In 2026, that distinction is becoming increasingly blurry.听Extreme heat, water scarcity, flooding, wildfires, and energy volatility are affecting cost structures, disrupting supply chains, and constraining labor productivity and capital planning. These factors increasingly show up in routine operational and financial decisions and interact with broader economic dynamics. Climate impacts intersect with听geopolitical competition, supply-side volatility, and regional fragmentation.听At the same time, the transition to a low-carbon economy continues to progress unevenly across markets, with carbon increasingly subject to pricing, regulation, and disclosure expectations.

Together, physical climate impacts and transition pressures are influencing how companies plan, invest, and听operate. Many organizations are approaching adaptation and mitigation as an integrated business capability, on par with听financial management,听supply chain听planning,听or cybersecurity.

Why adaptation and mitigation demand sustained leadership attention

听projects that physical climate risks could more than triple corporate financial exposure by 2050, driven by asset damage, supply disruptions, and productivity losses. Despite this growing听exposure,听however, fewer than one in five companies have implemented adaptation measures at scale.

This widening gap between risk and readiness has profound implications for CEOs and听boards, who听recognize this threat. A听听found that business leaders听identified听extreme weather events as the greatest long-term business risk, with cascading effects across economic stability, supply chains, and social cohesion.听Climate risk is now:

• Financial, affecting margins, asset values, insurance availability, and cost of capital
• Operational, disrupting production,听logistics, and workforce availability
• Strategic, influencing where companies invest, source, and grow
• Reputational, shaping trust with investors, customers, regulators, and employees

For many leadership teams, climate adaptation and mitigation have become part of the broader challenge of enterprise readiness.听In some cases, they are also influencing access to capital, insurance terms, talent听attraction,听补苍诲 long-term market positioning.

Going beyond the contingency mindset

A common constraint on progress is how climate adaptation is still framed inside organizations.

When it is treated primarily as contingency planning, it tends to be reactive and episodic. Plans are developed, documented, and revisited only after disruption occurs, while ownership is often spread across risk, sustainability,听operations,听补苍诲 finance teams with limited integration into core decision-making.

A capability-based approach works differently. Business capabilities are embedded and听inform听everyday decisions, supported by data, systems, governance, and incentives.

Climate capability听emerges听when organizations integrate climate risk, resilience, and carbon considerations into the core of how the enterprise runs.

The four pillars of climate capability

1. Supply chains designed for disruption

Global supply chains are increasingly exposed to climate volatility and regulatory pressure. Highly optimized, linear supply chains designed primarily for cost efficiency have shown limitations under these conditions. Many organizations are adjusting value chains to improve resilience and address emissions. Supplier diversification, regionalization, circular material flows, and better data sharing can reduce exposure to physical disruption and, in many cases, lower Scope 3 emissions. In practice, efforts to improve decarbonization and resilience often reinforce one another.

What this requires is more reliable,听timely听data across supply chains, so that COOs are empowered to turn insights into meaningful outcomes.

2. Assets and infrastructure built for a changing climate

Facilities, equipment, and听logistics听networks are increasingly exposed to chronic stresses, such as heat and water scarcity as well as acute events like flooding. At the same time, carbon-intensive assets face growing transition risk as energy systems and regulations evolve.

A capability-based approach evaluates assets through a dual lens: physical climate exposure and carbon intensity. This informs where companies听locate听facilities, how they听maintain听them, and when they invest in retrofits, electrification, or renewable energy.

Investments in energy efficiency and clean energy can reduce emissions while also moderating exposure to energy price volatility and supply disruptions.

3. Workforce resilience as a business priority

Climate impacts are also affecting people. Rising temperatures and extreme weather are already reducing labor productivity and increasing health and safety risks in many roles and regions.

听estimates听that heat stress alone could result in the equivalent of 80 million full-time jobs lost globally by 2030 under a 1.5掳C warming scenario. Organizations that treat workforce resilience as a core business issue are adjusting schedules, working conditions, training, and safety protocols, protecting people while maintaining productivity.

4. Financial decision-making informed by climate reality

Despite growing awareness, climate data is often still disconnected from financial planning and analysis.听听that while听67% of companies听identify听climate-related risks with potential听financial impact, only a fraction can quantify those risks with enough precision to guide investment decisions.

A capability-based approach incorporates carbon and climate risk into financial models. This allows leaders to assess physical risk, transition risk, and return on investment together, turning climate action into a disciplined, value-driven decision process.听, like听听补苍诲听, can empower organizations to drive actionable climate strategies and unlock measurable impact by helping them integrate sustainability into core business processes through the combination of trusted financial data and granular carbon insights.

A C-suite framework for climate capability in 2026

Across industries, five leadership actions will define those organizations building true climate capability:

1. Embed climate and carbon assumptions into core business planning and governance.
2. Redesign value chains for resilience and emissions reduction.
3. Protect assets and people with predictive, forward-looking insight.
4. Align mitigation and adaptation with financial strategy.
5. Measure resilience and emissions together, not in isolation.

Together, these actions help shift climate efforts from parallel initiatives into a managed enterprise capability, one that听determines听operational continuity, financial resilience, and long-term competitiveness.

听about how you can build a more compliant, sustainable, and resilient business with 51风流Sustainability solutions.

Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer at SAP.

By embedding sustainability into core business applications, unifying fragmented data across the enterprise, and amplifying human expertise through AI, 51风流is transforming how organizations turn sustainability commitments into competitive advantage.

Across the C-suite, leaders face pressure to make good on their organizations鈥� sustainability commitments while ensuring these initiatives create tangible value for their specific business units and departmental operations.

COOs grapple with maintaining resilient supply chains while embedding sustainability metrics for better risk prediction. CFOs struggle to gain visibility into integrated financial and non-financial data needed to manage reporting and drive sustainable growth. CPOs seek transparency of suppliers鈥� sustainability footprints across the source-to-pay process, while CHROs work to engage talent with authentic sustainability performance. Meanwhile, CROs need verified sustainability data to build brand trust and enable green premium pricing, and CIOs face the complex challenge of integrating sustainability data while managing governance, cost, and AI-driven innovation.

What鈥檚 missing is not awareness, but actionable, decision-grade sustainability data worthy of sitting alongside financial and operational metrics. This is why we build sustainability directly into our applications, generating new, usable data at the source of business activity.

Organizations find themselves constrained by financial systems, inconsistent data, and business processes that were not designed to address sustainability鈥檚 multifaceted nature. By ensuring this sustainability data becomes part of customers鈥� larger data story and drives core processes, we overcome these constraints.

This isn鈥檛 a peripheral issue; sustainability now intersects every critical business function, and the thoughtful organization of sustainability data. Its application to business processes prepares organizations for their agentic AI future, where sustainability metrics contribute to broader business intelligence tools like margin optimization agents rather than being siloed in sustainability-only solutions.

In this environment, 51风流emerges as a strategic partner that combines sustainability data with business processes to drive real change. By harnessing the power of 51风流Business AI and 51风流Business Data Cloud, we translate intricate sustainability challenges into clear, executable strategies.

This week, we introduced a new evolutionary step of sustainability solutions that go beyond traditional software updates. These solutions are designed to bridge the critical gap between organizational ambition and tangible outcomes. We help businesses manage risk, ensure compliance, and unlock meaningful enterprise-wide value.

This is more than a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic framework for sustainable business innovation. And now, we’re translating that strategy into action, through AI-powered innovations that scale.

AI for sustainability at scale: New innovations for EHS and product compliance

Beginning in August 2025, new capabilities will be available in beta, embedded within key sustainability applications to help customers ready their data, automate processes, and amplify their expertise. These AI-driven innovations streamline operations across environmental, health and safety (EHS) and product compliance workflows, driving measurable and scalable impact.

Here鈥檚 a look at what鈥檚 coming:

• AI-assisted permit management in 51风流S/4HANA for EHS environment management simplifies and automates permit handling by capturing and extracting key data from permit documents and automatically proposing relevant follow-up tasks to ensure compliance.
• AI-assisted safety observation reporting with , SAP鈥檚 AI copilot, in , enables seamless, intuitive incident reporting through a conversational interface, reducing barriers to shop floor safety documentation.
• AI-assisted safety instruction generation in 51风流S/4HANA for EHS workplace safety suggests appropriate safety instructions based on risk assessments and job hazard analyses, supporting proactive and preventive measures.
• AI-assisted compliance information processing in 51风流S/4HANA for product compliance automates the extraction and mapping of critical data from declarations, certificates, and safety data sheets, improving accuracy and freeing teams from tedious manual work.

These features will be available in beta and will be part of the new , reflecting SAP鈥檚 commitment to delivering embedded, business-ready AI that drives real outcomes.

AI that鈥檚 already delivering value

51风流customers are already leveraging Business AI to supercharge their sustainability efforts, including:

• In , AI accelerates environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report generation with editable templates, generative text, and visualizations, freeing teams to focus on ESG execution, not formatting.
• In , AI automates emission factor mapping by intelligently matching products to thousands of lifecycle assessment database entries, complete with confidence scores.
• In , AI automatically validating and extracting data from International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS supplier declarations, minimizing errors and increasing speed.

These intelligent capabilities help customers reduce costs, mitigate risk, and drive business performance across reporting, carbon management, circularity, and regulatory compliance.

What鈥檚 next: unlocking enterprise-wide sustainability insights

In the second half of 2025, 51风流will make 51风流Sustainability Control Tower available as an Intelligent Application within . This will unify sustainability data and business operations on a single platform, enabling consistent reporting, deeper insight, and smarter decision-making across the enterprise.

A technology preview of these solutions will be made available to selected customers before general availability.

