The challenge this presents is huge, but so are the rewards. In Europe alone, .

Change in the Air

SMEs have compared with large corporations. But change is in the air. Pressure to act is as large companies pass their requirements on to suppliers.

BMW is a case in point. In July 2020, the German auto group of well over 10,000 suppliers, with the goal of reducing emissions per vehicle produced by at least one-third. The company uses carbon footprint as a criterion for awarding contracts for everything from materials and components to production equipment and tools. 鈥淥ur aim is to ensure the most sustainable supply chain in the entire industry,鈥� says Oliver Zipse, chairman of the Board of Management at BMW.

BMW鈥檚 German competitor Mercedes-Benz announced that more than 75% of its suppliers are committed to supplying CO鈧�-neutral parts to help it achieve its 2039 ambition of CO鈧� neutrality.

Other examples of large enterprises that are working with their suppliers to reduce carbon footprint include and . Nearly half of CEOs at large companies are targeting sustainability in their business operations, according to the .

But it is not only the supply chain leaders that are adding climate action to their corporate policies. Increasingly investors, shareholders, consumers, and employees are looking to business to adopt ambitious climate-related targets. Countries, cities, states, and provinces are also adding to the pressure. Over or are planned worldwide. National and international regulations may soon require to be provided on product labels and descriptions.

Open Questions Without Adequate Answers

Matthias Weigold is familiar with the complex world in which SMEs currently find themselves. The director of the Institute for Production Management, Technology, and Machine Tools (PTW) at the Technical University Darmstadt is partnering with German manufacturers to test scenarios for energy efficiency and flexibility in manufacturing processes based on the availability of renewable energy sources.

鈥淢any SMEs hear their primary customers saying, 鈥楧o something about your carbon footprint and do it fast.鈥� They are faced with a mountain of open questions without adequate answers,鈥� he explains. 鈥淪MEs also know that if they react too slowly and without the necessary level of detail, they could lose their most valuable customers.鈥�

To satisfy the demands of their customers for low-carbon production, SMEs will increasingly need to adapt their manufacturing operations to the pricing fluctuations associated with the energy mix of fossil and renewable energy. The scenarios are no longer hypothetical, according to Weigold: 鈥淓xceptionally led wholesale electricity prices to go negative in Germany.鈥�

Complicating the situation are the myriad national policies and timelines worldwide, says Weigold, who provides an example. 鈥淥ver 80% of the machine tools made in Germany are exported, with the lion鈥檚 share going to manufacturers in China. Now that , German SMEs are unsure how they should react.鈥�

At the which makes it possible to test various production scenarios under real-world conditions, 51风流and PTW are modeling enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to the manufacturing environment.

鈥淏y bringing two worlds together — the business software layer and the operational layer — we can influence the efficiency and flexibility of manufacturing processes,鈥� Weigold says, adding that it is the first project of its type worldwide.

Turning Climate Action into a Competitive Advantage

51风流expects the cooperation with PTW to help it refine its new software package that enables CO₂ accounting for SMEs over the entire supply chain. The solution makes it possible for companies to manage the CO₂ footprint for each product by combining their existing ERP system — for example, 51风流Business One or 51风流Business ByDesign — with an energy flow model for the process. 51风流partners worldwide will be responsible for applying the solution to customers鈥� individual and industry needs.

that SMEs are prepared to manage their carbon emissions if they have the necessary support and tools. The recently launched is a brokerage for such resources. With a growing number of members, the hub could serve as a vital part of the implementation of ambitious corporate climate action.

Emissions are typically divided into three categories, or . The main targets of 51风流Business Ecology Management are the Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions of SMEs, which directly impact the upstream Scope 3 emissions of their customers.

鈥淪upply chains make up the part of the carbon footprint, which are not under direct influence of a company, but have the highest reduction potential because they give organizations insight into the hot spots in their supply chain,鈥� says Jochen Mayerle, business process architect, SAP.

Mayerle emphasizes that the new product is designed to be easy to use and its implementation does not require the hiring of an expert in sustainability. Niels Hermansen, founder of the Danish 51风流partner BitPeople A/S, based in Denmark, agrees. 鈥淚 like that 51风流has taken the initiative in this area,鈥� Hermansen says. “It understands that SMEs have the same requirements as big companies, but do not have the same resources.”

