These metrics must be embedded within a company鈥檚 core operations and services; traditional annual reports are no longer sufficient. Stakeholders want to understand how a company addresses areas such as climate action, with transparency on transition and adaptation plans based on the carbon footprint of its operations. They also want to understand progress on circular economy objectives by monitoring the reuse and recycling of materials. They want to track and advance people sustainability initiatives by gathering key performance indicators (KPIs) in areas such as diversity and inclusion.

SAP鈥檚 product innovations work across the enterprise to deliver on these goals.

Holistic Sustainability Management with 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises

To manage the green line, companies need business process technology to identify, quantify, analyze, and act on data through their end-to-end operations. To enable this, brings together a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to holistically manage sustainability performance. Embedding sustainable business data into processes and networks is one of the five actions business can take toward a sustainable future.

51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises includes the and solutions. It also covers existing products like the application and the . The solution provides an overview of sustainability impacts and performance against green objectives.

We continue to extend the capabilities of 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises. As many companies are accelerating their action for decarbonization, our new capabilities in this area are important.

Driving Carbon Data Transparency Is More Important Than Ever

Accounting for carbon emissions across the organization and its supply chain is a foundational step toward climate action. Businesses are actively looking to reduce their carbon footprints, which requires addressing emissions outside company walls. These emissions 鈥� Scope 3 emissions 鈥� include everything from goods purchased to business travel to packaging and transportation of raw materials. Scope 3 emissions make up a significant portion of overall emissions for our customers. To derive actionable insights to reduce organizational carbon footprint, it is crucial to measure Scope 3 emissions both at a corporate level and at a product level.

are on average 11.4 times higher than operational emissions. To reduce these emissions, it is important to engage across the sectoral value chain, with both suppliers and end customers, especially for customer-facing sectors like retail and consumer product goods (CPG), which have long upstream value chains. Companies can address significantly larger emission volumes by driving deeper engagement throughout their supply chains.

Earlier this year, called on registrants to report on not just their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions but also their Scope 3 emissions. This is not the first time companies have faced this request. Previously, asked companies to disclose the targets they used to assess and manage relevant climate-related risks and opportunities. IFRS takes this approach further with , which focus on transition planning, climate resilience, reporting on Scope 1-2-3 emissions, and disclosure of sustainability-related financial information as a part of its general purpose financial reporting.

Enabling 51风流Customers to Exchange Carbon Data across Value Chains

To develop and execute an effective decarbonization plan, companies need to receive and process high-quality product-level data on carbon emissions from suppliers and provide high-quality product footprint information to their customers.

However, with most supply chains spanning several industry sectors and consisting of multiple, heterogeneous networks and software components, taking a standardized approach to data sharing is critical. To collect meaningful emissions information, it is important that all parties use the same methodology and common standards for calculating and auditing the carbon footprint of a product.

Therefore, 51风流Product Footprint Management implements an API specification developed as part of . 51风流customers can now take informed sourcing and product-development decisions, invest in targeted decarbonization activities, make more accurate disclosures, measure and track decarbonization progress, and adhere to legislative requirements around environmental transparency.

We intend to use 51风流Product Footprint Management as part of 51风流networks 鈥� for example, in the Catena-X Automotive Network (Catena-X) 鈥� to enable a standard-based, secure, and cross-company-wide data exchange throughout the value chain.

In addition, there is the option to use the GreenToken by 51风流solution for multi-tier visibility across the networks. The combination of 51风流Product Footprint Management, 51风流Responsible Design and Production, and GreenToken forms a potent decarbonization value proposition for industries such as consumer goods, as 51风流can demonstrably address material traceability, packaging waste, and supplier-specific carbon data transparency throughout the value chain for both recycled content and land-use change.

New functionality created through our co-development partnership with BearingPoint is already embedded into 51风流Product Footprint Management and helps customers identify carbon reduction potential. Customers can thus determine the carbon footprint of a single product based on both direct and indirect emissions sources and upstream activities, building on existing functionality of carbon footprint measurement of purchased goods with tracking emissions resulting from transportation of those goods. Both these greenhouse gas (GHG) emission categories combined significantly contribute to a customer鈥檚 upstream and downstream environmental impact.

Integrating and Embedding Sustainable Data across the Intelligent Enterprise, Scaling Carbon Impact

Through open APIs, 51风流customers can easily exchange data with their enterprise applications, feeding it into 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises, and then provide the calculated sustainability data back into both 51风流and third-party applications.

