The new ESG strategy builds on the strength of the existing , which has successfully delivered business transformation solutions to clients in more than 80 countries.

The strategy includes co-innovated solutions, created with PwC鈥檚 , aimed at enabling businesses to apply ESG metrics through their operations that are trustworthy, auditable and verifiable. The solutions leverage the 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises solution, along with the 听and the . Together, PwC and 51风流help organizations leverage the solutions they need to fulfill compliance requirements and drive growth to support the ever-increasing expectations of customers and investors. They also assist customers in shaping the future of their net zero strategy and sustainability reporting.

PwC and SAP鈥檚 strategy includes solutions encompassing an enterprise-wide ESG strategy, ranging from trading optimization and tax credit recognition to third-party risk management and competitive analysis. Three top challenge areas for ESG, net zero and sustainability reporting will also be addressed:

• Reporting and disclosure helping to satisfy requirements to materially report and disclose investor-grade carbon measuring data to meet demands of investors, lenders, regulators and customers
• Operationalizing sustainability to support the incorporation of ESG measures, especially carbon issues, directly into business functions, such as trading, capitalization and tax
• Supply chain risk management, monitoring and compliance extending support for ESG measures to cover the impact of suppliers on organizational performance

Solutions like , based on 51风流Business Technology Platform, have already demonstrated the strength of the collaboration between the two organizations in bringing ESG innovation to market.

PwC and 51风流are dedicated to helping organizations respond to the reporting and auditability requirements imposed by the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). They also support companies in complying with a related ruling proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Solutions provided by PwC and 51风流enable the real-time, data-driven environment customers require to operate and grow the sustainable enterprise of the future.

Bob Moritz, Global Chairman, PwC said: 鈥淓SG has become a business imperative and is central to PwC鈥檚 global strategy, The New Equation, which aims to help clients build trust with their stakeholders and deliver sustained outcomes. New ESG reporting and disclosure requirements are being established, and greater transparency is critical to building trust. This belief is core to our new co-innovation strategy with SAP, expanding our collaboration to create a dedicated focus on ESG solution development. PwC has been working intensely to help companies deliver on the requirements needed to achieve their ESG goals. Combining our expertise and reputation for trust and integrity with SAP鈥檚 technology platform will help bring broader capabilities and solutions to respond to organizations鈥� challenges in meeting their ESG and sustainability commitments.鈥�

Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, said: 鈥淭he key to every organization鈥檚 ability to reach their sustainability goals and drive positive change is transparency. Our collaboration will combine the deep industry expertise and customer insights of PwC with our leading sustainability technology portfolio. The resulting ESG transparency will help companies reinvent their business models and deliver the sustainable outcomes the world urgently needs.鈥�

To learn more about PwC and SAP鈥檚 ESG co-innovation strategy, visit our .

About PwC

At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We鈥檙e a network of firms in 152 countries with nearly 328,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at .

Visit the 51风流News Center. Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 51风流customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit .

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According to a pulse survey conducted by the , 76% of employees want flexibility in where they work and 93% flexibility in when they work. The desire for flexible work is strongest among women, working parents, and employees of color who have shown gains in feelings of belonging working remotely. Specifically, 81% of Black respondents say they want flexibility in where they work, compared to 75% of White respondents.

This data is in direct contrast to what most executives report that they want in post-pandemic workforce policies. Of those currently working fully remotely, nearly half of all executives surveyed (44%) want to work from the office every day, compared to 17% of employees. And 75% of these executives say they want to work from the office three to five days a week versus only 34% of employees.

So, what are companies to do? How can they make informed decisions about what鈥檚 best for leaders, for the business, and for their employees?

Applying a Sustainability Lens to Work Location Decision

One way of looking at the issues of return to office or hybrid work is from a business sustainability perspective. For example, if forcing people back to the office will make critical employees more likely to leave their jobs, you have a real flight risk issue impacting the sustainability of your business. Your business must have enough people with the right skills at the right time to propel it forward.

Another perspective to consider is how today鈥檚 business environment has been transformed by climate change, nature loss, and more. The planet needs change, and people demand change. What if, when making decisions about who comes into the office and when, executives considered the carbon footprint generated by employee travel and commutes, weighed against the energy usage working from home, along with the sustainability causes that their employees support?

This would require implementing next-generation holistic steering and reporting that maps operational and experiential data to show progress on goals such as reducing the carbon footprint of the business. Imagine executives having climate and natural capital accounting at their fingertips, including individual and collective employee carbon footprint tracking.

This is the kind of holistic steering and reporting that groups such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) want companies to integrate into their strategic decision-making. Integrating economic, environmental, and social performance data into decisions 鈥� referred to as Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics 鈥� can help executives serve their own goals, respect their employees鈥� preferences for when and where they work, and contribute to reaching sustainability goals that make the world a cleaner, greener place.

How 51风流Can Help

In 2020, 51风流committed to enable companies to report on the WEF鈥檚 Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics. As promised, we have delivered to help enable holistic enterprise-wide sustainability performance management. 51风流also made it easier to become a sustainable business and reduce carbon footprints with , which can enable businesses to move toward lower carbon emissions and more sustainable operations. SAP鈥檚 data-driven approach lets businesses embed sustainability comprehensively and gain actionable insights across the entire value chain to enable companies to transition to low-carbon business processes.

Faced with an ambitious sustainability agenda and carbon-lowering targets, one 51风流customer wanted to go further and consider the employee wishes for home/office work, and the carbon emissions generated from their commute to work against the energy efficiency of their home offices. The company had committed to lowering its enterprise carbon emissions and wanted a mechanism to support managers鈥� operational workforce planning processes.

51风流built a proof of concept (PoC) application in just one day once the employee survey was collected. The PoC decision support application was realized as follows:

Employee address data was acquired from records using the standard delivered API. 51风流Data Quality Management and microservices for location data were used for both data cleansing 鈥� a big bonus since the customer was able to cleanse inaccurate addresses in 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central 鈥� and data enrichment to geocode the home and work addresses with the latitude, longitude, and altitude information. The world of geo-location services was opened.

Demographic measures and dimensions were acquired from 51风流SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics using the standard 51风流Analytics Cloud connector.

While trying to understand employee sentiment on workplace and flexibility preferences, a survey was created using Employee Experience Management Solutions from 51风流and Qualtrics. The survey allowed for employees, whose jobs enabled them to work from home, to answer questions relating to their preferences for the number of days a week they wanted to work from home and their commute (means and time of travel). The insights gathered allowed us to understand that the travel time to work 鈥� not distance 鈥� is a major factor in determining retention risk amongst various demographic groups and so the information was valuable input for the flight risk tool they had in 51风流Analytics Cloud enterprise reporting.

was then able to use external Web services and geo-location services to calculate the travel distance and travel time to work by various means of transport. One of the services was then able to determine the carbon emissions for the means of travel that the employee had specified. The commute travel time by job grade is a leading predictor of flight risk and is easily added to the flight risk prediction dataset.

The systems also gathered information of all the corporate and possible work locations. This opened the possibility for work location optimization, but it was not part of the scope of the PoC.

The data was then blended using 51风流Business Technology Platform, specifically 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud, and anonymization views were defined to protect actual home addresses from being shown. Real-time 51风流HANA data anonymization allowed the application to use actual addresses to accurately calculate the travel metrics while safely anonymizing sensitive data for dashboard visualization and drill-down.

A dashboard was built and refined to analyze and interrogate the employee commute measures and identify specific employee carbon emissions each working day. Geospatial representation and visualization were built and demonstrated with interactive zoom and data filters. A what-if scenario was demonstrated with graphs and metrics calculated in real time to show the specific carbon emission impact of changing the percentage of time spent working remotely.

As shown in the below process, this PoC was achieved using various 51风流solutions, including 51风流SuccessFactors solutions on 51风流Business Technology Platform.

In Summary

Executives can make better decisions about the impact of employees going back to the office and how often, considering the social and actual carbon emissions from commutes in their people planning. Using 51风流SuccessFactors solutions for employee information to geocode the distance of employees from the office and utilizing to layer experience insights to determine preferences, they can analyze carbon emissions for different types of commutes and make data-driven decisions to fuel their sustainability initiatives.

As shown in the below figure, executives can even look at this data by employee gender, race, and age. This helps them better assess, for instance, how many employees have strong preferences and who would become a flight risk should the business choose to mandate regular employee in-office attendance.

Finally, the figure below shows the simple what-if scenario to demonstrate how quickly and effectively analytics interfaces can be built, in this case, incorporating a slider bar and immediate impact of the change for the pre-filtered employees.

This kind of sustainability data and analysis empowers executives to find the 鈥渟weet spot鈥� in decisions that balance their preferences against employee preferences and align them to important goals such as reducing their carbon footprint.

Suddenly, what鈥檚 best for all becomes quite clear.

Learn more at .

Tammie Eldridge is part of Solution Marketing at 51风流SuccessFactors.

51风流Business Journeys for two key sustainability solutions can help.

With the business journeys for 51风流Sustainability Control Tower and 51风流Product Footprint Management, your business can stay ahead of customer demand, stakeholder expectations, and regulatory changes related to sustainability.

Start Tracking and Reporting Key Sustainability Metrics Fast

51风流Business Journeys are offerings designed to help your business with the planning, implementation, execution, and enablement of 51风流solutions. With 51风流Business Journeys, you can begin to smooth the path to sustainability by getting started with these solutions 鈥� and overcoming your greatest sustainability challenges 鈥� faster. They empower you to move forward toward a sustainable business with the confidence you need to achieve your goals on 51风流solutions.

provides the tools to help measure and track the footprints of your products. Use it to perform as-needed, automated, or scheduled calculations of emissions. The business journey for 51风流Product Footprint Management helps you prepare for solution adoption so you can quickly begin to reduce your carbon footprint.