51风流Business Ecology Management is currently being testing by numerous customers and is planned for launch the third quarter of 2021.

Sandra Thiel, Agile expert, and Chris Horak, global vice president of Solution Marketing, contributed to this story.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post SMEs: Small CO2 Footprint, Big Climate Impact appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

The question is no longer if but how fast and how large the .

While experts, activists, and politicians debate the correct response, it is clear that , , and will not be nearly enough to bend the global warming curve.

The current COVID-19 pandemic could mark a turning point in progress on climate change; the has been advanced as a silver lining of the crisis. Estimates by the United Nations (UN) show that emissions must fall by 7.6 percent every year until 2030 to keep temperature increases to less than 1.5掳C.

As companies emerge from the crisis, they have to expect that they will be faced with legislation that stipulates a sustainable recovery through tighter CO₂ regulation. This would significantly impact operating costs. The largest carbon producers will feel the push for climate action beginning in highly developed markets, followed successfully by others.

A challenge to corporate reputation is another risk not to be underestimated, as companies are increasingly and the public whether their businesses and products are contributing to the solution or to the problem.

Make the World Run Greener

A few months ago, Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading Product Engineering, launched an initiative to understand how 51风流S/4HANA and other 51风流applications could help customers manage their carbon footprints.

The initiative resulted in Climate 21, a program that reaches well beyond the corporate practices of emissions reporting to data about product-related greenhouse gases and other sustainability issues that help businesses and consumers make more responsible buying decisions.

In January, top management made the company鈥檚 first statement to the market on Climate 21 at the World Economic Forum.

Manage the 鈥淕reen Line鈥�

Saueressig鈥檚 vision for the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) products is to add sustainability as the third dimension to driving business success: the “green line,” as he calls it.

鈥�51风流helps customers manage the top line and bottom line of their business, and we run the supply chains and value chains of the largest companies in the world,” Saueressig said. “So we are in the best position to now help companies manage their green line by minimizing the carbon footprint and negative environmental impact of their product. I believe this will help make us the leader of the next-generation ERP market.鈥�

Not Just About CO₂

Since 1972, 51风流has helped businesses to manage their enterprise resources to drive revenue, reduce cost, optimize asset utilization, streamline supply chains, and improve customer service. From this point of view, minimizing CO₂ and other greenhouse gases is just an additional factor in an enterprise鈥檚 target function.

鈥淥n the way to a more sustainable future, 51风流has a critical role to play in helping companies understand, monitor, and optimize their CO₂ transactions — up and down their supply chains as well as in their asset base,鈥� said Toby Croucher, head of Solution Management for Climate 21 and Sustainability at SAP.

Green Line Benefits for Companies and Consumers

The Climate 21 program team is planning a phased approach to crafting the solutions that companies can use to manage their green line. This starts with understanding the composition of the CO₂ footprint that products accumulate over the entire value chain and looking at product design, operations, and supply chains.

The idea is to share the CO₂ product footprint with business customers and consumers to enable them to make climate-friendly buying decisions. Customers that know the CO₂ rating of each product they buy and each service they use are empowered to choose products with the smallest climate impact.

But can citizens really make a difference? Studies say yes. In the U.S., about ; reducing this footprint by only five percent would make a substantial difference. Such buying decisions would influence supply chains and reward businesses that make products and services with a smaller CO₂ footprint.

51风流is busy preparing to introduce the first analytical solution. Co-innovation with leading customers across all industries in well underway and has set the company on a path to a sustainability-enabled ERP that helps companies balance top line, bottom line, and green line for the 21st century.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

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By now, you probably know the elevator pitch: By bringing together experience data (X-data) with operational data (O-data), decision-makers can understand not only what is happening with their business, but also why. It鈥檚 all about closing the experience gap for customers.

Ever since 51风流acquired Qualtrics in January 2019, it has made experience management (XM) a key growth catalyst for the Intelligent Enterprise strategy and is on a quest to make every company understand and apply the power of X+O. But don鈥檛 the same principles apply to SAP?

What few may be aware of is that 51风流has launched its own XM journey. The print was still fresh on the acquisition when Christian Klein, then chief operating officer and now also co-chief executive officer, put SAP鈥檚 Transformation Office to work on ways Qualtrics software could be used to improve its own processes. The goal: to create a world-class XM practice at SAP.