With the newly introduced sustainability integration components for 51风流S/4HANA, customers can benefit from preconfigured functionality enabling reuse of sustainability data across processes supported by 51风流S/4HANA, such as record-to-report, lead-to-cash, source-to-pay, and plan-to-fulfill workflows. The component allows a bidirectional flow of information between 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises and 51风流S/4HANA in real time.

Examples include:

• In 51风流S/4HANA Sourcing and Procurement, customers can make sustainable purchase decisions based on a material鈥檚 carbon footprint displayed in purchase requisition, which is then is fed back into 51风流Product Footprint Management, keeping sustainability reporting updated.
• In听51风流Integrated Business Planning, the supply chain planner can access a comprehensive overview of GHG emissions based on the supply plan for the next 12 months. Planners can dive deeper into the details and try to resolve critical situations and alerts. .
• In 51风流Logistics Business Network, the material traceability option helps customers gain further insights into sustainability figures of products and share carbon footprint data on the batch level with suppliers, customers, and end consumers of the products. This feature is available with the 2021 release of 51风流S/4HANA. .
• In plant maintenance, customers can receive automatic updates from 51风流Environment, Health, and Safety Management, triggering corrective action if GHG emissions are exceeded. .
• In 51风流Enterprise Product Development with 51风流Responsible Design and Production, customers will be able to reduce packaging and other material waste by design while simulating for a lower carbon footprint. Packaging is typically a significant source of Scope 3 carbon emissions in consumer goods value chains.

We continue to innovate and aim to help customers track emissions data from 鈥渃radle to gate鈥� 鈥� from the delivery of raw materials to the moment finished products leave the production line, offering intelligent technologies to calculate, exchange, and track carbon footprint information in a trusted way.

Achieving this carbon transparency will pave the way to becoming an intelligent, sustainable enterprise.

Learn More

Sharing sustainability data across your enterprise can help you run more sustainably; . Join the to stay up-to-date with news and announcements about our growing portfolio of sustainability solutions. In addition, check out past and current .

Gunther Rothermel is head of 51风流S/4HANA Sustainability Management at SAP.
Anita Varshney is global vice president of Strategy for 51风流S/4HANA Sustainability at SAP.

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post Extending the Reach of 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

In 2022, the global community will continue to see significant changes in nearly every sector. Here, our EMEA team of experts will share their predictions for the new year ahead.

While it still seems like there may be some challenging times ahead, often this helps us to create new ideas and set up new processes that can help improve and benefit the world well into the future.

Here are the predictions from our team for 2022:

G枚tz Reinhardt, Managing Director at 51风流Concur MEE (Middle & Eastern Europe): Employees will have more choice and flexibility over their travel movements

鈥淢any employees have become accustomed to flexible, remote working hours over the past year. When we can meet and talk with clients via Zoom and other virtual platforms, employees would arguably now be more reluctant to travel across the world to do so, as they can perform a conference call from the comfort of their own home or office space.

Post-pandemic travel is demanding that greater employee flexibility is afforded, to encourage them to take more sensible trips. Additionally, the growing number of SDBs (Supplier Direct Bookings) we are seeing highlights travellers鈥� desires for more freedom of choice and the flexibility to choose the travel supplier they feel most comfortable with from a health & safety standpoint.

As a result, we predict that in 2022, businesses will allow employees greater flexibility when it comes to asking them to travel. Travel communities have become emboldened for their greater good and not just that of the company. So, travel will need to be done on the employee鈥檚 schedule and they need to be allowed to decide which hotels or flights they would like to purchase. Additionally, businesses will also need to evaluate in more detail whether travelling so much is worth the cost and sustainability risks 鈥� especially if alternative arrangements can be made to help reduce this.

Overall, travellers鈥� personalisation will now need to be considered first and foremost over cost鈥� as this will help improve compliance and the well-being and productivity of happier employees.鈥�

Pierre-Emmanuel Tetaz, EMEA SVP and General Manager: Businesses will need to become more honest and transparent about their carbon footprint

鈥淟ast year the Covid-related travel drop resulted in a significant reduction of CO2 emissions which the world environment has benefitted from 鈥� and this helped businesses with improving their sustainability movements. In recent years, sustainability has taken a lead position in the hiring and retention of employees. Many job seekers are evaluating a potential company鈥檚 commitment to environmental and social sustainability as well as the benefits the company offers. Companies that can adapt quickly to this new trend are more likely to attract and retain top talents.

However, with governments across the globe also setting new CO2 emission goals and criteria to meet, sustainable movements are not only critical for an organisation鈥檚 success, but also a top board priority.