Take, for instance, a fast-growing bakery with nationwide distribution. A recent change in legislation means this business must now report the carbon emissions of its products. And if you think cake can鈥檛 have a complicated carbon footprint, think again. This bakery has to track and report emissions related to its raw ingredients, such as cacao beans and flour, as well as the energy it takes to bake the cake and transport the packaged finished product to retail locations for sale.

For this bakery, 51风流Product Footprint Management helps reveal where emissions are too high and how the business can reduce them. The business journey can prepare this business 鈥� and yours 鈥� for a smoother implementation and fast ROI.

Reveal Insight into Sustainability across the Enterprise

empowers you with transparency based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indicators gathered from dependable data. That means you can gain key sustainability insights, monitor your progress, and set targets to help improve your business performance. It鈥檚 helping businesses worldwide transform how they measure their sustainability KPIs 鈥� and then use those insights to create better, greener outcomes.

That bakery business could use 51风流Sustainability Control Tower to report a large variety of sustainability metrics to regulators, partners, stakeholders, and even customers. For instance, if this bakery wanted to expand into a new country, it would need to follow that country鈥檚 sustainability standards and regulations. The solution can help report the necessary metrics to send to the right regulators. Or, if it wanted to target more sustainability-minded consumers, it could use its emissions metrics to help fuel a marketing campaign with sustainability metrics at the center of its message. The solution can help with that, too.

In addition, the solution can help you create a yearly sustainability report as part of your annual report much faster and more automated. For this, 51风流Sustainability Control Tower provides tools that follow international standards so you can collect relevant data from multiple sources and report your sustainability KPIs quickly.

The business journey for 51风流Sustainability Control Tower can enable this business and yours to reduce the time it takes to reveal key sustainability metrics not only by helping implement the solution faster, but also by supporting effective user adoption and enablement.

Get Started with Sustainability Solutions Faster Than Ever

With business journeys for 51风流Product Footprint Management and 51风流Sustainability Control Tower, you can break down barriers to sustainable operations and take control of your carbon emissions and other sustainability-related metrics. With the business journeys, your business can take advantage of:

• Expert insight to identify the most effective route to sustainable digital transformation
• Workshops to assess current and future requirements, targets, and strategies
• Expert advice and actionable steps to improve change management and help boost user adoption

51风流Sustainability Control Tower and 51风流Product Footprint Management are representative of SAP鈥檚 dedication to sustainability. As sustainability takes center stage for your business, 51风流continues to design innovative solutions to fulfill your unique needs.

To learn more about business journeys for sustainability services from SAP, .

Holger Wittwer is sustainability design lead for Cloud Success Services 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.

鈥淭he high-tech sector is under regulatory pressure to consistently capture data measuring the carbon footprint of their devices throughout the entire product life cycle, from sourcing materials to end of life and reuse,鈥� said Joerg Kaufmann, director of high-tech solution management at SAP. 鈥淭hey need a certifiable, auditable trail of data to prove regulatory compliance and avoid penalties. This will help manage operational costs while building a more sustainable business model.鈥�

A recent found that high-tech executives demonstrated the most mature outlook on sustainability: over 75% agreed that good sustainability practices reduced overall risk, versus 61% of total respondents. They were also the most likely of any sector to have a specific plan for reducing carbon emissions (71%).

Tracking Product Lifetime CO2 Emissions

Make no mistake, for high tech and every industry, net zero is a bottom-line issue. researchers predicted that by 2024, to improve long-term supply chain profitability, 70% of manufacturers in global supply chains will invest in software tools supporting sustainability and a circular economy business model. analysts said that by 2025, 40% of all manufacturing IT will own the responsibility of data modeling for sustainability and net-zero carbon targets.

Consider the carbon footprint of a laptop. It begins with the sourcing of raw materials that are transported to the plant, stored in a warehouse, and productized into the manufacturing of the laptop, which is shipped to customers who use it before, hopefully, recycling it for another use. During each phase of life, the product emits CO2, increasing a company鈥檚 total carbon footprint over time. Tracking this level of tonnage with accuracy and consistency is the next frontier in sustainable business.

鈥淐O2 is the new currency for resilient, sustainable supply chains,鈥� said Kaufmann. 鈥淔or example, is designed to collect internal and external data and calculate carbon emissions across the product life cycle. Companies can explore what-if scenarios, such as finding closer suppliers to reduce shipping miles and energy consumption. They could look at alternate designs and operations, sourcing recycled materials or increasing manufacturing efficiencies to produce an identical product for the same price with a lower carbon footprint.鈥�

Circular Economy Beats High-Tech Obsolescence

Built-in obsolescence has become both a growth driver and reporting burden for high-tech manufacturers. Yes, we want the latest innovations, but sustainable business isn鈥檛 tenable at the expense of climate change regulations. Many high-tech companies are transforming business models, in part, to innovate and better manage costs plus address climate change requirements. analysts predicted that by 2024, digital-first enterprises will enable empathetic customer experiences and resilient operating models by shifting 70% of all tech and services spending to as-a-service and outcomes-centric models.

鈥淥ver the past decade, many of our high-tech clients have shifted from selling boxes to services,鈥� said Kaufmann. 鈥淲e鈥檙e researching analytics that would help a manufacturer that sold, for instance, printing-as-a-service to track usage and provide insights prolonging the sustainable life cycle of the printer, including service and maintenance, replacement and exchange timelines, and reuse for business value and lowered lifetime carbon emissions.鈥�

High-Tech Players Recalculate Cost of Innovation

Having connected data may already be paying off for some companies. In the Oxford survey, high-tech respondents appeared to have made more progress in ensuring suppliers have sourced sustainable materials (72%) versus other industries. Business model transformation isn鈥檛 necessarily wholesale change all at once. With the right data, high-tech manufacturers can make adjustments that deliver stronger business results. No doubt regulations will spark innovations as well.

鈥淲hen you can measure your product鈥檚 entire CO2 footprint, you can reduce it,鈥� said Kaufmann. 鈥淲ith more comprehensive data, high-tech companies can factor CO2 emissions into the entire cost of the product, alongside everything else like the battery or the shell. They can make more informed decisions about the total cost to the company, including the environment.鈥�

Innovation at any cost is no longer sufficient for sustainable business. With the right data, high-tech leaders can recalculate the price all of us pay for a more sustainable world.

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Sustainability is not just good for the environment; it is also good for the bottom line, by increasing resource efficiency, improving governance practices, cultivating a positive reputation, and future-proofing against regulation.

What鈥檚 more, investors are now going beyond 鈥渘egative screening鈥� and actively backing businesses that are leaders in sustainability, in pursuit of above-market returns. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting is becoming a boardroom priority, as the disclosure is a means of increasing transparency to stakeholders, demonstrating progress toward goals such as reducing carbon emissions, and making responsible use of resources.

SMEs Help Decarbonize Global Supply Chains

While many large global corporations have led in taking sustainable business action, small businesses are also stepping up. Supply chain emissions are typically , so many large companies are now looking to cascade climate action through the value chain to their suppliers — often SMEs, which account for 90% of the world鈥檚 businesses. Without the active participation of every company in these often-fragmented supplier landscapes, decarbonization of corporations鈥� supply chains will prove impossible.

Acknowledging that SMEs need to play an active role in the transition to net-zero is one thing, but embedding sustainability into their business practices, processes, product development, operations, and strategy is another. To avoid getting left behind in the green economy, SMEs will need to be able to measure and report on their business鈥� environmental impact and performance — data that will increasingly become a requirement for tenders, framework agreements, and contracting. To remain competitive and ensure longevity, SMEs will also have to start working more closely with their own supply chains to find ways to lower emissions beyond the scope of their immediate operations.

One impediment for SMEs has been that sophisticated sustainability management tools are often built for large enterprises to calculate their carbon footprint across complex supply chains, system landscapes, and organizational structures. Large companies often have dedicated sustainability and IT experts, while their smaller counterparts often lack in-house expertise and financial resources to implement these sustainable tools and practices.

That is why the trickle-down effect has been slow to manifest — until now.

Simplifying Eco-Accountability for SMEs

s is built to specifically address the needs of small and midsize manufacturing and product-centric companies. The low-cost, low-effort solution streamlines and simplifies carbon management, from raw materials and production to consumption, waste prevention, and recycling.

The solution is designed to be easy to use and implement by lines of businesses rather than sustainability experts. It allows SMEs to measure and manage the bottom-up carbon footprint of individual products from cradle to grave and across the value chain. It is fully auditable and complies with the GHG protocol by creating the company-level inventory needed to identify a business鈥檚 emission sources and track changes over time.

Wolfgan Korner, co-CEO of , points out, “We are delighted that 51风流is providing a midmarket solution for sustainable corporate management in the cloud. CO2 identification and derivable savings potential go hand in hand.”

The solution provides actionable insights that can be used to:

• Make informed decisions about product portfolios, investments, and procurement
• Support the shift from resource efficiency to eco-efficiency
• Easily and transparently disclose sustainability efforts to investors, customers, consumers, employees, and regulators.

51风流Product Footprint Management for clean operations is built on the 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) and is designed to readily integrate with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for SMEs, 51风流Business ByDesign and 51风流Business One. It is also open and flexible to accommodate other data sources, such as integrated smart metering systems, and will be extensible by 51风流partners. As relevant environmental standards emerge and evolve, these will be incorporated into the solution as part of SAP鈥檚 continuous development road map.