One sustainability data model: From complexity to clarity

51风流is also introducing new sustainability data products throughout 2025 as part of our strategy to deliver hundreds of curated and governed datasets across . These data products, accessible via 51风流Business Data Cloud, will include:

• Structured emissions data (air, water, wastewater) from 51风流EHS Management and 51风流S/4HANA for product compliance
• Additional datasets from 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management

This unified sustainability data model will empower customers to strengthen compliance, simplify analytics, and scale sustainability programs with confidence and clarity.

Process intelligence meets sustainability intelligence

True progress does not just come from better data, it comes from better processes. That is why 51风流is embedding sustainability impact metrics into the starting in autumn 2025. These new capabilities will include:

• 51风流Signavio Value Accelerators: Pre-built process models and industry best practices tailored for regulatory-specific use cases
• 51风流Signavio Process Intelligence: Analytics tools that identify opportunities to optimize business processes and embed sustainability at scale

With these additions, customers can align process transformation efforts with environmental goals, helping close the gap between strategy and execution.

Your best, made real

With SAP, transforms from a compliance checklist into a lever for innovation, resilience, and growth. By embedding sustainability into applications, unifying data across the enterprise, and enabling intelligent automation through AI, we empower organizations to be sustainable while accelerating performance.

From frontline safety to carbon reporting, from real-time data to boardroom insights, this is what 鈥測our best, made real鈥� looks like.

Welcome to a new era of sustainable enterprise management, powered by SAP.

Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer at SAP.
Gunther Rothermel is chief product officer for 51风流Sustainability.

The Burning Platform

Around 10% of the world鈥檚 forests 鈥� an area larger than the European Union 鈥� have been lost over the past 30 years due to deforestation and another approximately 10% of forests globally are severely fragmented with little or no connectivity. While this is not a new phenomenon, the current scale and pace of destruction is alarming, causing significant social, economic, and environmental impacts, locally and globally.

Deforestation is one of the main drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss, and countries across the EU contribute to it by demanding and consuming a significant share of products associated with deforestation. In an effort to take accountability for this, the EU is determined to help end the issues by protecting and improving the health of existing forests, especially primary forests, while significantly increasing sustainable, biodiverse forest coverage worldwide. To achieve this goal, the EU has developed the Regulation on Deforestation-free products, scheduled to go into effect in December 2024.

To improve the health of existing forests and significantly increase sustainable, biodiverse forest coverage worldwide, the EUDR spans five main priorities:

• Reduce the footprint of EU consumption and encourage consumption of products from deforestation-free supply chains
• Work in partnership with producer countries to reduce pressures on forests
• Strengthen international cooperation to halt deforestation and encourage forest restoration
• Redirect finance to support more sustainable land-use practices
• Support availability and access to information on forests and commodity supply chains and support research and innovation

What鈥檚 at Stake

A number of industries and market segments are impacted by this new regulation, including consumer products, chemicals, pharma, agriculture, energy, retail, automotive, and mill and forestry industries covering paper, lumber, and wood. The regulation impacts seven commodities, which primarily consist of agricultural or raw materials, including cocoa, coffee, soy, wood, palm oil, rubber, and cattle, that are directly linked to deforestation and forest degradation. It also impacts derivatives, which are the products made using these commodities, such as chocolate from cocoa, furniture from wood, or fresh chicken meat made by feeding soya-based feed to poultry.

Companies such as manufacturers and exporters of these commodities and their derivatives are the ones most impacted by the regulation. Large companies in these categories must adhere to the regulation by December 2024, while small or mid-sized ones have until June 2025 to comply. To be approved for use in the EU, products must be covered by a due diligence statement (DDS) per delivery linked to a traceability system with evidence of chain-of-custody from the source of origin demonstrating that the product is deforestation-free and produced in accordance with relevant legislations.

Main Impact on Operators

The legislation has two broad ramifications:

• Companies must carry out supplier risk assessments to ensure their suppliers of these seven commodities meet requirements, have mapped the land areas (shape files) of sourcing, and that their production does not violate local laws and regulations. If necessary, they must implement remedial action plans.
• Companies must do day-to-day DDS reporting per delivery to the EUDR portal, including the geolocation shape file of all plots of land where the relevant commodities or their derivates were produced, which requires supply chain traceability.

Responding to these impacts is an onerous task and for a typical large EU operator could involve hundreds of thousands of due diligence statements being created and sent to the EU annually. Due diligence statements must be kept for five years and must be auditable, making these tasks ripe for automation.

How to Get Started

Non-conformance to the EUDR may lead to fines, lack of market access, reputational risk, and other repercussions. Companies need an inexpensive, efficient solution to help meet their immediate reporting requirements, and sustainability tracking software is being upgraded to fit the bill.

The out-of-the-box 51风流Green Token solution currently includes DDS reporting capabilities and can cover the majority of technical requirements for customers. It can share information for commingled commodities in segregated supply chains with downstream partners and generate declarations.

51风流Green Token is being developed to help support automated EUDR DDS reporting and meet the audit history requirements. Also in the works is integration with data providers for standardized location information and integration with the EUDR reporting platform, called TRACES, for importing operators. Further expansions will enable a connection to SAP鈥榮 sustainability business networks and end-to-end user experience scenarios.

Are You Equipped to Deal with the Upcoming Changes?

There is no better time than the present to prepare for the new regulatory landscape that is scheduled to take effect by the end of the year.

Companies can begin preparations by collaborating with suppliers to initiate the due diligence process, which includes three steps. It begins with collecting relevant data on types of products that are impacted and ensuring that they are being produced in accordance with regulations. If not, remedial steps can be taken in collaboration with partners and suppliers.

Next, companies must conduct risk assessments that address country-specific issues that can range from human right violations to tracing product origins. Again, remedial steps can be initiated collaboratively. And finally, the right technology is key to achieving compliance.

51风流Green Token can provide companies with the capability to track commingled materials in products using digital twins, segregated accounting, and blockchain technology to help prove sustainability. Not only can 51风流Green Token help tackle this new regulation, but it can help demonstrate progress towards environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitments in general and create a streamlined, transparent process for tracking and tracing materials to help drive a more sustainable, circular approach to business 鈥� one that benefits people and our planet while still driving profit.

Gloria Figaroa is part of Product Marketing for 51风流Green Token at SAP.

Companies that prioritize sustainability in their operations, such as using recycled materials, reducing carbon emissions, or supporting social causes, are gaining popularity among consumers. But those consumers demand proof of these values and product promises at the point of sale.

鈥淭he rise of sustainability isn’t just a movement; it is a shift in consumer consciousness,鈥� said Dania Fayyaz, 51风流North America sustainability program manager. 鈥淭oday’s consumers are redefining their purchasing patterns, opting for products and brands that align with their values, and driving a demand for eco-conscious practices and ethical sourcing.鈥� In her conversations with retailers that visited SAP鈥檚 booth at NRF 2024, the world鈥檚 largest retail fair, she saw a high interest in sustainability solutions.

Consumers 鈥� and Markets 鈥� Demand Visibility

When the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) comes into effect for large enterprises later this year all products sold in the EU containing palm oil, cocoa, soy, rubber, cattle/leather, coffee, wood, and their derivatives will need proof that their harvest didn鈥檛 contribute to deforestation. Non-compliance will result in potential fines of up to 4% of companies鈥� EU annual turnover. To help businesses simplify this complex task, the 51风流Green Token solution can track the geolocation of where raw materials are harvested and automate the creation of due diligence statements (DDS). The solution can also help improve visibility for consumers on where the raw material for their clothing was sourced and offer information on potential reuse and recycling.

Take the example of a cotton shirt made from 50% certified recycled materials. Cotton can be sourced from multiple farms or recycling services and taken to a cotton mill where it鈥檚 spun into thread and later fabric. It becomes impossible to distinguish the different cotton elements 鈥� conventional versus recycled cotton 鈥� once they are co-mingled and the manufacturer loses insight into the sustainability attributes of the raw materials. That鈥檚 why it鈥檚 important to have a sophisticated tracking solution in place. “51风流Green Token can enhance transparency for bulk-traded, co-mingled raw materials by digitally storing sustainability attributes on tokens that traverse the supply chain,” said Fayyaz.

In addition to making conscious decisions on raw materials and products, consumers can also consider circular economy models. 鈥淚’m really intrigued by the idea of revitalizing clothing items,鈥� said Fayyaz. 鈥淚magine being able to exchange a well-loved jacket you’ve had for years and receive credit in return. And the jacket might find a new owner who will genuinely appreciate it.鈥� The 51风流Recommerce solution enables that scenario, helping brands and retailers take back, manage, and resell secondhand inventory to help accelerate the shift from linear to circular business models. On an even larger scale, 51风流Green Ledger is SAP鈥檚 vision to make transactional carbon accounting a reality. It can enable organizations to track carbon like they do cash, with every financial transaction having a corresponding carbon entry. 鈥淭his is incredibly desirable because we will see taxes for carbon imposed in the future, and decision-makers will want insights into which processes are utilizing the most carbon,鈥� Fayyaz said.

A Glance into the Crystal Ball

At the same time, low-price online platforms continue to attract consumers with their affordable and wide range of products. They offer competitive prices on trendy clothing and accessories using economies of scale and direct-to-consumer models. Despite concerns about their environmental and ethical practices, these platforms remain popular among price-conscious consumers. However, there is growing awareness of the environmental and social impacts of fast fashion and low-price models. As a result, consumers are becoming increasingly discerning in their purchasing decisions, prioritizing quality, longevity, and sustainability over cheap prices and fast fashion trends.