Therefore, with business travel expected to start increasing next year, businesses in 2022 will need to provide their employees with greater visibility and informed choices about their sustainability movements and inform them re: how much of an impact their travel will have before booking any trips.

Business travellers will need to be more aware than ever of the carbon footprint they are creating, and if they are not aware, then they are simply not informed enough to make proper and responsible travel decisions. Employee movements need to be justified with travel options being chosen that are the most eco-friendly. To do this, we expect many companies to turn to technology tools which can help them manage their budgets and carbon footprints accordingly and plan the most eco-friendly and efficient routes to travel by.鈥�

Mark Cullen, Managing Director, EMEA South: Businesses will need to adapt technological processes to help solve regulation issues

听鈥淚 expect we will see companies embrace new corporate policies to help facilitate business travel while avoiding issues that could arise due to the complexity of today鈥檚 travel landscape. Unfortunately, there is no global standardisation when it comes to international travel –听 rules and regulations vary immensely by country. The policies will range from outright travel restrictions to ensuring employees have done their due diligence on what is required to travel to their destination before making arrangement and incurring expenses.

While corporate travel will continue to pick up in 2022 the landscape will remain complex, uneven, and confusing for both business and individual travellers; both will be in need of support and guidance to ensure they are aware and adhering to the various regulations to ensure smooth travel. 听We expect to see more organisations turn to technology providers to help address these complications.

Luckily, there are tools, resources, and vendors available today to provide the needed support. We are already seeing corporate leaders re-evaluate what they are doing today and considering how to re-engineer their organisations not only for the immediate future but for what may be waiting around the corner. To complement new policies and ways of managing business processes, we are seeing more interest from organisations in the broader eco-system and how new partnerships can add value and support听 鈥� providers that are best of breed in niche areas such as 鈥楧uty of Care鈥�. The beauty of the cloud is that it affords interoperability between providers, bringing unique sets of data together in new ways for companies and/or individuals to make better informed decisions.

In summary, COVID is not going away but we will continue to learn how to live with it and companies will continue to learn for themselves in 2022鈥�

听Ryan Demaray, Managing Director SMB EMEA at 51风流Concur: Virtual card payments will be used more to empower and manage employee spending

鈥淓ver since the development of cashless payments accelerated, particularly in the hospitality and retail sectors, finance teams across the board are looking for new ways to manage individual and company budgets鈥痮n the go.

With this in mind, we expect to see virtual cards used as a key solution in 2022 to help empower and manage employee spending. For B2B companies, where few payments are made face-to-face, this could potentially be game-changing.

Virtual cards offer significant benefits for travel managers and finance departments. They can be configured for spending limits, department codes, merchant category controls, and date specifications. They deliver this information to an organisation鈥檚 back-end accounting system in real time, making it easier to spot unusual activity, and because the numbers are unique for each transaction, it鈥檚 a more secure way to pay. Businesses can control how much is spent and what it鈥檚 spent on, so it鈥檚 easier to ensure compliance with the company听听and expense policy. It鈥檚 also ideal for employees who don鈥檛 travel often, and for vendors who will be incurring expenses over a limited period for the company in question.

This solution will also help smaller businesses who don鈥檛 want to invest too much and would prefer a simple solution instead. With virtual cards, multiple employees can use different card details, without any extra costs 鈥� and they can easily access the card through a mobile app, where they can also upload receipts for claims. We expect to see this technology take off for businesses in the next year ahead.鈥�

听Rob Harrison, MD EMEA North at 51风流Concur: Additional challenges will arise around data privacy

鈥�With the world slowing opening for business, and more people feeling confident about travelling, we can expect to see an increase around duty of care regulations for 2022 and the future. With individuals now expected to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test, or confirmation of their vaccine status, businesses will want to make sure that everyone is compliant and travelling with caution and care.

Having said this, while these regulations are still being adopted by many businesses and governments, there are still some concerns around the data privacy of these new procedures 鈥� which we expect to see as a key talking point in 2022.

For instance, the 鈥榲accine passport鈥� will hold sensitive information on health data 鈥� which is crucial to keep secure. There are several challenges and additional obligations that will apply under GDPR and UK GDPR 鈥� including obtaining the correct consent to any transfer and providing the right privacy notice. Any privacy notice must be specific to the processing in question.

Therefore, for vaccine passports and other data and regulation requirements, businesses will need to be responsible for keeping on top of this with travelling employees. Therefore, we would advise that they work with trusted travel providers, who can take on the heavy workload of making sure their travel actions and documentations are compliant, so they can be confident they are travelling securely.鈥�

The post 51风流Concur 2022 Predictions appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

What is the outlook for the enterprise IT market on the African continent in 2021?