Leveling the Green Playing Field

鈥淲e want our customers to scale their climate actions and SMEs are an important part of this systemic change,鈥� said Gunther Rothermel, senior vice president and head of 51风流S/4HANA Sustainability Management.听 鈥�51风流Product Footprint Management for clean operations answers the resources and realities of growing small businesses that are looking to simplify their sustainability accountability. The solution will play an integral role in countries with a high carbon price, which will provide organizations the financial incentive to reduce their emissions in line with national targets.鈥�

Last year, 51风流introduced 51风流Product Footprint Management, which enables larger customers to reduce the cumbersome and time-consuming effort of integrating data and deriving environmental footprints on product level and at scale. However, 80% of SAP鈥檚 customers are SMEs, so 51风流Product Footprint Management for clean operations is a right-sized tool for growing businesses.

Eliminating wasteful practices and doing more with less is simply good business practice, particularly for SMEs that are already battling the big players on margins. Any business that wants to supply to multinational corporations will increasingly have to compete on sustainability, and emerging supply chain and investment rules will mean that companies large and small will ultimately face a growing compliance burden.

Accounting for between 50% and 70% of value added in OECD economies and contributing , SMEs have just as big a role to play as multinationals when it comes to sustainability. They have the advantage of being nimble enough to make fundamental changes to their operations and culture today that can have a positive impact on planet and profit for decades to come. Those that gain control over their carbon emissions early are effectively safeguarding their license to operate and giving themselves a significant advantage over their laggard competitors.

“The climate-neutral production of our frozen pizzas was and is very important to us. But climate neutrality alone is not enough,” said Paul Lomba, CIO of . “We want to know exactly what our CO2 footprint is so that we can optimize it. As an IT decision-maker, you must know that calculating CO2 emissions is a complex task. 51风流Product Footprint Management for clean operations simplifies the calculation of CO2 emissions. Due to the high level of integration into the 51风流world and the cloud approach, the solution is quickly available and allows to track the success of the implemented CO2 reduction measures.”

Experience 51风流Product Footprint Management for Clean Operations

51风流is offering a free 30-day trial of 51风流Product Footprint Management for clean operations. Test-drive a live system to get insights into the carbon footprint of your own products and an initial idea of where you can take action to reduce your business鈥� emissions. .

Mark Innes is portfolio manager for SME Solutions at SAP.

According to a , while 80% of companies are turning to digital solutions to navigate current business challenges, only about 30% are successfully achieving a true digital transformation of their business. The innovations announced today will help 51风流customers accelerate their transformation journey with cloud-based solutions that provide the end-to-end business process support customers most need. The announcements come on the first day of , SAP鈥檚 global customer and partner conference, taking place in person and virtually May 10鈥�12, 2022.

鈥淔or 50 years, SAP鈥檚 mission-critical solutions and deep industry expertise have helped businesses around the world run their best,鈥� said Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE. 鈥淲e鈥檙e uniquely positioned to continue enabling our customers鈥� success in a rapidly evolving world by driving cloud-based digital transformation that solves customers鈥� most pressing challenges, from supply chain resilience to sustainability.鈥�

Resilient Supply Chains and Intelligent Business Networks

51风流innovations improve supply chain efficiency and transparency, enabling improved performance and resilience. Through its ongoing partnership with Apple to transform the way people work on iPhone and iPad, 51风流is announcing today a new suite of apps that streamline the digital supply chain and empower workers with intuitive tools. The first two of these mobile apps 鈥� and 鈥� launched today and are available now in the Apple .

In addition, the new solution brings together the latest analytics, edge computing, automation and state-of-the-art innovations supporting manufacturing processes end to end to help customers optimize manufacturing performance. 51风流Business Network also continues to evolve as the world鈥檚 largest business network, and with the planned integration of Taulia software customers can unlock the value tied up in their working capital.

Moving Businesses from Talk to Action on Sustainability

The increase in number of 51风流solutions for sustainability uniquely positions the software to help companies move from well-meaning talk to meaningful action. New innovations out today include new capabilities in the solution to help companies innovate across key areas of sustainability management. The enhanced solution helps customers reduce product carbon footprints at scale with live connectivity with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, including transport and travel capabilities.

Enabling Business Process Transformation

Customers continue to adopt the solution to redesign their end-to-end business processes and transition to a modular, agile ERP in the cloud. Several customers will be on stage at 51风流Sapphire to showcase how they use RISE with 51风流to deliver business innovation. Partners are also helping our customers scale these innovations through best practices and bespoke solutions: RISE with 51风流and SOAR with Accenture now integrate and deliver what businesses need for a cloud-based transformation, including cloud infrastructure management, application management and operations services. The latest release of the solution includes new dynamic case management and case modelling capabilities. The solution supports native integration with and Microsoft Teams to improve organizations鈥� ability to deliver on their brand promise with better visibility, greater accountability and faster time to resolution.

Accelerating Innovation with No-Code and Low-Code Development, Process Automation, Data and AI

, a leading no-code, low code development environment for enterprise applications, now includes native integration with the 51风流Service Cloud solution and is available as part of the free tier model for 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP). The solution, also part of the , has been enhanced for no-code workflow management and robotic process automation (RPA).

deliver AI-powered innovations to optimize intelligently business processes end to end, including lead-to-cash, design-to-operate, recruit-to-retire and source-to-pay. 51风流provides to tailored learning resources and experiences in the 鈥渟tudent zone鈥� of the . To support the growing need for accelerated app development by nontechnical users, 51风流is launching additional , including an enhanced skills.

News Guide 2022 for 51风流Sapphire

Get more details on all news, product launches and updates in the 2022 for 51风流Sapphire.

Visit the 51风流News Center. Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 51风流customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit .

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

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

Holistic Sustainability Management with 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises

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

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

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

Driving Carbon Data Transparency Is More Important Than Ever

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

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

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

Enabling 51风流Customers to Exchange Carbon Data across Value Chains

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Examples include:

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

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

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

Learn More

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

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

Businesses and organizations need to act together, leveraging collective networks, influence, and expertise, in order to bring real transformation and generate positive outcomes.

51风流has become a partner in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation鈥檚 network to deliver circular economy solutions led by regenerative business with customers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and partners.

The partnership formalizes the organizations鈥� joint commitment to accelerating the transition to a circular economy based on three key principles: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials, and regenerate nature through innovative business models and systems-level change.

Andrew Morlet, CEO at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, said: 鈥淲e are pleased to welcome 51风流as a partner. Collaboration across all sectors and industries is critical in order to shift the system and accelerate the global transition to a circular economy 鈥� an economy designed to eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials, and regenerate nature. Technology has a crucial enabling role to play, and we welcome SAP鈥檚 leadership in this space.鈥�

The partnership will focus on three key pillars:

• Powering circular design
• Actioning extended producer responsibility
• Enabling regenerative business via digital solutions

One of the key elements of a circular economy is design, including product design, policy design, and systems-level design. According to the Foundation, there are over 160 million designers in the world; connecting with them is crucial to solving the world鈥檚 waste problem. Technology will play a key role in enabling that, equipping them with insights and data to make better material choices, as well as creating better transparency around ecosystems.

With only nine percent of the 400 million tons of plastic produced every year , plastics is an issue where the urgent need to act is being recognized at the highest levels of global policy-making. United Nations (UN) member states to adopt a legally binding multilateral treaty on plastic pollution, the text of which explicitly underlines the importance of promoting the . executive director of the UN Environment Programme, the agreement is the “most important international multilateral environmental deal since [the] Paris [climate accord].”

Without collective and meaningful action, ocean plastic from 11 million tons in 2016 to 29 million tons in 2040, wreaking havoc on fragile marine ecosystems. This dire situation is a clarion call to act on extended producer responsibility (EPR), a policy framework that shifts financial responsibility from governments onto product producers for the management, treatment, and disposal of consumer products. This creates incentives for manufacturers to develop products that are more recyclable and less resource-intensive, in effect preventing waste at the source.

51风流has supported calls for EPR regulations, as have that recognize such approaches can create competitive markets for recycled plastics and create a level playing field for companies that rely on plastic products.

Technology is undoubtedly needed to make EPR actionable in business. The partnership will see 51风流bring its insights and innovation around digital solutions to enable the circular economy for a regenerative future, based on a non-extractive and replenishing principle, where businesses seek to give back more to society and the planet than what they take.

51风流launched its first major circular economy solution at COP26: , which provides the foundation for the company鈥檚 regenerative business mission and establishes a consistent measurement of material use globally. It helps companies gain better visibility of material flows through their business processes, manage EPR regulations worldwide, prepare for upcoming plastic taxes, and optimize material choices.

To further deliver transparency across the supply chain, climate solution enables businesses to calculate product footprints across the entire product life cycle, providing actionable insights into the environmental impact of their products at scale and allowing companies to move toward lower carbon emissions.

Holistic sustainability performance management solution enables companies to prioritize sustainable business results by providing insights for executive-level decision-making to manage and report financial and non-financial impacts of business processes.

Finally, 51风流has recently launched a new cloud offering to help companies holistically measure, manage, and optimize their sustainability performance: .

With more than 50 years of managing resources across enterprise functions, integrating data into business processes, and networking businesses and industries around the world, 51风流is uniquely positioned to build solutions to help companies run sustainably.

As Stephen Jamieson, global head of Circular Economy Solutions at SAP, puts it, 鈥淭his partnership is based on our mutual ambition to deliver a circular economy led by regenerative business. We aim to achieve this by working collaboratively to solve critical design challenges with innovative solutions, and focusing on extended producer responsibility, the single most important policy intervention that will deliver the level playing field that鈥檚 required for a circular economy. Together we鈥檙e committed to innovating and delivering the solutions that make that policy intervention simple, consumable, and actionable.鈥�

• BCG and 51风流will provide transparency on sustainability 鈥渁t the push of a button鈥� and deliver impact based on a combination of strategy, technology, and business model change, with BCG and 51风流solutions that can be ready to use within weeks.
• BCG and 51风流want to help accelerate companies in their journey to zero waste and zero emissions. BCG and 51风流can enable companies to achieve emissions reductions of up to 40%.*
• Early-adopter companies can realize up to 15 years of competitive advantage, generating more than a 10% market premium on shares in many industries.**

The joint transformation offering will allow companies to identify the business value in sustainability, setting the right climate ambitions and powering an actionable sustainability road map.

