White Spire is a Galway ESG and finance firm. On paper, the work is strategy, carbon, and audit-ready reporting. In the room, it is a pile of utility bills, invoices, and delivery records, spread across sites, sitting in inboxes and spreadsheets that nobody quite trusts.
They built ARC to fix that bottleneck. Black Pug Studio, a web and AI studio in the same city, built the product people log into.
A reporting firm with a data problem
White Spire helps organizations take control of sustainability reporting, finance operations, and the processes around both. Strategy. CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and VSME (Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for SMEs) compliance. Carbon footprinting. Audit-ready reporting. Finance automation. Process work. Their line is compliance as a capability, not a burden.
They sit in Galway, at Platform 94 in Mervue. Galway Chamber listed them as a member in March 2026. Both partners come from finance and governance. That is the point. The work has to stand up when someone checks the numbers.
The reporting requirements were already clear. The stall was always the evidence.
White Spire’s own words: for organizations reporting across multiple sites, sustainability data is everywhere and nowhere. Buried in PDFs. Manually re-keyed. Hard to verify. Slow to consolidate. They built ARC after seeing that pattern in their advisory work. The product converts utility bills, invoices, and delivery records into structured, traceable datasets, so a team spends less time gathering data and more time using it.
They explain it at whitespire.ie/arc-ai. The application is at arc.whitespire.ie.
What the product has to do
A carbon or sustainability report is only as good as the documents underneath it. Those documents do not arrive as a clean export. They arrive as bills, invoices, and delivery records, from more than one site, in more than one format.
Someone has to collect them. Someone has to read them. Someone has to turn each line item into data a report can use, including which ESG Scope it belongs to (Scope 1, 2, or 3). Then someone has to check the result, because this work is audit-adjacent and a black box will not do.
That last part is the one that used to take the time. Opening every document. Categorizing every line. Doing it again on the next site, the next month, the next client.
That is the job ARC exists to take. Not the advisory conversation. Not the public explanation of the practice. The unglamorous middle: get the raw material in, classify it, let staff review what is uncertain, send it back out as something the firm can stand behind.
What we built
The brief was the tool.
A client needs a place to upload the raw material. Staff need a dashboard they can work in. Those files have to become structured data. Someone at White Spire has to review the output. Then the work has to leave as a branded report that still sounds like White Spire.
That is the product layer we designed and built.
The portal. Clients need a way in that does not require a briefing document. Upload the bills. Upload the invoices. Upload the delivery records. Get them out of the shared inbox and into one place.
The processing. The files have to be read, line by line, and turned into structured, traceable data. Each line item also has to land in the right ESG Scope. That classification is what used to eat the week. White Spire staff had to open every document, review every line, and categorize it by hand. Now an extractor and a reviewer do that pass. If either is unsure, the item is flagged for a person. This is where AI services earn their place: they take a repeated, messy job and prepare it. They do not get the last word.
The review. White Spire’s team works the output in a staff dashboard. They can see what came in, how each line was classified, and what still needs a human. Clear items can move. Doubt gets flagged. If the numbers are going into a report, a person still signs off.
The report. Once line items are classified, the reports can be richer. White Spire has the data an ESG audit actually needs, not a pile of uncategorized rows. The work leaves looking like White Spire. Same firm. Same care. Not a generic export that could belong to anyone.
White Spire owns the platform underneath. We still work with them. The tool is the work we keep shipping.
The longer aim is simpler still. White Spire’s customers should be able to run more of their own ESG reporting in the product, with less staff time on every line.
The constraint that mattered most was simple. A visitor who reads about ARC on their site should land in the same firm when they open the application. Same voice. Same care. Not a brochure pointing at someone else’s software.
Why the product has to feel like the firm
A lot of tools in this space look like they were bought in a hurry. Fine for a demo. Wrong for a finance-led practice that has to stand next to a report.
White Spire’s clients are already trusting them with numbers that will be checked. The product has to carry that. Human review stays in the path. The interface has to match the firm they already met. The output has to be something staff can live with next week, not a prototype that dies in a deck.
That is also why a custom build made sense. Off-the-shelf software would have fought how they already work. White Spire did not need another dashboard to learn. They needed a tool that fits a practice that already knows the frameworks, already sits with clients, and already has to defend the result.
This is the same kind of work we take when a messy, repeated job is eating a team’s week. The wider pattern is in our real-world AI use cases.
Four rules that held
If you are building a product a specialist firm has to live with, these are the rules that held on ARC:
- Start from the job, not the page. The job was classifying messy line items into data a report, and an audit, can use.
- Keep a human in the loop. Audit-adjacent work needs a review step. AI can extract and classify. People still sign off on what is uncertain.
- Match the firm the visitor already met. The application has to feel like White Spire, not like a bolted-on SaaS.
- Ship something staff can work in. A portal, a dashboard, a report. Not a prototype that dies in a deck.
Those four are the brief, written the long way. If a product build cannot pass them, it is not ready.
This is the work we take
Black Pug Studio has been in Galway since 2015. We design and ship brands, websites, software, and AI systems with one team. No handover fog between the interface and the pipeline. Weekly clickable previews. Decisions you can trace.
AI speeds the processing. Humans still own the judgment. That is not a slogan we bolted on for this piece. It is how the product is built.
ARC is the kind of brief that fits that studio. A specialist firm. A real bottleneck. A product they have to live with.
If you need a tool that has to look and behave like the firm behind it, that is the work.
Start a similar build
See more of our work or start a project. A free 30-minute discovery call is enough to find out if the fit is real.
FAQ
What is ARC?
ARC is White Spire’s sustainability data platform. It turns utility bills, invoices, and delivery records from multiple sites into structured, traceable datasets, with each line item classified into the right ESG Scope. They describe it on whitespire.ie/arc-ai.
What did Black Pug Studio build?
The product people use. A client portal, a staff dashboard, and an AI processing flow that extracts line items, classifies them by ESG Scope, and flags anything uncertain for a person.
Who is White Spire?
An Irish ESG and finance firm in Galway. Sustainability reporting, finance operations, and process work, with ARC as the product that handles the data bottleneck.
Why build a custom tool instead of buying software?
White Spire’s work is finance-led and audit-adjacent. The product had to match how they already operate, keep a human in the review step, and feel like the same firm clients already trust.
Is ARC available?
White Spire explains the product on their site and runs the application at arc.whitespire.ie. They invite organizations to register interest.
What kind of product work does Black Pug Studio take?
Tools a team has to live with. Upload paths, review dashboards, processing flows, and the software that sits under a specialist practice. If the brief is only a brochure, say so. We will tell you if we are the right studio.
How do I start a similar project?
Send a brief or book a free 30-minute discovery call. We will tell you if we are the right studio for the tool.
Building ARC for White Spire was originally published in Creative by Black Pug Studio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