Three fundamental shifts have taken place in 2020 that will drive evolution in the enterprise IT market in 2021. The first is the financial strain faced by so many businesses on the continent, the second is the rise of the work-from-anywhere generation, and the third is the rise of ecommerce as a necessity.

What the continuous financial strain leads to is corporate strategy 鈥� regardless of size or industry sector 鈥� that aims to drive resilience and profitability. In the enterprise IT context, this translates to tech modernization investments that brings transparency to the financial wellbeing of a company and allows decision makers to easily identify much-needed actions to drive positive change. The scope for analytics, predictive modeling and intelligent working solutions is vast.

The work-from-anywhere expectation of employees implies a continued investment in productivity tools that allow teams to connect and collaborate online. Not only would the adoption of the software platforms continue to rise but a set of new job niches open up for people and companies to provide masterclasses in using particular workplace productivity tools or to assist in scouting and planning the right combination of productivity tools that are best-fit for a particular team. This includes a rise in security strategy offerings to ensure companies are working with minimal risk of exposure to external parties.

Lastly, eCommerce as a necessity is a result of companies needing to drive revenue through alternate channels during lockdowns. Many who were new to digital strategies would have seen the light, with digital offering lower costs of sale as compared to brick and mortar stores. Further investment in both eCommerce and CRM platforms to improve customer journeys and online shopping experiences will be witnessed, with investment in logistics and warehouse management system modernization to accommodate this increase in demand following soon after.

What key technologies should CIOs across the continent look out for in the year ahead?

Most tech enthusiasts will continue to keep a close eye on 5G and the opportunities it opens for connectivity, for people and for things. AI will continue to stretch into more mainstream corporate applications, the same way we unknowingly train thousands of machine learning models daily as an individual, corporate applications of machine learning will continue to rise with no obvious disruption to work tasks. We can expect to witness growth in job functions such as business architecture, automation engineering and process optimization.

One major shift in technologies will be greater adoption of low-code and no-code platforms to build enterprise applications, from SMEs to large enterprises. The agility, ability to prototype rapidly and the time to value offered by these platforms makes this an obvious choice for corporates looking to drive cost efficiency across their businesses. The skill of programming will continue to have a place but there will be a shift to software architecture, reverse engineering and user-centric design over coding in the coming year.

听What predictions do you have for the African enterprise IT market and what should CIOs be paying attention to?

As part of a longer-term strategy to drive down exchange rate fluctuation as a key factor in corporate spending, along with the growth in tech sector start-up and scale-up investment through venture capital funds and the impending rise of additional mega-cities on the continent, Africa will begin creating more African solutions that solve global problems. The tech start-ups that are trying to solve an issue about proximity or lack of expert resources or removing friction in a process will gain traction but will have continental origins.

As a CIO, creating alliances with early stage businesses, whether to outsource the build of enterprise applications, or to funnels into a corporate growth strategy focused on investments 鈥� will be essential for long-term survival. New ventures offer an opportunity to drive competitive advantage, or to gain market penetration, or to provide a new essential service to other stakeholders in your current industry sector. These outcomes will feed new business models, operating models and revenue streams, making a current business a lot more diverse and arguably more bulletproof for future economic shocks. At the least, the insights gained from working with new ventures will drive internal mindset shifts that should spark more innovation internally.

Given the shift to remote working brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, how do you see this shaping up in 2021 and how can CIOs and CISOs improve the security posture of their organisations in Africa?

The ability and willingness of employees to work remotely will not fall away for the foreseeable future. Naturally, some roles cannot be performed remotely, but remote working for at least a known proportion of a business can be properly defined and the correct infrastructure put in place to drive team performance.

Further investment in workplace productivity, the software and skills for communication and collaboration, will continue to rise in 2021. If not already in place, companies should be looking to introduce enterprise architecture, information architecture and security architecture capacities to their teams 鈥� whether in-house or outsourced. With the next normal of working, new challenges will arise 鈥� from mobile device enrolment where there was never a need, to procurement systems and policies to accommodate self-service buying by staff needing home office equipment, software licenses or replacement devices, to ensuring data encryption is in place through secure communication channels when dealing with sensitive data.

At the least, companies should be educating the workforce on safe working practices and to highlight the risks associated with using public WIFI networks, social hacking, unattended devices, phishing and improper classification of documentation for internal, external or confidential usage. Then, following a maturity curve or security implementation roadmap to introduce more hard controls to reduce the risk of improper access to corporate systems and data would be needed.

What do you see as challenges for enterprises across different industry verticals in Africa in 2021?