鈥淥verall, the consumer landscape is evolving, with a growing emphasis on sustainability, conscious consumption, and ethical practices,鈥� said Sven Denecken, chief marketing and solutions officer for 51风流Industries & CX. 鈥淐ompanies that can adapt to these changing preferences and demonstrate a commitment to environmental and social responsibility are likely to thrive in the long term.鈥�

The treaty represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unleash the potential of business to solve the plastic crisis. Its success is crucial. Production of new plastic is forecast to double by 2040 without new and effective action. Only 10% of plastic is currently recycled, and each year 19 to 23 million tons of plastic end up in our rivers, lakes, and seas. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions from plastics production, management, and disposal represent around 3.3% of global emissions. Exposure to plastics also has implications on human health, with plastic traces being found in our blood.

Fortunately, there is global consensus on the pressing need to end this ecological and environmental crisis, which is why 160 countries and hundreds of observer organizations are working together on this unique opportunity to end plastic pollution.

A Treaty Addressing the Entire Plastics Value Chain

The existing plastics ecosystem is heavily fragmented. Under current conditions, financial flows fund the creation of virgin polymers while a linear material flow continues bringing new plastics to market.

Centered on regulating production and consumption, the negotiations take every stage of the plastic value chain into account, from creation of the primary polymers to how plastic waste is managed. It covers product design for plastic reduction and recycling as well as extended producer responsibility to increase accountability among the most polluting entities while ensuring a just transition for affected communities.

This is an ambitious project. It will involve redesigning products, making circularity possible through repair, reuse, and recycling, and making recycled polymers more economically viable than virgin plastics.

New jobs, markets, and business opportunities will be created by the treaty. Research and development into plastic alternatives will be accelerated to eliminate the health-harming pollutants from plastic that are released at every stage of plastic production. Additionally, it will require the evolution of waste management systems to deal with the legacy of plastic waste.

51风流Endorses the Business Coalition

The , convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and WWF, assembles businesses and financial institutions committed to supporting the development of an ambitious, effective, and legally binding UN treaty to end plastic pollution.

“To end plastic pollution, we require both ambitious government policy and accelerated business action. The global plastics treaty offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put in place the right legally binding rules, measures, and incentives to tackle this global problem,” says Rob听Opsomer, executive lead, Plastics and Finance, Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

With over 200 members, including SAP, the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty is calling for global business rules underpinned by harmonized regulations to tackle the full life cycle of plastic products. This will level the global playing field, making it easier for businesses and investors to scale both upstream and downstream solutions, mobilize the right investments, and support new innovations.听

鈥淔or decades, 51风流software has been instrumental in enabling our customers to manage material flows, including plastics,” says Natasha Pergl, global sustainability lead, 51风流Consumer Products. “We understand first-hand the challenges our customers face in managing the complex and fragmented web of regulations in place today that make it difficult to understand current material flows and align upstream efforts with downstream solutions.”

51风流Calls for Harmonization

Achieving systemic change will require collaboration and joint innovation, which depends on effective, well-functioning communication. Software and network technology are central to bridging the information gap and operationalizing an inclusive plastics ecosystem. The treaty must lay the foundations for harmonized regulations and simplified information flow as well as accelerate the implementation of global rules.

To achieve this, four essential elements need to be in place:

• Common definitions for plastics and packaging to ensure mutual understanding and interoperability: This applies to the categorization of various plastic polymers, how products are structured and denominated, and how they are packaged and sold.
• Harmonization across the plastics life cycle, covering criteria for product design, extended producer responsibility schemes, and assessment for recyclability: This will support businesses to design for circularity and recyclability, ensure that strategic decisions are guided by the capabilities of existing downstream infrastructure, and highlight where new capital investments are needed.
• Harmonized national disclosure schemes to ensure uniformity, comparability, and information transparency: This is essential for giving investors and regulators a base of information for policy steering and decision-making. It will also allow business to harness the full potential of AI-driven innovation to accelerate solutions at scale.
• Recognition of the role of digital tools for traceability: Improved data and the application of digital tracking will enable true progress.

鈥淭he treaty goals are ambitious, but with an agreement that focuses on global rules covering product design and material fate, extended producer responsibility schemes, and chemicals of concern, we can unleash the power of global business to deliver the solutions necessary. Importantly, 51风流is ready with the processes and systems to help businesses quickly grasp the opportunity and scale impact to end plastic pollution,” says Stephen Jamieson, global head of Circular Economy Solutions, SAP.

Software solutions, such as and , already allow companies to monitor, measure, and act to facilitate the design of products for a more sustainable and circular economy. But a more effective information flow for better collaboration and innovation is required to achieve systemic change.

The Role of AI

An obvious benefit of agreed common terminology and harmonization of criteria and disclosure rules is that it can open the door for businesses to leverage AI. Some envisaged applications in the production process include reducing virgin polymers and boosting material and supply chain efficiency. Downstream uses such as waste sorting, material recovery, quality control, identifying waste flow trends, and predictive analytics would also be made possible.

A Bold Approach

Discussions in Ottawa were productive and focused on decreasing and restricting plastic production. During the talks, Rwanda and Peru submitted a motion to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers worldwide by 40% by 2040, from a 2025 baseline. Their vision is for this to be legally binding, much like the Paris Agreement to limit global warming.

Robust data clarity and systems for sharing information are crucial for enabling businesses in the implementation of such a treaty. Only by connecting data points throughout the supply chain and across jurisdictions can material flows and emission sources be fully understood.

Work will continue towards INC-5 in Busan, South Korea, in November, where the final text will be agreed prior to being ratified in 2025.

For more information:

Heather Davies is a brand journalist.

Key administrations are aware of this and are starting to act accordingly. Accelerating innovation in industrial products and fuels for a net-zero, circular economy听is 听in U.S. President Joe Biden鈥檚 Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative. Meanwhile, the new听听is a main element of the European Green Deal.

In parallel, the UN is collaborating multilaterally to create policy to regulate plastics. The UN Plastics Treaty is a consensus by 175 nations to deliver a legally binding agreement to tackle plastic pollution by the end of 2024. This is significant because plastic has become fundamental to the products we create and the packaging we use to contain and ship them. Plastic has an enormous impact on the environment due to the emissions involved in its creation and mismanaged plastic waste polluting the air, the oceans, our food, and even our blood.

Currently, the linear economy dominates, as听. In the case of plastic, we take oil from the ground, turn it into products and packaging, use them, and throw them out when we鈥檙e finished. Continuing like this isn鈥檛 an option because we will run out of resources, worsen global warming, and cause further damage to our ecosystem. , so materials retain their value and can be reused.

It sounds logical, so why aren鈥檛 we doing it already? The first reason is financial. In the long term, the circular economy will create jobs, cut costs, improve profitability, and secure supply lines. Achieving this, however, requires massive capital investment in the short term. Additionally, more data is required to help us understand the impact of our decisions. And we need a new, more collaborative way of working.

Capital investment-wise, we must invest in designing and manufacturing products with circularity in mind. We need to adapt and build machinery and systems to rescue resources from existing products and turn them into new items. The labor market must evolve to train people in the skills required and to make circular economy jobs attractive, with good remuneration and benefits packages. More wealth must also flow back up the supply chain to ensure the sustainability of raw materials and to enable growth and sustainable manufacturing. To help companies and financial institutions understand the benefits and necessity of the circular economy, more education is required.

Data systems need to evolve to give companies insights on material flow and traceability, help them avoid waste, extend periods of use, recover and regenerate materials, and make informed decisions about products and packaging. This is where 51风流comes in, with 80% of the world鈥檚 businesses using our software.

Take plastic again: the solution can help businesses trace plastics back to their source polymer to understand what type of material is used in every plastic element in a product. This can help companies prove the environmental credentials of a given plastic. 51风流Responsible Design and Production can be used to understand how recycled and recyclable a component is and can help a company understand the true end-to-end cost of a material. This can be useful in regulating certain materials for comparison and decision-making purposes as well as in helping businesses anticipate taxes and fees associated with their products.

We can interrogate upstream supply chain data, which relates to what a product is made from, but we don鈥檛 yet have a complete downstream picture of what happens to a product at its end of life. Recyclability varies wildly between countries, so to understand how recyclable materials are in certain countries or jurisdictions, a partnership approach with national governments, local authorities, NGOs, and others is required to build a database that can inform companies which types of plastic to use or avoid for certain markets to achieve circularity. 51风流can add value by collecting this data and pulling it into solutions.

At the same time, to embrace the circular economy, our way of working must evolve. Instead of working in silos within our individual businesses and in vertical supply chains, we need to work collaboratively to share the data and bring the skill sets and processes together. For example, 51风流works with groups of companies, such as with the WBCSD, to establish frameworks for exchanging data.  started with embedded carbon in products, but the application can be extended to track other important material information for the circular economy like recycled content or water content.

Collaborations between businesses and non-corporate bodies accelerate progress. A clear example of this is how, by working with the WBCSD and the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network, 51风流works towards updating solutions to help customers respond to new requirements that arise from the negotiations.

The ambition is to replicate this approach to plastic for other products, such as steel, batteries, electronics, textiles, and even food. With a circular economy across these industries, I鈥檓 convinced we can get halfway to net zero and if, in parallel, the energy experts continue to move the needle on energy efficiency and renewable power generation, we鈥檒l get the rest of the way.

Learn more about 51风流Sustainability solutions at .

Darren West is a product expert in Circular Economy at SAP.

Reflecting on the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the scale of SAP鈥檚 transformative potential 鈥� helping companies record, report, and act on net-zero targets and beyond 鈥� has never been clearer.

I observed two key trends that will advance climate action in meaningful ways 鈥� a shift towards simplifying data sharing and a transition to sustainable energy 鈥� where 51风流is poised to help.

A Shift Towards Simplifying Data Sharing

In recent years, more and more companies have made net-zero commitments 鈥� often before knowing how to execute these lofty goals. At COP28, I saw business leaders wrestling with how to deliver on these commitments and publicly report on progress amid growing public pressure. They face two significant data challenges: the need for cooperation across the value chain and collaboration around a common language for data exchange.