The 51风流and BCG partnership will help companies tackle the generational challenge of climate change and respond to increasing investor pressure and ever stricter regulations. Research from analyst firm IDC shows that sustainability has become a top business priority.鈥�

鈥淎ccording to one of IDC鈥檚 recent end-user surveys, three-quarters of executives involved in their company鈥檚 sustainability initiatives believe that environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors are 鈥榲ery important鈥� for the enterprise value of their organization,鈥� said Bjoern Stengel, the global sustainability research lead at IDC. 鈥淏CG and 51风流have both been at the forefront of operationalizing sustainable transformation with their clients, and this partnership will further help IT buyers use sustainability-focused technology strategically to achieve their goals.鈥�

51风流and BCG offer market-leading solutions in three areas that are of particular relevance in a sustainability transformation — strategy, business model change, and technology innovation — to complement their respective efforts in the sustainability space.

To help companies accelerate on their net-zero-emissions journey with an up to 40% emissions reduction potential,* BCG and 51风流will enable companies to integrate leading-edge carbon-tracking measurement and intelligence into their core business operations and strategic decision-making. Combining two market-leading solutions in BCG鈥檚 CO2 AI and the 51风流Product Footprint Management solution, the partnership targets Scopes 1, 2, and 3 via BCG鈥檚 CO2 AI as well as an integration into core 51风流software through 51风流Product Footprint Management.

To help achieve zero waste in supply chains, 51风流and BCG will assess the circularity opportunity in a company鈥檚 portfolio across its entire supply chain and product portfolio. Based on BCG鈥檚 CIRCelligence and the 51风流Responsible Design and Production solution, this offering will enable customers to accelerate the zero-waste journey.

The sustainability transformation efforts of customers will be guided by a Holistic Steering and Reporting solution backed by the 51风流Sustainability Control Tower solution and BCG鈥檚 Compliance Target Operating Model to help ensure that the transformation is driven with a focus on business value and that companies comply with all regulatory requirements.

鈥淪ustainable businesses will create positive impacts for future generations, but no organization can achieve its sustainability goals alone,鈥� said Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE. 鈥淏eing sustainable requires coordination across the value chain, and this is where SAP鈥檚 partnership with BCG plays a key role. Bringing together BCG鈥檚 expertise, tools, and services with SAP鈥檚 technology gives companies the transparency, actionable data, and strategic guidance they need to successfully tackle end-to-end sustainability and create value for all its stakeholders.鈥�

This new partnership is designed to effect enterprise-wide change, spanning complex supply chains and creating business value from sustainability.

鈥淚 firmly believe that an organization’s environmental impact will soon be as important to its key stakeholders as its financial performance. Early movers in sustainability can experience up to 15 years of competitive advantage and a 10% market premium.** This is an enormous opportunity for companies around the world. This partnership with 51风流will allow our clients to transform at an unprecedented pace,鈥� added Christoph Schweizer, CEO, BCG.

The Sustainability Transformation offering from BCG and 51风流is deployed at lighthouse customers right now, with an expected broader launch in the third quarter of 2022.

Visit the 51风流News Center. Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

About Boston Consulting Group

Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders鈥攅mpowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.

Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 51风流customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit .

Note to editors:
To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit . On this platform, you can find high resolution material for your media channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit . From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share video via email links, and subscribe to RSS feeds from 51风流TV.

For customers interested in learning more about 51风流products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-151风流(1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
SAP: Stacy Ries, +1 484 619 0411, stacy.ries@sap.com
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com
BCG: Brian Bannister, +44 7919 393753, bannister.brian@bcg.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.

*Karalee Close, Norbert Faure, and Rich Hutchinson, 鈥� ,鈥� Boston Consulting Group, October 14, 2021.
**Ar茅, Berthaud, Fuisz-Kehrbach, Haloui, Hutchinson, Loureiro, Perzanowski, Rhodes, and Semmel, 鈥淪ustainability as Advantage,鈥� 2022.
鈥�ESG Business Services Survey, IDC, 2021.

In response, governments, investors, and citizens are putting pressure on companies to recognize and act on these issues. These systemic threats harbor enormous opportunity if we work together.

Today, 51风流and global strategic consultancy BCG announced a partnership to help companies transform their business models, become sustainable enterprises, and gain the data transparency they need to embed sustainability into their core business.

The 51风流and BCG partnership combines SAP鈥檚 strength as the leading enterprise software company with BCG鈥檚 proven expertise in advising clients on their sustainability transformation strategies.

Close to 90% of BCG鈥檚 businesses run 51风流and they can benefit from the partnership that enables companies to plan, execute, measure, and report on sustainability initiatives across their value chains. Adding to the strength of this partnership, 51风流continues to bring new capabilities and embed sustainability into existing solutions to address climate action, circular economy, governance, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting.

Three unique features define this partnership. First, it is an integrated offering that goes from outlining a sustainable strategy to adopting technology solutions with holistic impact. Companies can address key sustainability drivers with scalable technology, and business leaders can help ensure a successful digital transformation. Second, the 51风流and BCG partnership brings two powerful global ecosystems together to accelerate transformation with the urgency required to meet ambitious targets. Third, 51风流and BCG are combining their intellectual properties and bringing capabilities and services together around targets related to zero emissions, zero waste, and ESG reporting. These new offerings will be incorporated into 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises

Zero Emissions

The recently adopted a proposal for a new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which will apply the concept of carbon pricing to all imports by 2026. The 51风流and BCG collaboration allows companies to analyze their carbon footprint based on 51风流data and determine which initiatives can best reduce emissions. BCG鈥檚 digital solution CO2 AI supports the overall sustainability transformation offering by combining BCG鈥檚 insights and 51风流data from the solution.

51风流Product Footprint Management offers businesses a blueprint to integrate data into businesses processes. Likewise, the solution enables mutual customers to manage life-cycle assessment data to calculate footprints across the entire product inventory. Both capabilities ease the complexity of carbon tracking and accounting across scope 1, 2, and 3.听 The benefits range from complying with ESG requirements from investors and regulators, and potentially .

Zero Waste

Today, tons of material resources are used each year — of which, less than 9% is recycled or reused.听 Zero waste is becoming a strategic imperative among business leaders, driven by stakeholder pressures and emerging regulations

Legislation is being implemented across the globe to address this challenge: have pledged to significantly reduce their waste by 2030. 听Key policies developed by the EU encourage immediate action on packaging and plastics such as the EU Plastics Strategy.听 In addition, there is increasing focus on packaging regulations, including (EPR) schemes and upcoming plastic taxes based on a “polluter pays” principle. As one of the most widely supported policy mechanisms, these regulations act as a key driver for reducing consumption and increasing the circular use of materials. China, Canada, the U.S., and India are among the countries that have committed to develop solutions that can .

Current business models fail to consider the legislative and geographic complexity of the circular economic model — companies pay fees per volume of plastic, plastic and waste management must report data, and governments use this data to define policies and fees. and BCG鈥檚 CIRCelligence can address some of the gaps, including the lack of dynamic tracking and insights for EPR fees, as well as assess tax implications per market and oversee the manual data collection or estimation of materials volume by market or product.

Together, 51风流and BCG can provide customers with the data transparency their companies require.

ESG Reporting

With the increasing number of ESG reporting requirements, more companies pursue goals of zero emissions and zero waste. The 51风流and BCG partnership aims to combine two existing solutions — BCG鈥檚 ESG Risk and Compliance Framework and — in order to allow customers to take actions on embedding risks and compliance procedures into their organization processes based on real-time financial and non-financial ESG data.

51风流CEO Christian Klein and BCG CEO Christoph Schweizer see sustainability as a unique opportunity to join forces not only for the good of their companies, but also to make a significant contribution to solving the global sustainability challenge.

鈥淏eing sustainable requires coordination across the value chain, and this is where SAP鈥檚 partnership with BCG plays a key role,” Klein said. 鈥淏ringing together BCG鈥檚 expertise, tools, and services with SAP鈥檚 technology gives companies the transparency, actionable data, and strategic guidance they need to successfully tackle end-to-end sustainability and create value for all its stakeholders.鈥�

The 51风流and BCG sustainability transformation offering is in pilot phase, with an expected broader launch in the third quarter of 2022.

To learn more, visit

The companies will collaborate to advance the design and development of a leading-edge solution for customers to help them reach zero emissions.

Measuring, managing and steering carbon footprints is a key element of reaching zero emissions and part of the climate action program promoted by SAP. Companies are under increasing pressure to determine their carbon footprint not only on a corporate level but also on a product level. However, the data acquisition, consolidation and mapping are challenges that many companies face. Together with the recent launch of the solution, 51风流solutions for sustainability and BearingPoint鈥檚 long-standing experience with emission calculations in the market, the companies are well equipped to develop innovative solutions to address customer concerns about environmental footprinting across their value chain.

鈥淭he co-development partnership between 51风流and BearingPoint will bring together two strong value propositions. BearingPoint has long experience helping customers identify carbon reduction potentials and achieve sustainability targets. 51风流contributes innovation capabilities, broad system landscape and reach to customers. Together as partners we will push the limits to move the economy forward on the path to zero emissions,鈥� said Gunther Rothermel, SVP, Head of 51风流S/4HANA Sustainability, SAP.

