Saama Technologies

Overview

Saama, a California-headquartered healthcare technology company with a global workforce across the Americas, APAC, Europe and India, sought to build an ESG programme designed to the standard pharma sponsors apply to clinical data: human review at every quality gate with a full audit trail. In 2025, Saama started working with KEY ESG to realise this ambition, empowering its existing teams across the globe to collaborate effectively and build the data foundations crucial to support its sustainability programme.

A pharma-grade approach to ESG

Saama's clients are large pharmaceutical companies that write ESG performance into supplier contracts and increasingly tie qualification to EcoVadis ratings and SBTi commitments. Creating an efficient and reliable ESG data collection process that can provide audit-ready ESG data is therefore an important pillar to Saama's growth.

When Saama's Global Head of Quality, Compliance & ESG, Jo-Ann Rodriguez, and her team built the programme in 2025, they strove to apply the same discipline Saama uses for clinical GxP processes: defensible documentation, audit trail at every step, and a designated review gate before any output is signed off.

To build a repeatable and scalable process, Saama selected KEY ESG as its AI-powered [SR2.1]software vendor of choice after a diligence process that evaluated the platform's capabilities on data quality review features, user-friendliness and customer support.

“ESG is not a reporting exercise for us. It is a commercial mandate. We needed a system that enables us to apply the same discipline we use for our clinical GxP processes and that produces audit-grade data we can trust.”

Jo-Ann Rodriguez, Global Head of Compliance, Quality and ESG, Saama Technologies

Enabling ESG data ownership

Saama identified 18 data owners across its organisation and tasked them with collecting data across 4 entities spanning 2 continents. 13 custom metrics and 39 data points had been scoped, with units and entity boundaries locked, before any data was collected. Most of the assigned data owners had not worked with sustainability data before. To get the whole team up to speed, tailored onboarding sessions with KEY ESG's Customer Success [SR4.1]team enabled Mackenzie Cady, Quality and Compliance Manager, to upskill herself and her global colleagues on the various ESG metrics that would be tracked.

An intuitive system for global workflows and collaboration

Although Saama is headquartered in California, a significant part of its global operations spans the Americas, APAC and Europe. KEY ESG enabled Saama to enhance the collaboration between its global teams: within 9 days of signing[SR5.1], its 18 data owners were live on the software and collaborating on data collection and review processes in-platform.

Mackenzie Cady faced the challenge of limited overlap in business hours with her global team. In-platform agentic AI and human support enabled users to get their questions answered as they were actively going through their workflows, enabling Mackenzie to focus on higher-value issues during limited overlap hours with her global team.

“KEY ESG has been an effective tool for launching our programme. The team were highly responsive, a key factor in our successful implementation.”

Mackenzie Cady, Quality and Compliance Manager, Saama Technologies ★★★★★ 5.0 on Capterra, October 2025

A continuous reporting rhythm as a foundation for action

KEY ESG enabled Saama to build a centralised source of truth for global collaboration on ESG data collection and performance management. The global team managed to produce its full GHG Protocol Inventory covering all three scopes. With this baseline in place, Saama can start focusing on improvement and is working towards its Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) alignment submission.

KEY ESG now provides Saama with the decision-grade data it needs to move from reporting to action. The platform underpins Saama's transition to sustainable procurement to strengthen its Scope 3 reporting, and supports the operational planning required for its long-term decarbonisation commitments. ESG metrics sit on the monthly executive leadership agenda, the ESG team meets biweekly, and ownership runs cross-functionally across Finance, Legal, Product, HCM, IT and Operations under the Quality Management Office.

Solid foundations for AI-enabled ESG workflows

As an AI-driven technology company, Saama harnesses artificial intelligence both in its products and in its internal operations. The team has identified significant efficiency gains that AI can bring to many of its processes while remaining mindful of the risks and governance requirements that accompany it.

Jo-Ann Rodriguez emphasises that while Claude and Gemini are enterprise AI tools the organisation leverages, they are currently undergoing validation as part of Saama's GxP and ESG governance frameworks to ensure full compliance with AI regulatory requirements, and are therefore not yet certified to produce the audit-grade ESG reports that Saama requires as standalone outputs.

The KEY ESG platform bridges this gap: it offers Saama the ability to connect its trusted ESG data to its preferred AI tools through the KEY ESG MCP connector. This allows the team to access verified, audit-grade sustainability data inside its preferred AI environment, combining the speed and intelligence of AI with the provenance and data quality controls that Saama's pharma clients demand. The result is a scalable, AI-enabled ESG workflow built on a foundation the business can trust.