While many companies successfully measure their own emissions, reaching net zero requires an understanding of Scope 3 emissions, indirect emissions that occur in the value chain, where approximately of carbon emissions fall. This means that to get to net zero, businesses need to share emissions data across the value chain. This requires a high level of collaboration and information sharing among businesses and their suppliers. 51风流Sustainability Data Exchange can simplify this process by tracking actual Scope 3 carbon emissions data, not averages and estimates, and facilitating cross-company data sharing.

With solutions like 51风流Sustainability Data Exchange, more companies can measure their carbon emissions data and share it across the value chain. However, this proves futile if companies cannot exchange data in a common format. They need to exchange information and understand what it means. Today, many emissions and accounting technology solutions fail to speak the same language with one another. To overcome this obstacle, 51风流works closely with the (PACT), hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), to create a harmonized data exchange system. Together, we are establishing the methodology and technical infrastructure for product-level greenhouse gas emissions data exchange and measurement so businesses can share real carbon footprints across the supply chain with increased interoperability. 

No entity can conquer the decarbonization challenge alone. But, with cooperation across the value chain around Scope 3 emissions and collaboration around standardized carbon emissions data, we can move close to net zero together.

A Transition to Sustainable Energy

Given the focus on how to deliver on net-zero commitments and decarbonize operations, businesses look to energy as one crucial path to accelerate progress. Beyond aiming for net zero, geopolitical tensions underscore the urgency of bolstering energy security and diminishing reliance on overseas providers. As governments pursue energy independence and implement emissions regulations, corporations are compelled to adhere and transparently track their progress.

As companies face growing pressure from all sides, the pace of the sustainable energy transition intensifies, realizing unanticipated benefits along the way. For example, firms experience enhanced reputations and boosts to market value. And, in the search for cost-effective and efficient energy mixes, many companies find improved operations. A surge in production efficiency often accompanies reduced emissions. These changes inspire more diverse business models, identify new revenue streams, attract new clients, and yield a broader customer base.

As businesses move toward alternative energy sources, fostering transparency and trust through accurate data tracking and measurement proves challenging. Take green hydrogen as an example. Generated by the electrolysis of water using renewable sources like solar or wind energy, it offers a carbon-emission-free energy solution. However, fostering demand for green hydrogen requires a high level of transparency to ensure authenticity, build trust among consumers, businesses, and governments, and measure its environmental impact. 

51风流works closely with governments, the CEO Alliance for Europe, H2Global, and Hydrogen Europe to address the critical need for transparency across the entire lifecycle of green hydrogen 鈥� from production to distribution. Establishing a digital layer for green hydrogen guarantees its authenticity and differentiation from other grades of hydrogen aiding certification and proof of origin. This creates a clear market for green hydrogen, helping consumers understand its intrinsic value and positive environmental impact. utilizes an energy-efficient blockchain method that helps provide this visibility into the hydrogen journey and can enable auditable volume movements among various partners.

While digital technologies actively drive the transition to renewable energy, we recognize the indispensable role of collaborative, action-oriented partnerships in propelling these efforts forward. Ahead of COP28, 51风流joined global efforts led by the to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, accelerate the clean energy transition, and scale up investments in renewables. 51风流also supports the , a business initiative urging governments to phase out fossil fuels. The future requires collaboration with all stakeholders 鈥� value chain partners, NGOs, industry groups, and more.

As the conference concludes, the real work begins. Reflecting on last week and the resounding call for global climate action, 51风流remains committed to helping our customers simplify data sharing and transition to sustainable energy. The technology and the data exist. Now, we need to deploy these tools effectively and harness them to drive meaningful impact across a vast ecosystem of organizations. A sustainable future starts today, and the responsibility lies with each one of us doing our part.

Learn more about 51风流Sustainability at .

Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer and co-GM for 51风流Sustainability.

Today, only such as bio- and circular components. Bio-components are feedstock that comes from organic, bio-based origins, such as used cooking oil. Circular components are feedstock that is recycled from waste plastic, such as post-consumer recycled waste.

A viable and efficient way to use such sustainable feedstock is integrating it into existing, large-scale production systems to avoid the additional cost, energy, and carbon emissions of segregated production facilities. But, when bio- and circular feedstock is blended with conventional fossil feedstock, how can consumers, regulators, and supply chains have confidence in bio- and circular-attributed plastic product claims? And how can these claims be leveraged to encourage informed choices when industries and consumers purchase products that are certified sustainable?

Digital Tracking for Total Traceability and Transparency

The solution is a mass balance management solution from 51风流that leverages tokenization and blockchain for chain of custody to help create traceability and transparency. In September 2022, 51风流Green Token became an official part of the 51风流Sustainability portfolio.

In a successful pilot, a group of 51风流customers 鈥� including SKGC, Korea; Elantas, Italy; Westlake Vinnolit, Germany; Berry Global, U.S.; and Unilever R&D, the Netherlands 鈥� reviewed the ability of 51风流Green Token to enable traceability and transparency of bio- and circular waste inputs to bio- and circular-attributed products across the chemical and plastics supply chain.

51风流Green Token enables organizations to create tokens that serve as digital twins of the bio- and circular chemical feedstock material flows throughout the entire supply chain and capture the unique sustainability attributes linked to the bio- and circular feedstock origin. As a result, the solution allows organizations to verify their certified sustainable material usage in their processes. What鈥檚 more, the green credentials encapsulated in the tokens can be passed from one business partner to another via blockchain as the material moves along the supply chain, helping to ensure that important environmental, social, and governance (ESG) attributes are preserved. Also, an auditable record can be documented to prove the product is sustainable in accordance with recognized product standards, such as ISCC PLUS and REDcert2, and hence better for the environment.

“This successful trial of 51风流Green Token represents another key milestone on our mission to establish the 鈥榞reen line鈥� alongside the top and bottom lines as key performance dimensions,” says Gunther Rothermel, head of Sustainability Engineering at SAP. 鈥淭his solution offers our customers an easy way to have complete visibility into the origin and chain of custody of their bio- and circular-based feedstock and allows them to prove to their customers, international standard agencies, and their board that they have a concrete, auditable way of proving their circular performance against their sustainability KPIs.鈥�

The blockchain technology helps prevent double counting of claims and create trust; it can make the production of sustainable plastic easier to verify and thus certifiable, which is particularly important in terms of customer demand, regulatory compliance, and the ability to charge a price premium.

Rapid Adoption Crucial for Sustainable Plastics

“Accelerating the circular economy requires driving demand for circular plastics,” said Diane Marret, sustainability director for Consumer Packaging North America at Berry Global. “Integrating mass balance-accounted materials into 51风流Green Token鈥檚 centralized, global IT system helps reduce risk in our reporting accuracy, minimize manual efforts through automation, and build confidence and trust in our ability to manage circular materials.”

Read more about this pilot in the newly published . For more information on how 51风流helps companies record, report, and act on their sustainability goals, visit and the .

Gloria Figaroa is a solution advisor for 51风流Green Token.

Carbon accounting is still undertaken manually or using semi-automated tools that rely on estimates or averages. Additionally, many more organizations still need to set targets. To move forward, they must first ascertain current emissions levels. But with supply chain emissions representing a much higher proportion than direct emissions, this is proving challenging for four key reasons: a lack of data, poor or unreliable data, a skills gap preventing effective data analysis, and issues exchanging data.

Organizations must account for carbon, not only for climate and compliance reasons but to aid decision-making, reveal opportunities for efficiencies and growth, and differentiate their business. As a result, organizations across industries are racing to slash the carbon footprint of their products and services. As businesses at every level of the value chain ramp up their own decarbonization efforts, business leaders know the lowest carbon offerings are likely to become the most desirable and hence the best opportunity for growth and profit.

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A Lack of Emissions Data

Emissions data is used in three areas of a company鈥檚 net-zero strategy: to measure and identify hotspots for emissions reduction; to make improvements such as selecting suppliers and redesigning products and processes; and to continuously anticipate business outcomes and identify new opportunities for greenhouse gas reduction.

For successful decarbonization, emissions data must be embedded in an organization鈥檚 decision-making process. Incomplete and unreliable data hinders the creation of an effective net-zero strategy. This issue is particularly prevalent across the value chain in scope 3 emissions, which regularly account for 75% of a company鈥檚 emissions across all sectors. Due to a lack of influence and control and an absence of disclosure rules, supply chain emissions go vastly underreported, weakening net-zero strategies.

It is essential for companies to close the gap and gather data on all scope 3 emissions. Not doing so leaves them open to allegations of greenwashing and non-compliance penalties as policymakers worldwide move increasingly towards making scope 3 emissions reporting mandatory.

Poor Quality Data

Data that is accurate, granular, and comparable is indispensable for a comprehensive understanding of an organization鈥檚 carbon footprint. However, much of the data being relied upon is spend-based, estimated, or reliant on regional or sector-based averages as opposed to primary data directly from a business鈥檚 operations and suppliers.

By its nature, secondary data cannot provide an accurate indication of a company鈥檚 greenhouse gas emission hotspots, nor can it be used for comparison purposes. It also lacks granularity, impairing decision-making. Relying on inconsistent data carries potentially significant risks, which can lead to a decline in trust and credibility.

Sustainability Skills Gap

The number of green jobs grew by 8% between 2015 and 2021 and is expected to continue to increase. But there is a significant skills shortage, and candidates don鈥檛 yet have the competencies to be able to fulfill the roles. Short courses and micro-credentials run by universities, professional bodies, and NGOs are helping to fill the gap, but on-the-job training and upskilling are also necessary to equip employees and business leaders with the necessary skills to be able to interpret the data and turn pledges into progress.