Carbon Footprinting for the Entire Value Chain: Scope 1, 2 and 3

While many companies have already assessed their scope 1, and scope 2 emissions, assessing the entire value chain by introducing scope 3 emissions is key. To do so environmental networks must support data exchange with partners like suppliers, clients, auditors and governments even if they use different IT systems. Building on BearingPoint鈥檚 in-depth know-how in product and corporate footprint calculations and algorithms, the 51风流Product Footprint Management solution supports data gathering and calculations to help realize end-to-end carbon and environmental footprinting. The 51风流solution is fully integrated with 51风流S/4HANA and the intelligent enterprise architecture, but also connects with other data sources. This enables it to perform automated assessments of footprints across the value chain, even in heterogenous system landscapes.

鈥淭ogether with SAP, we will co-develop utilizing our IP asset and provide a unique solution in the market to measure and optimize the climate impact of products across the entire lifecycle. 51风流Product Footprint Management has sophisticated capabilities to determine the carbon footprint of a single product. Our 10-years-plus proven industry experience in calculating and optimizing product and corporate CO2 footprints will enable our joint customers to meet their decarbonization targets. We at BearingPoint believe that together with SAP鈥檚 innovative solutions, depth in commercial processes and market expertise we can make a positive impact on the climate,鈥� said Donald Wachs, Head of IP Assets, BearingPoint, and Member of the BearingPoint Management Committee.

鈥淭he partnership with BearingPoint accelerates the 51风流Product Footprint Management solution road map and will help make us a market leader in product footprint solutions that support our customers in maximizing the sustainability of their products and services,鈥� said Peter Maier, President, Industries and Customer Advisory, SAP.

Visit the 51风流News Center. Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

About BearingPoint

is an independent management and technology consultancy with European roots and a global reach. The company operates in three business units: The first unit covers the advisory business with a clear focus on five key areas to drive growth across all regions. The second unit provides IP-driven managed services beyond SaaS and offers business-critical services to its clients, supporting their business success. The third unit is designed to explore innovative business models with clients and partners by driving the financing and development of start-ups and leveraging ecosystems.

BearingPoint’s clients include many of the world’s leading companies and organizations. The firm has a global consulting network with more than 10,000 people and supports clients in over 70 countries, engaging with them to achieve measurable and sustainable success. For more information, visit .

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 51风流customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit .

For customers interested in learning more about 51风流products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-151风流(1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Stacy Ries, SAP, +1 (484) 619-0411, stacy.ries@sap.com, ET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.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. 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 2020 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.
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How can businesses take climate action? How can they turn linear processes into circular resources and product flows? How can they ensure socially responsible value chains? And ultimately, how can they integrate economic, environmental, and social performance into strategic decision-making?

These questions are top of mind for executives. In 2021, sustainability .

At SAP, we deliver answers to these questions through our products. Our customers can benefit from solutions that help them achieve zero emissions, zero waste, zero inequality, as well as holistic steering and reporting of their sustainability efforts.

Last year, we launched three new solutions: , , and . All are embedded 51风流S/4HANA cloud-native applications that are delivered in a modular way and built on top of 51风流Business Technology Platform.

What is more, we are embedding sustainability across SAP’s entire solution portfolio. A recent example is the inclusion of product footprints in 51风流Integrated Business Planning, so customers can monitor the greenhouse gas emissions from their production plants. Another example is the integration of 51风流Sustainability Control Tower with 51风流SuccessFactors solutions, enabling customers to obtain insights into how their organization is faring on crucial aspects such as diversity and inclusion.

Sustainable Business Strategies, Sustainable Enterprises

For the last 50 years, our innovative solutions have helped our customers transform their business processes and stay ahead in rapidly changing business environments. And we will continue to take and enable organizations of any size and in any industry to take a transformative approach to sustainability as well.

Quick fixes that do not get to the root cause of problems won鈥檛 make businesses more sustainable in the long run. Fragmented sustainability strategies won鈥檛 help. Sustainable business strategies will. That is why we support companies in integrating sustainability into the heart of their business processes.

Our approach pays off. Today, the most sustainable companies run our software. According to our analysis of S&P Trucost Limited data and , 51风流customers with high digital maturity — those adopting SAP鈥檚 latest technologies — on average have 75% better environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores compared to their industry peers. They also produce 24% less CO2 emissions than the market average.

To further facilitate the sustainability transformation for our customers, we recently launched a new offering. 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises is a flexible bundle of sustainability-specific applications. It allows businesses to adopt our solutions based on the current stage of their sustainability transformation. Depending on where they stand, they can implement holistic management or start with specific areas of sustainability performance.

Chasing Zero, Together

The past year has been all about delivering the tools that help businesses transition into sustainable enterprises. So, what鈥檚 next? 2022 will be the year to implement these tools globally in close collaboration with our customers and partners.

Ultimately, the transition to a more sustainable global economy is not something one company can achieve on its own. In today鈥檚 interconnected world, we must rely on our ecosystem to ensure sustainability across the entire value chain. Let鈥檚 make 2022 the year we transition toward a more sustainable world, together.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading 51风流Product Engineering.

Stakeholders are coming to the same conclusions that we have long been convinced of. Even before announcing our Climate 21 initiative two years ago, we have been seen as front-runners in providing environmental transparency. We have long understood the importance of measuring sustainability progress holistically and connecting financial and pre-financial data. We鈥檝e been doing that since 2012. That鈥檚 when we merged our sustainability and annual reports into an integrated report.

We know that the days of fragmented reporting must end. And now, many more businesses are seeing how fundamental the issues of transparency on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts are. But many businesses still struggle with a multitude of reporting frameworks and lack of appropriate data. This is what stands in the way of consistent investor-focused disclosures. Our planet cannot afford this. Increasingly, consumers want to know the provenance of their products. They want to be assured that they are making choices based on data they can trust.

The sustainability issues we face today are different from all other previous threats and opportunities — in scope, scale, and ultimately in the consequences. Measuring, reporting, and achieving the sustainable business goals we set is imperative to a .

Businesses Want to Make Sustainable Decisions; They Need the Right Intelligence to Do It

The vast majority of business leaders I connect with want to lead their businesses sustainably. They care about planetary and societal impacts; in fact, their customers, investors, and employees demand it. At SAP, our aspiration goes far beyond enabling businesses to achieve efficiency. We work with customers to reinvent their business processes to achieve sustainable growth. That means enabling businesses to use data in agile ways, across all sustainability dimensions. We provide early alerts that allow companies to be responsive and we give customers the full picture they need to move proactively on their ESG issues.

Sustainability data is “pre-financial,” not “non-financial.” That means the search for sustainability levers must go beyond the financials to bring together all sustainability data dimensions, including emissions, material flows, and social impacts. We know this and it is why we have made this possible today. For example, with , companies get visibility into their carbon footprint data throughout a product鈥檚 value chain, including for material sourcing and production. And that鈥檚 the insight businesses need to make proactive, sustainable supply chain decisions.

Scale Data Across Business Networks to Mitigate Planetary Impacts

Individual businesses can only do so much. Emissions do not recognize company boundaries and therefore we must help companies reach beyond their own four walls. We know we must connect our customers into a network of intelligent, sustainable enterprises.

Intelligent cross-enterprise scenarios that enable data sharing across value chains will create impact at scale. Business networks enable companies to continuously re-evaluate and re-engage with each other, creating additional value for their customers and our planet.

From Voluntary to Mandatory, ESG Standards Are Evolving

ESG reporting is maturing; there is no doubt about that. Climate-related disclosures are evolving from voluntary to mandatory. Around 100 countries have explicitly expressed support for starting negotiations for a global agreement on plastics in 2022. The European Union is already developing a social taxonomy based on global social and human rights norms. 51风流also recently released an asking the European Union to act on ESG disclosure standards. We want to encourage a global baseline set of standards. We fully support corporate transparency that meets the needs of all stakeholders and improves connectivity between sustainability and financial reporting.

And, once again, we at 51风流have stepped up to provide the solutions that companies need to execute on these evolving standards and connect their environmental, social, and financial values, holistically. Today, I鈥檓 proud to say that we just released , a solution that enables customers to go further on their ESG integration and data transparency journey. Our solution enables non-financial — or, as I prefer to call them, “pre-financial” — disclosures focused on four aspects: people, planet, prosperity, and principles of governance. This includes measurements around greenhouse gas emissions, pay equality, and board diversity. It enables comparisons between companies, regardless of industry or region.

Our two previously released sustainability products, and , feed precisely those new data dimensions, which businesses have so far been lacking, into 51风流Sustainability Control Tower.

Our new solution has the World Economic Forum鈥檚 Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics as its foundation. These metrics are based on existing standards to make ESG disclosures more comparable and consistent. They were developed within the International Business Council, a community of over 120 global CEOs who seek to improve the ways companies measure and demonstrate their contributions toward creating a more sustainable relationship with our planet.

And of course, our partners are integral here. Deloitte, EY, and PwC are a few examples of the partners that bring immense knowledge, not only about the framework, but also about the ESG transformations of our customers. Strategic partners like BCG enable our customers to take a holistic perspective toward establishing ESG and climate compliance.

Time Is of the Essence

Businesses that set out a 10-year agenda for dealing with their sustainability challenges are moving much too slowly. We all need to move quickly to enable the shift to new business models. Time is of the essence.

At SAP, we know how important it is that corporate sustainability efforts be measured, reported, steered, and communicated effectively. And I am personally very proud of the leadership we continue to demonstrate here.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading 51风流Product Engineering.

The rating comes only weeks after 51风流was named the software industry leader in the for the 15th consecutive year and 51风流as an environmental, social and governance front-runner.

鈥淲e remain firmly committed to leading by example in our efforts to run our business sustainably and report our progress,鈥� said Luka Mucic, CFO and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, responsible for SAP’s sustainability efforts. 鈥淓qually important is that we share our knowledge with our customers and enable them to achieve their own climate goals with our growing portfolio of sustainability solutions.鈥�

51风流offers a range of enterprise software applications and technologies to help companies operate more sustainably.

