenges in ESG reporting is ensuring the availability and quality of underlying data. Typical supplier response rates, for example, often hover around 20%. This means that for many organizations, Scope 3 emissions reporting relies more on estimation and extrapolation than on reported primary data. For global companies, these challenges are further compounded by the need to harmonize data across geographies, business units, units of measure, currencies, and reporting standards. These inconsistencies introduce material risks to data integrity and audit readiness.

Increasingly, AI is becoming a critical tool in addressing these challenges. AI enables organizations to automate data ingestion, validate and reconcile inconsistent inputs, identify anomalies, and intelligently fill data gaps through advanced modeling techniques. Under CFO oversight, finance and IT teams are working closely to apply AI-enabled data enrichment and governance. This ensures ESG reporting starts from a foundation of high-quality, consistent, and auditable information. The collaboration not only improves the accuracy and completeness of ESG disclosures but is also essential for meeting growing audit and assurance expectations under regulations such as CSRD.

The CFO’s influence over technology investments tied to carbon reduction, cloud efficiency, and responsible procurement 

Financial officers still want to see a return on their investment in sustainability initiatives. As some of the lower-hanging fruits have been picked (energy efficiency, renewable PPAs, waste reductions, water conservation), the next challenge is in identifying the next marginal abatement initiative. This is where CFOs, IT departments, and sustainability offices are seeing real integration, as financial professionals are bringing sophisticated modeling tools, IT groups are integrating near real-time monitoring and sustainability experts are guiding strategy on abatement. 

How IT leaders build trustworthy ESG data pipelines (carbon accounting, asset lifecycle, supply chain, etc.) 

This isn’t just an IT issue but requires system-level governance for any company. For instance, getting a supplier to respond to one year’s data request for a life cycle analysis is hard enough, but getting that data updated bi-annually (or even annually or monthly) requires more than just IT systems. It also requires integration with procurement (to where contractual and solicitation language spells out expectations), with products or research so that product innovation roadmaps don’t outpace data collection, and with sustainability (who are often tasked with industry wide coordination). 

Practical metrics tracked by organizations, including energy-efficiency KPIs, Scope 3 transparency, and IT asset lifecycle impacts 

Most KPIs are set up based on metrics upon which the company can act. For instance, it’s difficult to take action on the embedded carbon of a digital device, but easier to act on extending the life of such a device. The challenge when setting up these metrics, though, is finding a suitable indicator upon which action can be taken – but then articulating the output of that KPI in true sustainability value. For instance, tracking the power usage efficiency (PUE) of a data center may be useful for colocation companies to compare their efficiency, but a low PUE in a carbon intensive grid may still contribute more GHG than a higher PUE in a hydro-dominated grid. Balancing action with outcome is necessary. 

Examples of joint CFO–CIO initiatives that advanced sustainability or reduced financial/operational risk 

One client sells a premium product based on the sustainable materials used in its manufacturing. The company is ISCC certified, which means that they are allowed to track the sustainable materials through the manufacturing process and, when the product is finally sold, certify that they can charge a premium price for such product. 

However, the realistic challenge of tracing both the sustainable material as well as an associated certificate for the material is daunting. But, without that type of IT platform performing such diligence, the ability to sell premium products disappears. This is where the CFO and CIO’s offices stepped in together to jointly sponsor a traceability platform that can drive greater revenues while reducing the resource impact of the company on the environment.

About the Author:
Nick Haase is a co-founder of MaintainX, an AI-powered maintenance and asset management platform transforming how frontline teams operate. Over the past seven years, he has helped scale MaintainX into a global leader trusted by more than 13,000 manufacturing and other industrial companies to boost production, reduce unplanned downtime, and build more resilient operations. Today Nick continues to drive MaintainX’s rapid growth and innovation, shaping the future of industrial maintenance and operations.

Subscribe to Industry Today