Data Exchange Issues

Carbon accounting challenges within a single organization are an issue, but the problem is multiplied when it comes to achieving carbon transparency between companies in a given value chain. Incompatibility of data, inconsistencies in carbon accounting rules, software platforms that don鈥檛 easily interact, and a lack of collaboration across supply chains leave business leaders fumbling in the dark for information.

The automobile industry is an obvious example. With 98% of emissions falling into scope 3, exchanging carbon footprint data can seem like an impossible task due to its complex supply chain, a lack of trust between suppliers and customers, a scarcity of quality data, inconsistent carbon accounting methodologies, and incompatible data management platforms.

The Impact of Carbon Accounting Challenges

The aforementioned challenges result in wasted time and resources, compromised decision-making, an inability to affect meaningful emissions reduction, missed opportunities, a lack of transparency, and higher exposure to business risks, not to mention the global risks of deadly heat waves, devastating floods, rising sea levels, and a decline in biodiversity.

Moving Towards a Green Ledger

What if sustainability performance could be managed with the same rigor as financial performance? Where it becomes as effortless as financial transactions in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, where a carbon network makes data exchange easy, and where end-to-end carbon accounting tracks product emissions across the entire value chain?

Ledger-based transactional carbon accounting provides all of this and more 鈥� and it鈥檚 not new. It is an amalgamation of a suite of solutions, an ecosystem of platforms. Working together, they have the power and interactivity to collect and assimilate emissions data using a hybrid approach to help businesses transition from estimated or average emissions values to actual and verified data. A double entry approach allows companies to balance emission in- and outflows.

A sustainability ledger provides auditable carbon reports and attaches emissions to financial costs and revenue. This provides companies with the capability to analyze carbon emission hotspots through a financial lens across cost centers, profit centers, and market segments.

Finding the Key to Collaboration in the Automotive Industry

Perhaps most importantly, the sustainability ledger approach provides a platform for collaboration and integration of data throughout an entire value chain. The is the first open and collaborative data ecosystem capable of allowing companies to work together to establish transparent processes and common data standards from material acquisition to manufacturing and distribution to meet sustainability and regulatory requirements.

By partnering with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), Catena-X was able to achieve a standardized carbon footprint value that could be used throughout the supply chain.

Thanks to the , companies can manage this standardized product carbon footprint data and share it easily, on a material level, between business partners in an efficient and secure way.

Other Industries Incorporating the Green Ledger

The automotive industry isn鈥檛 alone in identifying a need for a more scientific and collaborative approach. Other industries, including manufacturing and healthcare, are moving towards a more holistic green ledger solution.

Multinational chemical and consumer goods company Henkel has recently implemented while simultaneously transitioning to the cloud. will benefit along its entire value chain from increased data-driven, real-time decision-making and leaner and more sustainable processes.

The Next Steps

Plugging the gaps and improving the quality of emissions data is a clear priority to turn an organization鈥檚 carbon reduction targets into actionable plans, but collaboration must not be underestimated if a real reduction is to be achieved across industries. Companies now need to identify the best software solution for their business that will not only collate emissions data on a transactional basis but also report it holistically and provide the possibility to share it throughout the supply chain.

Find out more about .

Heather Davies is a sustainability communications brand journalist at SAP.

Negotiations should conclude by the end of 2024. Now, over a year into the negotiation period, how are businesses preparing for the new legislation?

What Is the Plastic Problem?

The 鈥溾�� report on marine litter produced in 2021 by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was unequivocal on the issue. Since the 1950s, we have generated around 6.9 billion tons of plastic and are adding to this at a rate of over 400 million tons per year.

Of all the plastic produced to date, only an estimated 14% has been incinerated and only 10% has been recycled. The remaining 76% has gone to landfills or ended up in the environment. Waste management systems can鈥檛 cope, which has led to the widespread contamination of our waterways, seas, and oceans by an estimated 8 million tons of plastic every year.

Plastic is a cocktail of fossil fuels and chemicals that breaks down slowly into microplastics, damaging marine environments from the shore to the deepest parts of the ocean. Apart from damaging marine life, they are a threat to people as they make their way into our food chain and drinking water.

Two countries, Spain and the UK, have already taken their first steps with the introduction of plastic taxes on non-recyclable packaging and packaging using less than 30% recycled content respectively. That said, at the time the report was written, there was no consistent policy framework to ensure global action to combat plastic pollution.

SAP鈥檚 Role

The 51风流Circular Economy Solutions team, led by Stephen Jamieson, began work on this issue five years ago. The team is an active member of the , convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and WWF, alongside some of the world鈥檚 biggest businesses and financial institutions.

SAP鈥檚 response to the resolution was to create a digital solution that would enable customers to apply the framework to their business as well as provide feedback to policymakers on what is and isn鈥檛 working.

The Biggest Business Challenge to Eliminating Plastic Pollution

鈥淭he biggest challenge is how to decouple virgin plastic production from growth. We need to break that connection, but, to date, nobody has the solution,鈥� Jamieson says. 鈥淪AP鈥檚 strategy is data-driven. By helping our clients understand the implications of using virgin plastic and having information about alternative options at their fingertips, businesses can find a pathway to more sustainable growth.鈥�

A Data-Driven Solution

With customers at all levels of the value chain, 51风流set out to help its clients solve this problem using technology. Initial discussions with 30 or so organizations helped 51风流understand the complexities involved and led us to identify the need for a plastics data resource. 51风流built the 51风流Responsible Design and Production solution to help deliver the information companies require to identify strategies and solutions for eliminating plastics or moving to other solutions such as reuse schemes.

Data transparency is key to begin the process of decoupling growth from virgin plastics and to facilitate a transition to a more circular economy. The first step involves measurement, in effect creating a digital twin of the plastic item a company produces to allow them to fully understand the types and amounts of components involved in the product itself. Then we do the same for the primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging.

Once the measurement phase is complete, the software can be used to apply EPR (extended producer responsibility) policies and local plastic taxes to the different components. With this data applied, businesses can compare materials like-for-like by connecting with digital material libraries to find the best-fit alternatives.

Once a new solution has been identified, the by 51风流solution comes into play. With its blockchain-based approach, the recycled content of products can be verifiable, which helps prevent fraud and provide assurance to customers.

Is There an Appetite to Change Business Practices around Plastic?

The desire to find solutions has evolved dramatically in the last five years. The level of seniority of the people driving the discussions and their determination is palpable. Rather than seeing this issue as an unnecessary cost, business leaders are genuinely engaged in finding solutions for several reasons.

Firstly, they recognize that the plastic problem is inextricably linked to the climate crisis and biodiversity loss and understand that change is necessary if we鈥檙e to stay within planetary boundaries.

Secondly, there is a feeling that solving the plastic problem will open the door to the next phase of growth, profitability, and social equity. This is creating a high level of competition between key players in the market.

Thirdly, companies are concerned with their reputation. They want to be on the right side of history and retain the loyalty and trust of their customers. In addition, there is now an acceptance 鈥� which didn鈥檛 exist previously 鈥� that there is no real downside to pursuing a solution.

These drivers coupled with data-driven technology means businesses will be ready, some even in an advanced position, when the UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution comes into force.

For more information on how 51风流helps companies record, report, and act on their sustainability goals, visit听.

Heather Davies is a sustainability brand journalist.

In 2020, the EU identified green hydrogen as a cornerstone of a climate-neutral energy system to be in place by 2050. At that time, hydrogen accounted for consumption and was primarily used to produce chemical products, such as plastics and fertilizers. Ninety-six percent of this hydrogen was produced with natural gas, resulting in significant amounts of CO2 emissions.

The other aspect driving this strategy is the need to reduce the dependency on imported fossil fuels. Diversification and access to new forms of renewable energy such as hydrogen will make the region more resilient.

The European Commission resolved to produce 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen and import 10 million tons by 2030. While green energy can be produced anywhere, countries with high availability of solar and wind energy such as Brazil offer more favorable conditions for efficient and affordable production. With its hydroelectric plants and policies favoring renewable energy as a substitute for fossil fuels, Brazil is a promising candidate for strategic green fuel trade partnerships with Europe.

However, Brazilian companies trading green hydrogen nationally and exporting it to regions such as the European Union must provide transparent proof of origin based on certification schemes.

The Public-Private Partnership between 51风流and GIZ

In order to validate the general requirements and develop concepts for a software to support the green hydrogen certification for Brazil and Germany, 51风流has formed a public-private partnership with the (GIZ). To help Brazilian suppliers prove their hydrogen is truly green, the project will evaluate and summarize certification rules and test digital solutions as well.

鈥淭his cooperation aims to promote sustainable hydrogen projects in developing and emerging countries,鈥� said Sabine Bendiek, chief people and operating officer and member of the Executive Board at 51风流SE, after signing a Letter of Intent (LoI) outlining the understanding between all parties. The LoI was later countersigned by GIZ Brazil at a delegation ceremony attended by the German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Robert Habeck.

“One of SAP鈥檚 first collaborative aspirations with GIZ is to develop a pilot project to digitize the hydrogen certification processes for Brazilian companies. We鈥檙e excited to work with GIZ on this project, which will eventually allow certification data to be exchanged and evaluated along the value chain in a tamperproof, cost-efficient, and traceable manner,鈥� said Bendiek.

The GreenToken by 51风流solution, for example, can provide supply chain transparency right back to the origin of any material using a blockchain based chain of custody for trust based on recognized standards such as ISCC PLUS, ISCC EU, and REDcert2. This unique digital twin on a blockchain approach can provide transparency into ESG (environmental, social, and governance) facts such as commodity origin, child labor, and recycled and/or sustainability status across company borders.

Building the Green Hydrogen Economy

鈥淏razil has the ideal conditions to become a global player in this area, including the infrastructure needed to create a relevant domestic market and become a major exporter of green hydrogen. This makes Brazil an excellent partner for countries like Germany that intend to import green hydrogen,鈥� said Dr. Markus Francke, GIZ vice country director in Brazil. 鈥淎s Brazilian hydrogen companies are looking to sell their products in domestic, European, and other markets, this project will help prepare them for the requirements of region-specific certification processes.鈥�

Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), the results of the partnership are expected to benefit small and medium enterprises as well as large companies in Brazil.