The has been available since September. It enables organizations to combat climate change by capturing the environmental footprint of products across the value chain.

Last month, 51风流added , a solution that helps companies gain better visibility into material flows through their business processes including tracking and complying with rapidly changing regulations, especially those concerning product packaging and plastics.

Soon, the will be available. The solution will integrate top-line and bottom-line management with an added dimension: a 鈥済reen line鈥� for integrated environmental and social sustainability insights, decision-making and reporting.

To learn more, check out听.

Visit the . Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

Media Contact:
Harro ten Wolde, +49 151 5517 6501, harro.ten.wolde@sap.com, CET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 51风流are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51风流undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2021 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.

CDP was founded at 20 years ago in response to a warning by that if climate change remained unchecked, the world would warm by six degrees Celsius within the century. As the number of climate-related catastrophes mounted over the years, CDP kept urging companies and governments to report on their emissions and take measurable action.

Above and Beyond

Today, the world鈥檚 economy looks to of environmental reporting with the richest and most comprehensive data set on corporate and city action. By scoring companies and other organizations from D to A on climate change, forests, and water security, CDP helps them evolve from disclosing sustainability metrics to taking measurable actions that lead to environmental leadership.

In light of the recent climate conference COP26, it is apparent more than ever that the private sector has a critical role in driving change and leading by example. 51风流enforced its climate action commitment by moving its carbon neutral target up by two years to 2023. This week, 51风流received a spot on the prestigious , which announces over 300 companies leading the way to a more sustainable future.

. More than 13,000 companies reported on their environmental impact through CDP, despite the continuing challenges of the pandemic. This was 37% more than 2020 and 135% higher than when governments signed the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015. Between them, disclosing companies in 2021 accounted for over 64% of global market capitalization, including 96% of the FTSE 100, over 80% of the S&P 500, and more than 1,500 companies in China.

SAP鈥檚 CDP A rating comes only weeks after 51风流was named the software industry leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) for the 15th consecutive year, 51风流as an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) front-runner.

Setting the Pace

Achieving top scores in the CDP and DJSI rankings sets 51风流apart as exemplar when it comes to disclosure. More importantly, 51风流solutions for sustainability help companies measure and monitor their emissions, making it an enabler for companies that want to do due diligence on their own performance.

鈥淭he DJSI and CDP awards recognize Fortune 500 companies that are taking concrete steps to tackle climate change challenges. It is good to receive ongoing independent recognition that 51风流is on the right track,鈥� said Daniel Schmid, chief sustainability officer at SAP, responsible for SAP鈥檚 sustainability efforts. 鈥淚t鈥檚 equally important to embed sustainability in the business strategy, so that it impacts all aspects of the business. That鈥檚 how we can reduce the negative impact on our environment and create regenerative business.鈥�

51风流customers benefit from a range of products to help them to take climate action or to accelerate their participation in the circular, wasteless economy.

The enables organizations to combat climate change by capturing the environmental footprint of products across the value chain so they can build sustainability into the fabric of how they do business. Last month, 51风流added to its portfolio. The solution helps companies gain better visibility of material flows through their processes including tracking and complying with rapidly changing regulations, especially those concerning product packaging and plastics.

And finally, helps customers meet their ESG performance targets. This solution enables integration of top-line and bottom-line management with an added dimension 鈥� a green line for integrated environmental and social sustainability insights and decision-making.

The importance of disclosure cannot be underestimated. Business is still business, but in today鈥檚 challenging world, the purpose is not to just turn a profit; it鈥檚 to remain competitive, relevant, and sustainable while turning a profit. While the , sustainability is already material to all companies because the fortunes of business are inevitably linked to those of the planet.

found that the more companies believe sustainability is material to their businesses, meaning it is likely to affect their financial condition and should be publicly disclosed, the more competitive and profitable they are likely to be.

The good news is that after 20 years of running the world鈥檚 environmental disclosure system for companies, cities, and regions, CDP finally . With companies disclosing and reporting more than ever before, it鈥檚 becoming easier to accelerate change, especially with the right tools and technology at hand.

Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying, with some trends now irreversible, according to the recent .

The science is clear: unless immediate, fast, and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the average global temperature is likely to reach, or cross, the 1.5掳 C warming threshold within 20 years. The alarming results are already with us, ranging from droughts and heat waves to wildfires and devastating flooding worldwide.

While much hope is focused on a green recovery, the window of opportunity is closing fast. The latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that energy-related , an increase of nearly 5% year-over-year and the second-largest in history, taking us back to pre-COVID-19 peak levels.

The urgency to dramatically change course and accelerate decarbonization has never been higher. But only when businesses are moving beyond their siloed approaches, commitments, and climate pledges to fully embrace sustainability and embed these ambitions in an integrated way will we be able to drive the systemic change needed.

It is a journey toward embedding sustainability across everything we do.

Moving Away From Add-On to Core

Companies need to avoid thinking of sustainability as only an add-on to their strategies and operations. They need to integrate it across the business. Rather than defining a separate sustainability strategy, it is crucial to .

A first step toward 51风流realizing this was linking sustainability to our purpose of helping the world run better and improving people鈥檚 lives. The objective: create positive economic, environmental, and social impact within with special focus on climate action, circular economy, social responsibility, and holistic steering and reporting.

This is reflected not only in the updated 51风流vision to 鈥渞einvent how the world runs as a network of intelligent, sustainable enterprises,鈥� but also in the executive compensation that rewards Executive Board members for customer loyalty, employee commitment, and SAP鈥檚 carbon impact, along with financial performance.

Enabling Climate Action Through Technology

The IPCC report has once again highlighted that harnessing the innovation power of enterprises has to be at the center of fighting climate change. For SAP, this means using digitalization to contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), .

In collaboration with customers and partners, 51风流is working to optimize material, financial, and energy flows throughout end-to-end business processes in order to address planetary and social challenges. For example, the company鈥檚 multi-year Climate 21 program helps build analytical and transactional capabilities into enterprise applications that can help 51风流customers understand and minimize the greenhouse gas footprint of their products and operations along their value chains.

During the in April, sustainability management by SAP was introduced, providing an expanded portfolio of sustainability-specific solutions, including 51风流Product Footprint Management, which has been available since September 2021. There is more to come with the releases of the and 51风流Sustainability Control Tower solutions in the next months, as will be shown during

Foundries locations Berlin and Munich are fostering startup innovation by setting up the Sustainable Future program together with Accenture. The equity-free program is designed to propel digital transformation in four target areas: carbon tracking and trading, resource efficiency, climate risk tracking and mitigation, and circular economy.

Setting Ambitious Targets

In addition to harnessing innovation, the climate emergency calls for bold targets for decarbonization. By mid-2021, countries representing around 65% of global carbon dioxide emissions and more than 70% of the world economy have made ambitious commitments to carbon neutrality. The U.S, the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and others — in total 126 countries — have pledged carbon neutrality by 2050; China says it will do so before 2060.

The private sector also needs to step up. More than 1,900 companies, including 51风流in 2017, have set emissions reduction targets grounded in climate science through the .

In 2019, 51风流raised its commitment and adopted a 1.5掳 C science-based emissions reduction targets aligned with a net-zero future. However, the journey started much earlier; back in 2009, 51风流set the first goal of reducing its global carbon emissions to the year-2000 level by 2020.鈥�This target was met at the end of 2017, even though 51风流grew more than fourfold over the period.

The next milestone is 2023, when 51风流aims to be carbon neutral in its own operations鈥�– two years earlier than previously envisaged. This includes all direct (Scope 1), indirect (Scope 2), and selected categories of value chain (Scope 3) carbon emissions, such as business flights, employee commuting, paper consumption, and external data centers (co-locations and hyperscalers).

Monitoring and Reporting

It is essential to measure and monitor progress on the path toward achieving these targets. For example, 51风流has increasingly embraced holistic steering and reporting because connecting financial and pre-financial performance leads to better management decisions and business success.

SAP鈥檚 sustainability and annual reports were merged into the in 2012. Since then, both material and immaterial value creation have been at the center of the company鈥檚 reporting and have been placed on an equal footing. Besides key financial information, environmental progress, workforce information, and social investments have been made transparent. In addition, an internal sustainability dashboard allows employees to explore the key sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs), such as women in management and carbon emissions by their country, location, and line of business, with updates every quarter.

Our reporting shows that in 2020, 51风流was able to overachieve by 43% on its target for net carbon emissions in 2020, generating 135 kilotons instead of the anticipated 238 kilotons. This trend continued in the first half of 2021, during which SAP鈥檚 carbon emissions totaled 45 kilotons compared to 90 kilotons in the first half of 2020 (-37%).

The low emissions level is a consequence of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the introduction of Pledge to Flex, which enables a more flexible mix of remote and onsite work. 51风流believes this trend will continue and has just announced in its that it has lowered its 2021 carbon emissions outlook from 145 kilotons to a range of 90-110 kilotons.

Taking Action: Measures of Implementation

To become carbon neutral in its own operations by 2023, 51风流is following a three-pillar approach: avoid, reduce, compensate.

• Avoid: Whenever possible, 51风流aims to avoid the creation of greenhouse gases. This is a top priority, supported by, for example, using virtual telecommunication instead of business flights.
• Reduce: If greenhouse gas emissions cannot be avoided, 51风流aims to drive efficiency and reduce all types of emissions; for example, building efficiency, data center operations, carpooling and car sharing, and e-mobility.
• Compensate: 51风流has extended its compensation models for travel. For business flights, it has introduced an internal carbon price to offset related carbon emissions. If greenhouse gas emissions cannot be eliminated altogether, 51风流aims to reduce them through innovations in the areas of building efficiency, data center operations, carpooling, and car sharing, as well as e-mobility. For example, 51风流has powered its own data centers and facilities with 100% renewable electricity since 2014, implemented an environmental management system with ISO 14001 certification in more than 30 countries and ISO 50001 at headquarters, adopting green IT initiatives in order to foster sustainable IT equipment usage and promoting tools such as as a default search engine.