African businesses and its investors will look at hedging for supply chain integrity. The lockdowns of 2020 caused major disruption to businesses worldwide and a general shift to identify and secure local, domestic or continental suppliers is underway. Across industry sectors, this would have varying levels of readiness to completely replace prior international suppliers. Some may have fixed contracts in mind or preferred suppliers internationally, based on pricing or quality. Supply diversification may not also make sense for all sectors.

Consumer behaviours also shapes sector evolution. For example, grocery consumers would favour both quality and price and would arguably suffer from a lack of variety in order to retain value for money. Understandably, this new consumer behaviour may be born from their direct outcome of national lockdowns impacting their disposable income. The knock-on effect to the retailer, consumer goods manufacturer, co-ops and farmers is reduced demand for some produce and increased demand for others. Within the telecommunication sector, the work-from-home era puts the majority of the workforce on home WIFI networks, shifting the spend from voice calls to VOIP calls via chat platforms.

Hard hit sectors, such as transportation, would look at innovative ways to drive additional revenue. One example is a shift to more pay-as-you-use models for vehicles, or all-you-can-use models for trains, buses, trams, planes or bicycles. The knock-on effect for the stakeholders in these value chains is immense. A survivalist approach, with a relevant business offering and a business model favourable to the consumer, will see a company through the next wave of transformation.

What emerging technologies will take off in 2021 and what will drive the adoption of those technologies in Africa?

Less of a technology and more of an approach is the adoption of sustainability as a corporate strategy pillar. More businesses are realizing the need for purpose-led corporate culture and are feeling the pressure to align business decisions with their purpose with an aim to build more ethical and sustainable businesses.

Technologies to support this, such as SAP鈥檚 Climate21 initiative that features a Carbon Footprint Analysis solution to assess your company鈥檚 ongoing contribution to climate change, will help drive the transparency needed to make the right changes for sustainable outcomes. Other solutions in the circular economy, health and safety, and waste management domains, drive these climate action outcomes even more. For this to be successful, leaders need to ensure that sustainability outcomes are measurable and that the discussion on progress is being represented in the boardroom across the continent.

Beyond sustainability, and to support a focus on cost efficiency and the retention of almost only the critical skills within a business, is the rise in Intelligent Robotic Process Automation. For companies to work smarter, they need to shift to working on exceptions and not trawling through lists of tasks. This means employees shift their work to focus on higher value-add tasks and the rate of productivity within a business should increase. For this to succeed, all representatives at the board level need to understand the benefits of automation and the journey to get there, to help identify opportunities across their respective business areas and to effectively communicate the impact and positive outcomes for the human contingent within the business.

What technologies will be most sought after in the year ahead?

Once people realise that 2021 will continue in much the same light as 2020 has, there鈥檒l be a renewed enthusiasm to work simpler and smarter. From a home worker perspective, hardware and software that adds simplicity to video and voice calls 鈥� from headsets, to presentation and video editing software, to smart desks and audio-visual and lighting equipment 鈥� will be on the hotlist. From a corporate perspective, audio-visual equipment to sustain team calls and remove the need for individual connections from within the office will be on the wish list, as well as team performance dashboards spanning different departments (such as SAP鈥檚 Digital Boardroom) to show a holistic view of the business with the ability to drilldown to detail or correlate data on demand. The transparency created by dashboards feeds a rise in relevance within decision making, which in turn feeds an automation strategy.

How should CIOs tackle the skills challenges the African technology sector is facing at the moment?

There is a comparative shortage of tech skills in Africa. To combat this, a long-term strategy should be adopted, whereby CIOs and other leaders are supporting growth opportunities for currently skilled and future tech specialists. Growth can take the form of formal funding for schooling and tertiary education but can also be demonstrated by creating opportunities to collaborate with the youth. For example, a corporate hackathon can include students or scholars, so they get familiar with the industry sector, business challenges represented in the hackathon, and the technologies used to help solve those challenges. Not only is there an opportunity for potential internship placements after the event, but there鈥檚 also the growth of awareness at a young age that can help recruit future techies. One organisation 鈥� AI in Africa 鈥� has been focused on giving high school aged girls exposure to AI concepts successfully through a similar model.

Work experience opportunities, in the form of tech academies, startup challenges, incubators or internships, designed to bring people in and get them collaborating with others of mixed expertise, will broaden their minds and appetite for learning and growth while growing their networks.

What CIOs can also do is share their stories with the world.

Follow Mervyn George on Twitter @mervynonline

The post What Emerging Technologies Will Take Off in 2021? appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.