While decarbonizing the economy, the development of a green hydrogen industry in parallel can boost economic growth and resilience, creating local jobs in countries that produce green hydrogen such as Brazil. The new partnership between 51风流and GIZ will contribute significantly to developing the hydrogen economy in Brazil by creating the necessary proof points through reliable certification for Brazil, Germany, and 鈥� and through its compliance to European directives 鈥� the European Union Member States.

When joined the Action Tank, one of the key work streams was to make the “green dream” a reality, accelerating the replacement of conventional fuels with renewable alternatives like green hydrogen. With customers at every step of the value chain, 51风流found itself in a unique position to lead the movement from a digital perspective.

There are numerous challenges to effecting such a monumental change in the energy sector, but one that requires a unique and digital response is tracking green hydrogen. Differentiating it from the other color grades — including blue, gray, and pink, which represent production methods with CO2e emissions or using nuclear power or fossil fuels — is critical to the success of decarbonization with green hydrogen.

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Digital Tracking for Total Transparency

The , unique digital software based on a blockchain approach, responds to the need to track green hydrogen. Designed to track commodity origin and mass balance quantities, GreenToken provides complete transparency of the source, like solar, wind, or water, as well as the way it is produced and its journey, such as pipeline, tanker, or transition into green ammonia for transportation.

A significant number of governments are working on their own green hydrogen certification programs. To account for the different production and delivery methods, blockchain is a highly reliable technology as it can provide holistic transparency on the origin of green hydrogen and the methods used for its production and transportation.

The technology in GreenToken works at every step of the value chain. A car manufacturer, for example, can have complete confidence in the green steel used to manufacture its vehicles thanks to the tokens that prove the energy from hydrogen used to produce the steel came from renewable sources.

Blockchain technology prevents fraud and creates trust; it makes the production of green hydrogen auditable, and therefore certifiable, which is particularly important in terms of pricing. Because green hydrogen is currently significantly more expensive than its blue or gray equivalents, energy buyers investing in the clean energy transition need absolute assurance and justification that their energy purchases are truly renewable.

Digital Simulation Tools

51风流software can also be used to simulate green hydrogen projects to both support decision-making and aid in planning.

Wind turbines and solar panels depend on the right weather patterns to produce energy, so the capacity to produce renewable energy is constantly fluctuating, resulting in continuous price variations. Energy data software plays a critical role in informing green hydrogen producers about fluctuations in capacity in order to allow them to manage their electrolyzers accordingly. Such tools are also essential for industrial energy customers to manage their energy finance budget.

An example of an 51风流digital simulation project involved a railway operator, where digital tools were used to calculate the capacity and filling speed requirements for a proposed hydrogen dual filling station for trucks and trains.

City planners would also find digital capabilities from 51风流valuable. 51风流has the ability to work with planning teams to understand the potential implications of transitioning the city to green hydrogen as its main source of energy for heating, lighting, and transport.

Rapid Adoption Crucial for Green Hydrogen Transition

鈥淚mplementing the digital tools to enable a successful transition to green hydrogen will not happen overnight,鈥� warns Klaus Schimmer, chief innovation architect at SAP.

The software exists — GreenToken is ready for implementation, but industry and governments are dragging their feet. Collaboration among countries and industries is key to setting certification standards.

We simply don鈥檛 have time to waste. This is not just a job for the energy industry; every large industry is impacted and needs to make resources available to join the dots. It is clear that digitalization can and will enable and accelerate the transition, but speed of adoption will be key to its success.

For more information on how 51风流helps companies record, report, and act on their sustainability goals, visit .

Christian Boos is head of Sustainability Engagement at SAP.

Capgemini and 51风流will provide cloud products and services to support sustainability transformation in strategy, technology, and business model change. The initiative will enable companies to better manage their suppliers and supply chains in pursuit of their sustainability goals.

“Sustainability is at the heart of the automotive industry and has to be the foundation of every decision. At the same time, it is essential to clearly understand the customer’s perspective and integrate feedback to ensure success in the digital age,” said Hagen Heubach, global vice president and head of the Automotive Industry Business Unit at SAP. “We are combining the strengths of 51风流and Capgemini to provide our customers with expanded capabilities to define and implement their sustainability strategies.”

Josean Mendez, global 51风流alliance lead at Capgemini, adds:鈥�淲e are proud to be working with 51风流on this sustainability initiative to jointly deliver automotive offerings leveraging RISE with 51风流transformation value to our clients.鈥疭trengthening our solutions and helping our clients with their sustainability agendas signals the positive impact we aspire to for all our customers.鈥�

Traditional original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers, as well as supplier organizations can drive their competitive advantage and value with the management processes and tools supported by the joint initiative. Specifically, this joint transformation framework can help automotive companies identify the business value of sustainability and inject sustainability management into products and services across their supply chains.

51风流and Capgemini offer market-leading solutions in four key areas of sustainability transformation to complement their innovation in the sustainability space:

• Net-zero strategies and business models identify transformation opportunities and drive transparency on sustainability objectives with the help of the 51风流Sustainability Control Tower solution.
• Sustainable products and services create transparency about the carbon emissions of products throughout their life cycle, leveraging 51风流Product Footprint Management and sharing emissions data through the industry value chain with the GreenToken by 51风流solution.
• Sustainable procurement and supply chains leverage 51风流Integrated Business Planning, 51风流Supply Chain Control Tower, and product carbon footprint data to help drive supply chain decisions with visibility across the network.
• Steering and reporting for impact helps ensure that the transformation focuses on business value, with actionable insights and improved environmental, social,
  and governance (ESG) reporting so that companies can comply with all regulatory and reporting requirements.

鈥淔acing significant industry disruption, traditional OEMs, EV manufacturers, and automotive suppliers must continually innovate with their products and services while at the same time constantly improve efficiency,鈥濃�痵aid Markus Winkler, executive vice president of Global Automotive at Capgemini.鈥�淭he joint initiative for automotive with 51风流helps our clients adapt to the changing requirements of today as well as plan for the future with a strong and comprehensive industry cloud solution addressing global sustainability.鈥�

Jim Davis is director of Automotive Industry Business Unit at 51风流America.

Raw materials like palm oil are often mixed with physically identical raw materials from verified sustainable and nonverified sources after the 鈥渇irst mile鈥� of the supply chain, causing the origin information to be either hidden or lost.

In a successful proof of concept in Indonesia, Unilever applied GreenToken to source more than 188,000 tons of oil palm fruit. The solution enabled Golden Agri-Resources and other suppliers from whom Unilever sources to create tokens that mirror the material flow of the palm oil throughout the supply chain and capture the unique attributes linked to the oil鈥檚 origin.

鈥淲ith GreenToken, we want to bring the same traceability and supply chain transparency to bulk raw materials that you get from scanning a bar or QR code on any consumer product,鈥� said Nitin Jain, co-founder and general manager of the GreenToken by 51风流solution, SAP. 鈥淥ur solution allows companies to tell what percentage of palm oil products they purchased from a sustainable origin and track it to the end consumer product.鈥�

鈥淭echnology has played an important role in our efforts to enhance visibility and transparency in our own palm oil supply chains,鈥� said Anita Neville, chief sustainability and communications officer, Golden Agri-Resources. 鈥淥ur participation in the GreenToken by 51风流solution pilot with 51风流and Unilever provided useful insights in how to successfully pass information between different actors in the supply chain.鈥�

The GreenToken solution helped Unilever track, verify and report in near real time the origins and journey that palm oil takes through its long and complex supply chain.

鈥淯nilever is committed to achieving a deforestation-free supply chain by 2023, and blockchain technology has the potential to help companies, like ours, track their supply chains to ensure the commodities we source respect people and the planet,鈥� said Dave Ingram, chief procurement officer, Unilever. 鈥淲e are encouraged by the promising results of our pilot with GreenToken by SAP, the latest building block in our tech-enabled approach to ensure a more traceable and transparent supply chain.鈥�

The work with GreenToken enhances Unilever鈥檚 ongoing and industry-leading efforts to gain full visibility of its supply chain.

Visit the . Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

Media Contacts:
Benjamin Nickel, +49 170 4920616, benjamin.nickel@sap.com, CET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com
Unilever Press Office, Press-Office.London@unilever.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ.听 Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP鈥檚 2021 Annual Report on Form 20-F.漏 2022 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

Here, meet the finalists in the Products and Technology category.

The Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award is the highest
employee recognition at SAP, awarded annually by the CEO
to an individual or a team.

Finalist: GreenToken by 51风流

Eighty percent of the world鈥檚 palm oil originates from Indonesia and Malaysia. While some of it is being sustainably sourced in sustainable fair-trade plantations and small holdings, much is also being harvested on recently deforested land. How can you tell one from the other?

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Video produced by David Aguirre and Rana Hamzakadi

The GreenToken by 51风流solution was designed to address this issue by providing a new level of transparency into complex raw material supply chains.

鈥淚n 2019 a group of 51风流palm oil customers approached us with this very problem 鈥� they wanted a robust solution to maintain facts across the value chain from smallholder to end customer,鈥� says GreenToken Co-Founder James Veale. 鈥淭raditional batch-based inventory systems with their simple rules don鈥檛 truly reflect the exact makeup of a raw material inventory, which may be a mix of sustainable and non-sustainable sources. At scale, we would be dealing with millions of batches.鈥�

GreenToken instead uses a digital twin token to represent a fixed and usually small amount of the raw material. Records are kept on a blockchain ledger, and as the material moves along the supply chain GreenToken passes the equivalent number of tokens that represent the volume of material moved, from one supply chain actor鈥檚 wallet to another. This creates a tracing history — an immutable chain of custody that adds complete supply chain transparency and makes the data trustworthy.