In 2020, 51风流implemented additional energy and climate measures within its operations, ranging from opening a new office with energy-efficient design in Australia and implementing more efficient data center technology in Germany to introducing a bike fleet at 51风流Hungary as well as a flexible mobility budget in Germany and installation of photovoltaic systems in Austria.

For emissions that cannot yet be reduced or avoided, 51风流thirdly invests in high-quality carbon credits. For example, 51风流has been a long-term investor of the Livelihoods Carbon Funds (LCF) since 2012. 51风流has also donated funds to restore ecosystems and improve people鈥檚 lives. In support of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, 51风流recently joined the 1t.org corporate alliance, which aims to conserve, restore, and grow trees worldwide, with a pledge to plant 21 million trees by the end of 2025.

I am proud that SAP鈥檚 efforts to combat climate change and to strengthen its transparent reporting are externally recognized. The non-profit organization CDP included 51风流on its , thereby granting us the top rating for leading in environmental transparency and action.

Partnering

51风流recognizes that strong partnerships are an invaluable asset in tackling climate change. This is why we became a founding member of the European Green Digital Coalition and joined the World Economic Forum Stakeholder Capitalism Coalition and CEO Climate Leaders as well as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), complementing our previous engagements with the UN Global Compact, the We Mean Business Coalition, the Value Balancing Alliance, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and many more.

In addition, we signed the calling for greater climate ambition and we launched Chasing Zero, a new initiative that will feature executive thought leadership, best practices, and insights into a sustainability-related transformation of 51风流and its global ecosystem to achieve zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality. The transition to a circular economy remains central to our vision for a world of zero waste and plastic free oceans by 2030. Consequently, we support stronger circular economy policies, such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature鈥檚 OneSource Coalition and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation鈥檚 Extended Producer Responsibility endorsement.

Daniel Schmid is chief sustainability officer of SAP.

As a frontrunner in the sustainability movement, 51风流has a crucial role to play as an exemplar 鈥� such as committing to become carbon neutral by 2023 鈥� as well as in helping businesses unlock their potential growth. This is possible through optimizing circular business models with practical and scalable 51风流solutions such as , which enables companies to account for greenhouse gas emissions in their end-to-end business processes. While SAP鈥檚 focus is on innovations that help customers become more sustainable, we as individuals should lead by example by taking steps that lead to a more sustainable living, such as using alternative modes of transportation or reducing single-use plastics.

Following the vision of a , businesses and individuals are advised to set the focus on repurposing and reusing materials, following a cycle of make, use, return, and reuse.

Achieving circular business models requires completely rethinking supply and value chains across industries to create end-to-end transparency. In the quest to turn waste into value, 51风流developed , a solution that can improve visibility into resources across value chains, helping companies understand, control, and manage their impact on the environment. For example, it is estimated that the fashion industry is responsible for , and, according to UNFCCC, the sector鈥檚 emissions are to if transformation towards a sustainable fashion industry fails to materialize soon.

A great use case where the 51风流Rural Sourcing Management solution helps streamline the journey to a circular economy is through a sustainable network of businesses, connecting plastic waste collectors in Ghana with recycling companies, manufacturers, brands, and consumers of fashion. In Africa less than 20% of plastic waste is being recycled, while the European Union sets a target of 50% by 2025. Ghana has committed to turn this issue into an opportunity by creating a domestic recycling industry that creates jobs as well as supports a clean environment. In urban areas of countries such as Ghana, waste collecting is a means of survival. However, many urban dwellers have poor visibility into the market price of the collected materials, leaving them vulnerable to imposed pricing.

Through the implementation of , waste collectors in Ghana can directly connect to waste aggregators to receive a fair and transparent wage. The plastic resources are then handed over to the recycling companies to transform it into reusable resources. Being transported to different factories and manufacturers, plastic can be used in the production of fashion items. Using , full traceability can be achieved along the entire supply chain to help ensure expectations and standards for sustainable production and fair conditions are met.

To connect and manage the business operations steps within any fashion business, 51风流supports brands and retailers that want to capture and control the value of products after sale with recommerce. The aim is to enable and connect recommerce-specific business processes that include buying back, managing, and reselling pre-owned inventory, as well as tracking key financial, customer, and sustainability performance indicators. Any fashion brand can maintain visibility and control re-commerce business to fully capture the opportunities at stake 鈥� a profitable reselling business, positive environmental impact, customer acquisition, and expansion of the customer lifetime value.

51风流technology provides solutions that can transform serious environmental challenges, such as plastic waste, into integral parts of the circular economy. It can bring people and businesses with shared values together to jointly create a more sustainable value chain, where products are used, returned, reused, and given a new purpose.

Katrin Lehmann is head of Customer Innovation and Maintenance at SAP.

51风流Product Footprint Management enables companies to lower their carbon emissions, make their products more sustainable, and disclose their products鈥� environmental footprints to regulators. The product launch underpins to deliver products and services that address the sustainability challenges and opportunities of its customers.

Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, responsible for Product Engineering, explained the urgency for applications like 51风流Product Footprint Management: 鈥淐ustomers want it, the world needs it. There is no time to waste for businesses to act more responsibly and sustainably. Sustainability goals are increasingly as important to business success as financial goals.鈥�

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By integrating emissions data across all solutions that govern production processes with master data from business applications such as 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流Product Footprint Management can calculate the environmental impact of various production scenarios.

鈥淲hen companies embed emissions data into underlying business processes, leaders can drive real change by making conscious decisions across the entire value chain,鈥� Saueressig said, noting that 51风流is uniquely positioned to drive this change throughout collaborative, intelligent, and sustainable business networks.

SAP鈥檚 Commitment to Sustainability

51风流has been leading by example in sustainable business practices for more than a decade. In addition to being named the software industry leader in the听Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for 14 consecutive years, SAP鈥檚 membership in the Value Balancing Alliance and use of the annual illustrates our commitment to integrating economic, environmental, and social performance to drive business decisions.

鈥�51风流has long had a strong, dedicated focus on its own sustainability operations,鈥� said Marta Mu帽oz, senior research director and lead, Technology & Sustainability Practice, IDC EME. “The launch of the 51风流Product Footprint Management solution, combined with the , represents a unique opportunity to bring together companies to jointly drive decarbonization across value chains and industries.”

Interview with Gunther Rothermel and Anita Varshney

Gunther Rothermel is senior vice president and head of Sustainability for 51风流S/4HANA. Anita Varshney is global vice president of Strategy for Sustainability for 51风流S/4HANA and oversees the product strategy and global partner ecosystem across SAP鈥檚 sustainability portfolio.

Q: What鈥檚 the significance of this product launch for SAP?

Rothermel: All of us can see climate change impacting not only our customer鈥檚 operations, but also our own personal lives. 51风流Product Footprint Management is an incredibly important milestone along our path to help customers systematically monitor and control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across their end-end business processes. To support their decarbonization journey, the solution delivers data transparency on their environmental footprint and enables them to make more informed decisions in real time.

The potential impact cannot be overstated. Boston Consulting Group analyzed the and found that around 40% of GHG can be eliminated with measures that bring cost savings or are at costs of less than 鈧�10 per ton of CO₂ equivalent. Just imagine what we and our customers can achieve together.

Competition for sustainability management software is heating up. How is 51风流differentiating itself?

Varshney: A number of new technologies are emerging to facilitate the identification, tracking, trade and offset of GHG emissions, and established players and as well as newer, small vendors are coming out with innovative solutions applying leading technology to solve complex problems. As long as we stay focused on our core business capabilities and deliver innovations on top of 51风流Business Technology (51风流BTP) platform, we can position ourselves as a front runner in solving environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues at scale. We can differentiate ourselves from the competition in three ways:

• Differentiated impact of our product offerings: With our portfolio, we will enable organizations to assess and reduce their carbon footprint, increase resource productivity through circular processes, and run safer, sustainable business processes while providing industry-specific insights that combine operational and financial data across value chains.
• Deep process integration: By embedding sustainability data into end-end business processes across value chains, we can help our customers adapt their key business processes to be more sustainable.
• Co-innovation with ecosystem partners: In close collaboration with our partners, customers, market makers, and standard bodies, we will jointly shape and accelerate innovations for the future sustainability landscape, which enables and drives new redefined business process models.

What鈥檚 the role of 51风流BTP? How can our customers use these cloud services?

Rothermel: 51风流BTP plays a very important enabling role for us. We are building our new sustainability solutions along cloud engineering principles, based on open, flexible architecture on top of 51风流BTP. We are also making full use of key additional platform capabilities.

For instance, we are closely working with the 51风流BTP team to build 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud and 51风流Analytics Cloud content for our upcoming solution 51风流Sustainability Control Tower. We are also following an 鈥楢PI-first鈥� approach for our new services, helping our partners more easily adapt and integrate their own solutions on top of the foundation that we deliver from SAP. This enables us to jointly address most critical use cases in different industries, enabling our customer to manage their environmental, societal, and planetary impact.

What鈥檚 our future road map and our vision to support our customers as they transition to become sustainable enterprises?

Varshney: During their life cycle, products move from material acquisition and pre-processing to production and storage, and finally, downstream to distribution, delivery, use, and end-of-life. 51风流Product Footprint Management enables transparency regarding environmental footprints across this full product life cycle. For this, we are taking a holistic approach and are now also embedding emissions data into our other products like 51风流Integrated Business Planning, 51风流Ariba and others.