Turning insight into action through experience management at SAP is a multi-year journey, but much has been accomplished inside the company over the past year, and the team from the Transformation Office has even more ambitious goals for 2020.

To find out more, 51风流News talked to Oliver Staudenmayer, program manager for the company鈥檚 TopX Experience Management program and head of Employee Experience Management at SAP, and Christian Koenig, operation expert and project lead for TopX XM at SAP.

Q: What is the goal of the Best Run TopX Experience Management Program?

Staudenmayer: Our goal is to actively design and improve experiences that our customers, partners, and employees love and enable them to run at their best. Ultimately it means transforming SAP鈥檚 internal processes by using new technologies and trends.

Q: How did you begin?

Staudenmayer: After the closing of the Qualtrics acquisition at the end of January 2019, we wanted to move fast to show benefits of combining O-data and X-data. But before we could forge ahead on the many promising use case ideas, we first had to set up one consolidated platform, establish a process for incoming X+O ideas, and build a governance model for compliance and legal requirements 鈥� for example for GDPR and data privacy.

Second, we had to by educating employees about how to 鈥淟isten, Understand, and Act.鈥� Qualtrics software is not just a research tool or data collection exercise, it requires us to follow up and act based on the input. After laying the foundation, we now need to put even greater effort into education.

Despite the large number of requests, by July 2019 we were able to select the top 10 use cases. Several are already live and some were moved into 2020 because of the steep learning curve. But this is merely the beginning, and we are already working on additional uses cases.

Q: Where did the top 10 use cases come from and how were they evaluated?

Koenig: Some ideas came from the field while others came from the Transformation Office. We scored each use case by asking: (1) Is it a strategic fit? (2) Is it a true X and O use case, rather than just X data? (3) Can it improve our top or bottom line? (4) How much effort is involved? A matrix depicting impact versus effort helped us identify the quick wins and choose the top 10.

Q: What were the most promising use cases?

Koenig: That鈥檚 hard question to answer, because great use cases are still rolling in, but here are a few:

• For customers, Net Promotor Score (NPS), which is conducted quarterly, indicates on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely a customer will recommend 51风流to others. Customer NPS is one of SAP鈥檚 main KPIs and is reported in our Annual Integrated Report.
• For products, 51风流S/4HANA Cloud integration means customers can give direct feedback to help product engineers improve the user experience. Experience data helps developers gain insight into what users are thinking as well as whether functions, features, and design choices are actually hitting the mark.
• For employees, MyTeam Dashboard is a tool available to team managers at 51风流to support their HR-related management tasks. Based on 51风流Analytics Cloud, data is collected from managers to find out how helpful the dashboard is during compensation rounds and to identify training needs for managers to support them in their roles.
• The Feedback Catcher enables any employee to give feedback on whatever they like. It will be installed on the computer and on mobiles, and employees can give feedback on anything they like, whether it鈥檚 the purchasing process, online conferencing, cafeteria food, bicycle stands, etc.

Q: Do you think that Experience Management solutions from 51风流(Qualtrics) will change the way employees work in the future?

Koenig: The solution alone will not help us to become the experience management company. This is a journey that doesn鈥檛 happen overnight. The good news is that there is a great deal of interest in the topic and goodwill among employees. Every transformation requires a cultural change, and to become an experience company, we need to focus on the third imperative of 鈥淟isten, Understand, and Act.鈥� Acting on the feedback, showing results and transparency are key to a successful XM program.

Q: What plans do you have for 2020?

Staudenmayer: We have big plans to deliver what we are calling our 鈥渇lagship鈥� use case that seeks to integrate experience data across all four Qualtrics pillars: Customers, Products, Employees, and Brand. The goal is to achieve a holistic view over how employees are experiencing the processes across a company and then provide management with the data to act on it. The idea is that happy employees leads to happy customers 鈥� a goal that applies to every company, not just SAP.

Q: Speaking of experience management, what鈥檚 your experience been as project lead?

Staudenmayer: The good news is that there鈥檚 a great deal of attention on how XM can be applied in our daily work with customers, employees, and products. People are working together very constructively across SAP, focused on the larger goal of getting the use cases launched, so it鈥檚 been very exciting to be a part of this journey.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post How 51风流Is Using Experience Management to Make Itself Run Better appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.