Transforming the World Economy

GreenToken鈥檚 elegant yet powerful design has found applications in many industries. The tokens can carry information on any kind of raw materials to help answer a variety of questions: 鈥淎re these food crops sustainably sourced? Has this cobalt been mined free of child labor? Is this plastic recycled with a high percentage coming from molecular recycling of plastic waste?鈥�

With over 77% of the world鈥檚 manufactured goods passing through an 51风流system, GreenToken is receiving huge interest from 51风流customers under increasing pressure from both legislation and their own customer base to prove that their raw material sourcing, processing, and supply chain practices are the best that they can be.

鈥淕reenToken is SAP鈥檚 answer to that,鈥� says Nitin Jain, GreenToken co-founder. 鈥淲e have found a truly innovative use for tokens on a blockchain ledger that gives transparency to these formerly opaque raw material supply chains. GreenToken鈥檚 purpose is to help the world transform to a sustainable and circular economy — and our innovation has made it available in the cloud using simple, frictionless browser-based interfaces.鈥�

Finalist Fast Facts

• Submission Title: GreenToken by SAP
• Team: Nitin Jain in Canada and James Veale in Australia, co-founders, with a global team of 18, including full-time employees and fellows spread across Asia-Pacific Japan, Europe, and North America regions
• Number of employees: 20
• Achievement: Developed an elegant yet powerful method to add complete supply chain transparency to previously opaque raw material supply chains using digital twin tokens on a blockchain ledger. The solution works for any raw material supply chain. The team is currently deploying the system in the U.S. and Europe to prove that plastic has a high degree of circular recycled content.
• Impact: GreenToken allows 51风流customers to not only measure and make claims on their current sustainable, ethical, and circular sourcing practices, but also use their procurement spending power to promote good supply chains over bad.

Finalist: Ecosilient

While optimizing resources and capacities is not exactly a new business challenge, B2B circular sharing platform Ecosilient aims to commodify demand, supply, and services, connecting organizations in a community to generate value more efficiently and sustainably with special focus on existing resources and capacities.

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Ecosilient helps businesses leverage resources such as obsolete assets, surplus inventory, waste, and other byproducts into a circular economy. It creates a community layer based on enterprise resource planning (ERP) to enable this growing demand for businesses, stakeholders, and investors to make more responsible decisions that drive meaningful impact on critical issues.

Ecosilient Founder Avital Ben-Natan says the team鈥檚 mission is to 鈥渄ecouple economic growth from natural extraction and corrosive business practices. It鈥檚 about creating a trust platform to discover and facilitate collaboration opportunities around shared values.鈥�

The goal is no less than to address interlinked problems like the climate crisis, social inequities, or broken supply chains. Ecosilient serves as a framework for evolving SAP’s core technologies, data, and its global ecosystem into an engine for a sustainable economy.

Users will be able to work with 51风流software as they are accustomed — sourcing materials, signing contracts, tracing their shipping, and managing their inventories. 鈥淏ut with Ecosilient,鈥� Ben-Natan says, 鈥渢here is this additional layer in our software that users can trust will guide them to make responsible choices — to do more and better with less.鈥�

Leading the Sustainable Economy

Fostered within the 51风流Intrapreneurs program, the idea of Ecosilient resonated with many people at 51风流from the start and attracted like-minded employees willing to engage in their spare time. 鈥淓ven though few of us have ever been in the same room, we鈥檝e all become very close while building Ecosilient over the last one and a half years.鈥�

Ben-Natan says names the impact of climate change as his team鈥檚 motivation. 鈥淎s parents, we feel responsible for the future of our kids and our communities. We have to answer the challenges that we face as a species, but also as a planet and as an economy, and find an appropriate response.鈥�

The team considers its solution as a natural evolution of what 51风流stands for: to create order in chaos, to create opportunities and collaboration, to create a fair, responsible, and ultimately more efficient economy.

But Ecosilient is also a way for 51风流to innovate its own infrastructure and the way it operates as a company, as Ben-Natan stresses: 鈥淚t’s about creating a fundamental direction for 51风流to lead in the sustainable economy.鈥�

Finalist Fast Facts

• Submission Title: Ecosilient, the B2B Circular Sharing Platform
• Team: Avital Ben Natan, Umesh Shekar
• Number of employees: More than 20, with engineers, designers, innovation specialists, and mentors that have contributed to the business model, design thinking, demo, MVP, and customer engagement, and with special thanks to New Ventures and Technologies, Services IMM, and 51风流Experience Garage for platforming.
• Achievement: Leveraged market research and data analysis to identify target industries and organizations for freight pooling; implemented a WIP MVP and a demo for a sustainable shipping network; started customer engagement and GTM with companies like Unilever, Bechtle, Steelcase, Cargill, and others.
• Impact: Ecosilient helps companies increase resource efficiency while promoting a sustainable economy by engaging the ecosystem to create shared value.

Finalist: 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences

In recent years, the world has seen the issue of drug counterfeiting increase dramatically. In Africa alone, over 120,000 people die each year because they are being treated with fake malaria medication. It is estimated that currently over 50% of the drugs in Africa are counterfeit.

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Enter 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences: this industry network based on software-as-a-service (SaaS) helps 51风流pharmaceutical customers share information on their pharmaceutical products with supply chain partners and government agencies to enable traceability and verification of individual product packs in these markets.

鈥淚t was really a joint effort with plenty of input from 51风流customers that inspired the info hub,鈥� says Oliver Nuernberg, chief product owner, 51风流Life Sciences. 鈥淭hey pointed out the need for a global network that would minimize the effort by connecting once while sharing data with many participants.鈥�

Running on 51风流Business Technology Platform, the information hub leverages the platform鈥檚 integration services to exchange messages, 51风流Blockchain Business Services to make data available for verification, and portal services. In 2021, new innovative capabilities enabling the automation of onboarding processes and self-onboarding of trading partners were delivered to enable customers to efficiently onboard hundreds of partners in parallel for new markets.

The largest eight pharmaceutical manufacturers, and 14 of the top 20, are already using 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, including most of the COVID-19 vaccines manufacturers.

Next, we plan to offer 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences together with 51风流Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals to enable aid workers from organizations such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders to verify, for example, COVID-19 vaccines that they receive on the spot to听 low- to middle-income countries.

Initially, the team was made up of just a handful of 51风流employees working out of Germany and Ireland. Today, there are more than 50 team members from the Customer Innovation & Maintenance organization, mainly located in India, who develop and operate the solution as well as help onboard customers and their business partners.

Amba Bisht, senior developer for Engineering in Customer Innovation & Maintenance, says: 鈥淲hat鈥檚 so rewarding about working on this project is how it really brings the spirit of 51风流— to make the world run better — to life, because by increasing security in the pharmaceutical supply chain and preventing counterfeit medication from reaching patients, 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences may ultimately save lives.鈥�

Finalist Fast Facts

• Submission Title: 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, Saving Lives One Serial Number at a Time
• Team: Oliver Nuernberg, Martin Janssen, Dennis Keilbach, Vincent Varain, Sandeep Kumar Dikshit, Shashank Goyal, Amba Bisht, Anil Kumar Suresh, Geetha Ranjani G M, Athul Umesh
• Number of employees: More than 50
• Achievement: Global network with the eight largest pharmaceutical companies and 14 of the top 20, most COVID-19 vaccine manufactures, over 1,000 live trading partners. The hub currently hosts 2.2 billion product packs in the blockchain for verification in the U.S. market, manages tens of thousands of messages reported to government agencies, such as those in the EU, Russia, Brazil, and other markets, every day, all to prevent counterfeit products being introduced into the legitimate supply chain.
• Impact: Increase patient safety by authenticating pharmaceutical products, thus avoiding counterfeit drugs reaching patients; increase sustainability by reducing drug wastage.

By 2050, according to听, green hydrogen could supply up to 25% of the world鈥檚 energy needs and become a 鈧�13 trillion (US$15 trillion) market. But until we get there, current challenges of storing and transporting hydrogen need to be overcome first.

Not All Hydrogen Is Created Equal

In the long run, only CO2-free hydrogen produced with the help of renewable energies is sustainable. However, it will be quite a while before there is enough green hydrogen to meet the growing demand. The reason: there is not enough green electricity. Of the many alternative production methods, the most popular today is blue or grey hydrogen produced from natural gas.

In the future, many industrial processes will use green or blue hydrogen or downstream products made from it, such as ammonia and methanol. Hydrogen can particularly help clean up emission-intensive industries like transportation, chemical iron, and steel production, which account for about 7% of global CO2 emissions each year. But the high number of potential users contrasts with the limited availability and high production costs of hydrogen.

Cross-Company Alliances to Accelerate the Value Chain

In line with the听听to reduce emissions at least 55% by 2030 and make Europe climate-neutral by 2050, governments have adopted similar sustainability goals and consider hydrogen a critical component to reach them. Companies are also taking action to support green and digital transformations in the EU. For instance, the听听was founded by 12 executives from leading European companies to develop concrete recommendations for action and help companies undergo the green transition. This alliance is driven by the conviction that no company will solve the greatest challenges of our time alone. To succeed, companies need to collaborate across value chains, build partnerships, and work together with governments and academia.

One project that has emerged from these cross-company efforts is looking at how to accelerate the complete value chain of green hydrogen 鈥� from production, transport, storage, and sale, to the energy customer. Instead of operating in silos, these market segments need to be linked together.

A Data-Sharing Platform as the Single Source of Truth

The first prototype of a green hydrogen platform based on听听looks promising. The platform combines data from all participants of the hydrogen value chain and, therefore, enables better data-driven business decisions. Instead of managing complicated spreadsheets, an energy provider can use the platform as their single source of truth to run simulations and calculate how much energy they can produce, how much they want to sell to the electrolyzer, and how much power they need for vehicles, households, and industries.

For such platforms to be successful, visibility across the value chain of green hydrogen is a prerequisite. Supply chain solution听听helps companies to track hydrogen across the entire supply chain, from production to energy customer, via electrolyzers and carriers using blockchain technology. The solution is designed to provide auditable proof of what percentage of the hydrogen is green, blue, or grey. GreenToken can also be used to track听听that are caused when hydrogen is imported from far away. Companies can leverage the data to prove that their purchased hydrogen is truly green. They can also see how much CO2 has been created during the journey from production origin to customer site and, therefore, how much they would need to offset to make the hydrogen 100% green again.

Klaus Schimmer is chief innovation architect of Sustainability at SAP.
The article was initially published on the .

The current pandemic has had a significant impact on the , as well as people鈥檚 professional and personal lives. Business operations across the globe have changed rapidly over the last six weeks, with small companies and startups in particular feeling the pressure to .

Late last year, before the , the outlook for newly founded ventures and startups was quite different. At that time, two employee-created startups within 51风流secured funding and joined the accelerator program within the company鈥檚 New Ventures and Technologies team.

With the rapid development of the pandemic, the co-founders of GreenToken and face new business obstacles that they could not have predicted upon receiving funding.

鈥淚 had business meetings in Germany, the U.S., the UK, Singapore, and Indonesia that all had to be canceled,鈥� GreenToken Co-Founder James Veale says. He adds that while the meetings were replaced with video calls, software deployment and activities like troubleshooting or training were challenging to accomplish without being on-site with customers.

Despite the new challenges, both teams still appreciate the support they have had from , a production innovation program that invests in small entrepreneurial 51风流teams to build and launch products. The intrapreneurship program represents one of the company鈥檚 efforts to identify future opportunities and funding ideas for employee-led innovation. It provides a one-stop shop for all the information and tools employees need,听such as access to an exclusive network of advisors, hands-on education, and a world-class accelerator to听help build their own business听inside SAP.

Here, both founding teams reflect on their first 100 days as intrapreneurs at SAP and share their experiences and challenges, as well as key takeaways.

Creating a New Venture

Dor Shany and Rooly Eliezerov are the co-founders of , a web application that lets users create one single digital identity that can be used for login across websites and apps. Their goal is to safeguard personal data on various platforms. Both have experience as founders, as they bring deep expertise from their identity management platform, , which听51风流acquired in 2017.

Shany and Eliezerov applied for support from the internal accelerator program as opposed to seeking external funding.

鈥淪AP鈥檚 added value is a big plus for us,鈥� Shany explains. 鈥淥ther companies already have a lot of trust with 51风流and we can benefit from that when approaching new customers.鈥� But the decision to apply was also a personal one. 鈥淲e both shine in a startup environment, and that鈥檚 what New Ventures and Technologies offers,鈥� Eliezerov adds.

Ideas for the accelerator program come from across business areas. GreenToken by SAP emerged from the听.

As the company鈥檚 flagship social intrapreneurship initiative, 51风流One Billion Lives drives social innovation and gives employees the permission, time, technology, and mentorship to turn their passion for making a difference into sustainable ventures. With a social mission at the core of business, the program aspires to improve the lives of 1 billion people.

Being selected for funding came as a surprise for the GreenToken Co-Founders Veale and Nitin Jain.

鈥淲e entered 51风流One Billion Lives just to get some funding to finish our project and we ended up being given the opportunity to start a new business unit within SAP,鈥� Veale says, adding that he and Jain had to leave their existing roles to completely focus on the venture. 鈥淪uccess or failure is down to us.鈥�

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

Before securing funding, the four founders took part in a three-week workshop to receive feedback from mentors and fellow intrapreneurs. Jain notes that every single aspect of their business plan was scrutinized and challenged by workshop peers.

Shany says such deep inspection and review enabled the four co-founders to view their respective ventures from multiple perspectives. 鈥淥ur key takeaway was that it鈥檚 not about having other people solve our problems, but it’s about listening to others and then we learn how we can improve,鈥� he says.

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Coming from a business development background, Veale and Jain knew that their professional experiences were unique among their peers within New Ventures and Technologies, who typically have more technical backgrounds. These differences, however, have been complementary to both the co-founders and the teams they work with, because they are able to approach problems and issues with a different view and vice versa 鈥� even if it meant being challenged and challenging others openly.

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 hold back in challenging the team,鈥� Veale says, emphasizing that it was a valuable learning experience for both sides. 鈥淚nnovation is about passion and change, and if we can鈥檛 change our process then we can鈥檛 innovate. New Ventures and Technologies understood this and gave us the flexibility and headroom we needed.鈥�

A Glimpse into the Future

In their first 100 days as intrapreneurs at SAP, the lives and roles of these four co-founders have fundamentally changed. They are working with existing 51风流customers, including blue chip companies and are looking forward to expanding their portfolios and scaling their businesses. But they are also acutely aware that they are not just dealing with the challenges of a typical startup. The pandemic has presented challenges for startups, some of which have never before been seen.

Nevertheless, they remain optimistic. 鈥淲e had a slower start than we had hoped for, but we have adapted, like bringing face-to-face meetings to video, and we are now moving and gathering pace,鈥� Veale says.

When asked if the founders recommended taking the leap and becoming an intrapreneur, Jain answers with an emphatic yes: 鈥淭his transition from being an employee in a large organization to driving something on your own is a challenge and a change of mind 鈥� but it is definitely worth it.鈥�

In-house innovation has been one of SAP鈥檚 recipes for success since its founding days nearly half a century ago. Driving transformative innovation inside the company demands going beyond innovating upon existing products by actively scouting for new ideas. Once identified, these innovative ideas can build and grow upon SAP鈥檚 unique strength and assets such as the company鈥檚 technologies, data and customer relationships.

鈥淚t鈥檚 our job to keep our eyes on the future,鈥� Max Wessel, chief innovation officer of SAP, said. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 more than just having the ideas. We have to put an operating model in place to facilitate innovation for our customers.鈥�

Venturing inside of 51风流鈥� also known as intrapreneurship 鈥� is one of the ways 51风流accomplishes the task by reimagining how products and services can be delivered from the ground up.

From Idea to Product Incubation

The听internal accelerator program听at 51风流has been identifying high-potential, entrepreneurial employees听inside the company听since 2015.听With the help of a structured program, the employees join together in teams that create an idea for a new venture. The selected 51风流teams then receive mentorship to validate critical assumptions and solve real business problems.

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In 2019, 11 teams were selected to pitch for investment. Two have secured funding and are joining SAP.iO Venture Studio, the in-house product incubator. Over the next 18 to 24 months, these two venture teams will have the opportunity to continue to develop their ideas and test and iterate among other teams in the product incubator environment.

GreenToken: Traceable Raw Material Supply Chains for Informed Purchasing Decisions

What is inspiring about the program is that ideas are sourced from all areas of SAP鈥檚 business. The GreenToken by SAP solution was sourced from the , the company鈥檚 flagship social intrapreneurship program that aims to improve 1 billion lives through a portfolio of sustainable, shared-value impact ventures.

As consumers become more conscious of the origin of the products they buy, they are demanding sustainable and ethically sourced material. GreenToken enhances the traceability of product raw materials through a cloud platform supported by blockchain technology.

The venture鈥檚 approach is unique in the market and it will be able to offer companies a new level of transparency for their sourced raw materials, as opposed to the current practice of only tracking the final packaged good. Founders James Veale and Nitin Jain have proved the viability and are continually working to build on the potential impact of their venture.

Digital Identities: Usernames and Passwords Become Obsolete with OwnID

was built to safeguard personal data on various online platforms. The web application enables users to create a single digital identity that will be used to log in to websites and apps.

Today鈥檚 online logins include cumbersome account creations and password hassles, which too easily can lead to compromised privacy. OwnID听aims to听transform听identity management by giving users full ownership of their personal data and protecting their digital identities from being dispersed across multiple platforms. The venture plans to create decentralized, portable identities听that users can take with them wherever they go through their phone without installing an app.

A user will click on a link on their phone to register to a website without choosing a password, choose the profile information that they want to share about themselves, and will then be able to use just their phone to login from anywhere.

Not only that, but in business-to-business (B2B) scenarios,听the same portable identity technology could be used by employees to log in and share information securely. Providing听data autonomy for end users could also resolve issues听for companies managing their own customer data and compliance.

Funding and听Founding听Inside听SAP

Dor Shany and听Rooly听Eliezerov are the founding team behind OwnID, and bring deep expertise from identity management platform听Gigya, which 51风流acquired in 2017.

鈥淐reating a new business within an organization offers us to work with听the existing company鈥檚 assets and infrastructure, which is fundamentally听different from a traditional startup,鈥澨鼸liezerov, co-founder of Gigya and OwnID, explained.听鈥淵ou aren鈥檛 starting on a blank canvas.鈥�

About New Ventures and Technologies听

To future-proof 51风流and customer businesses, the New Ventures and Technologies organization听drives transformative innovation through technology innovation and product incubation. It听identifies听commercial opportunities in the 51风流ecosystem, explores听补苍诲 pioneers听the business impact of emerging technologies, and makes听them听enterprise ready.听For more information,听.

Previous听experience in starting听a听business isn鈥檛 a requirement within SAP.iO Venture Studio.

鈥淲ith our approach to product incubation, we听empower听employees听to own their new product,鈥� Graham听Ratcliffe, general manager of听SAP.iO听Venture Studio,听said.听鈥淲e鈥檙e most interested in the big bets听补苍诲 we look for founding teams who want to create new markets.鈥