Two more products will be announced soon: 51风流Responsible Design and Production and 51风流Sustainability Control Tower. With 51风流Responsible Design and Production, we empower businesses to eliminate waste and support compliance to extended producer responsibility schemes. This will allow them to manage their limited resources productively throughout their life cycle. With 51风流Sustainability Control Tower, we enable our customers to improve performance and long-term valuation by embedding sustainability metrics and insights into core business processes.

What was the most challenging aspect of the project?

Rothermel: There is a lot of time pressure given the urgency the topic has for SAP, the industry, and society overall. I am extremely proud of what my team has accomplished in a very short time window. Although the team was only set-up in the fourth quarter of last year, we delivered on our promised innovations on time despite the restraints of COVID-19. With the sustainability management program, colleagues came together and each has played a significant role in shaping this product, the first significant innovation focused on the vision of a sustainable intelligent enterprise for our customers.

51风流Product Footprint Management is part of a new portfolio of sustainability-specific business applications that deliver transparency and measurement capability across the supply chain, allowing companies to move toward lower carbon emissions and more sustainable operations.

鈥淐ustomers want it, the world needs it. There is no time to waste for businesses to act more responsibly and sustainably. Sustainability goals are increasingly as important to business success as financial goals,鈥� said Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE and responsible for 51风流Product Engineering. 鈥淲hen companies embed emissions data into underlying business processes, leaders can drive real change by making conscious decisions across the entire value chain. That is what scales the transition to low emission pathways, and 51风流is uniquely positioned to drive this change throughout collaborative, intelligent and sustainable business networks.鈥�

By integrating data across all solutions that govern production processes with master data from business applications such as 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流Product Footprint Management can calculate the environmental impact of various production scenarios. For example, can choose its source for chocolate based both on the cost of the raw material as well as on its carbon footprint.

SAP鈥檚 data-driven approach lets businesses embed sustainability comprehensively and gain actionable insights across the entire value chain to enable companies to transition to low-carbon business processes. Taking a differentiating approach, 51风流enables businesses to proactively identify the carbon impact at the beginning of the product lifecycle instead of reactively after a product has been produced. Moreover, 51风流Product Footprint Management not only equips companies with the insight to reduce carbon emissions across their value chains but can enable data exchange with customers, suppliers and business partners 鈥� driving transparency across a company鈥檚 scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3 emissions.

51风流Product Footprint Management, a cloud-native solution built on , is designed to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions. Proposed governmental regulations designed to combat the harmful effects of climate change could cost businesses . A recent IDC survey showed linking financial and environmental indications in financial reporting, as well as reducing carbon emissions, are top topics for IT decision-makers.*

SAP鈥檚 Commitment to Sustainability

51风流has been leading by example in sustainable business practices for more than a decade. In addition to being named the software industry leader in the听Dow Jones Sustainability Indices听(DJSI) for 14 consecutive years, SAP鈥檚 membership in the Value Balancing Alliance and the illustrates our commitment to integrating economic, environmental and social performance to drive business decisions.

鈥�51风流has long had a strong, dedicated focus on its own sustainability operations. The launch of the 51风流Product Footprint Management solution, combined with the , represents a unique opportunity to bring together companies to jointly drive decarbonization across value chains and industries,鈥� said Marta Mu帽oz, senior research director and Lead Technology & Sustainability Practice, IDC EME.

To learn more visit the 51风流News Center and follow 51风流on Twitter at .

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world鈥檚 transaction revenue touches an 51风流system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit

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*IDC, The Increasing Importance of ESG Principles for Enterprises,听Doc # EUR147475621, February 2021.

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鈥淭he world is on fire,鈥� according to and a recent with astronauts from the International Space Station. While many parts of the world deal with extreme heat, others struggle with extreme flooding. The says nations are 鈥渘owhere close鈥� to the level of action needed to fight global warming and the effects of extreme weather caused by climate change. The need for climate action is undeniable and opportunities for green house gas (GHG) reductions are within our grasp. Action to date has been slow, but it’s accelerating.

I see a surge in companies seeking to reduce GHG emissions coming. November鈥檚 upcoming , the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, is set to ensure that action around science-based target setting will accelerate. And I鈥檓 hearing from industry and government leaders that we will see unprecedented corporate climate action, driven by regulation and good business, that aligns with the .

Pressure from governments and consumers is mounting as climate change is unfolding before our eyes — faster even than scientists predicted. I鈥檓 watching the upcoming COP26 where the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation鈥檚 International Sustainability Standard Board (ISSB) will be launched in November. This robust, will adopt a climate-first approach and have a big impact on our customers.

Our customers are asking us to help them make the necessary change at scale. And we are ready to help them meet the requirements. But many businesses have moved forward without reassessing their business models or focusing on the underlying process, data, and governance changes that they must make to accurately measure, manage, and reduce their carbon emissions. Why? Because it鈥檚 complex!

Calculating environmental and social impacts across a company鈥檚 products and services and across the entirety of their life cycles is simply complicated. Yet supply chain emissions are on average . So merely focusing on individual operational emissions is no longer enough. Actually, it was always just a first step.

Understanding complex business challenges and optimizing existing business processes has always been SAP鈥檚 strength. The breadth and depth of our industry expertise, spanning 50 years, enables us to help businesses today to not just optimize, but reinvent their business processes, like no other company can. That鈥檚 what today鈥檚 challenges call for.

As we near our 50-year company anniversary, we build on that legacy today by enabling business to meet new challenges. We know that dashboarding is not enough. When we embed emissions data into underlying business processes, leaders can drive real change by making conscious decisions across the entire value chain. That鈥檚 what scales the transition to low carbon pathways, and 51风流is uniquely positioned to drive this change across collaborative, intelligent, and sustainable business networks.

These activities are interconnected and must be done together to achieve maximum impact. Our business software applications bring together materials, energy, and financial flows to steer businesses in a holistic way. These are not add-ons. We have found significant value from the interconnectedness of these factors over our decade of integrated reporting and steering, and are working closely with our customers through organizations such as the to accelerate this approach for all sectors.

We not only enable individual intelligent enterprises, we connect them to each other. We support the move from intelligent sustainable enterprises to a network of intelligent sustainable enterprises. This is the key to achieving real change for the planet. Just as GHG emissions go beyond the four walls of a company, efforts to reduce those emissions must also extend beyond individual companies, into the network of companies.

While every company can start by focusing on their own individual supply chains, those further down the path to sustainability can use the network as a pathway to scale. *, 鈥淐onsolidating data into a unified network means better access, streamlined analysis and the opportunity to more effectively turn insights into action.鈥� Systemic industry change needs the network effect, and it needs a spark.

The customer base that we currently serve covers 94% of the world鈥檚 500 largest companies which represents an immense capacity for real change at scale. Partnerships also help accelerate our product innovation. 51风流is , dedicated to enhancing transparency in corporate carbon emissions with the objective to ultimately decarbonize supply chains.

We emphasize the role of technology for the green transition and EU taxonomy as a founding member of . In addition to working with these established partners and others, 51风流is supporting sustainability innovation from startups around the world. For example, through our program, startups play a pivotal role in catalyzing innovations on sustainability across the globe.

We facilitated systemic industry change 50 years ago with our enterprise software based on our founders鈥� vision. Now we are doing it again in order to tackle the climate crisis. The business model innovation we drive helps improve energy efficiency across both conventional and renewable energy value chains, it supports decarbonizing through electricity generation and transmission such as green hydrogen, and it helps our customers to decarbonize their products and services, for example, by adopting circularity.

We have not slowed down on our promise to innovate in this product space throughout the pandemic. Just recently, we made our 51风流Product Footprint Management solution generally available to our customers to support them in monitoring, analyzing, and reducing emissions to deliver on their climate commitments.

We are building for the future. And I believe that future is coming faster than anyone even thought.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

*IDC InfoBrief, Sponsored by SAP, Global B2B Collaboration Networks: Critical Enablers of Business Resiliency, IDC Doc. #US47857121, August 2021.

I grew up in Germany and can still remember when we started to separate our trash for recycling back in the 80s or 90s 鈥� our rivers and forests were suffering, and the environment was becoming a big topic. Even though we have seen progress on this front here in Germany, if you look at the global situation today, it鈥檚 clear we need to do more. It goes far beyond separating our trash. I sometimes wonder if I am part of the last generation that had the privilege to grow up in a world where natural disasters were an exception rather than the rule. Thinking about my own children, this is certainly a gut-wrenching thought.

I do not know if there is a guide through a slow-motion emergency, but the fact that climate change is already at our front door is inescapable. With the current state of the planet setting the context for us, talking about sustainability is talking about survival. It is about redefining growth, rethinking progress, and limiting financial risk. How we view our business or our industry will be a key driver in how well we proceed in creating a sustainability vision for our organization, both from within and without.

And . By placing sustainability at the front and center of our purpose, SAP鈥檚 strategy underlines the importance of technology, and specifically technological innovation, in enabling and accelerating climate action, hand in hand with our customers and partners.

Placing Sustainability at the Front and Center

With , we are uniquely positioned to create a lasting,听positive impact for our future generations. Leveraging SAP鈥檚 exemplary track record of managing enterprise resources for close to five decades, we want to collaborate and work closely with our customers to transition to sustainable business models.听Our vision to enable customers to transform into intelligent, sustainable enterprises is based on our shared values in “chasing zero“: zero emissions (GHG), zero waste, and zero inequality.

By integrating sustainability data into end-to-end business processes across industries and value chains, we can have a significant impact and accelerate the pace of change needed. In close collaboration with our partners, customers, market makers, and standard bodies, we intend to jointly shape the future sustainability landscape that enables and drives new, redefined business process models.

The success of the in April this year clearly shows that our ecosystem is ready to join forces with us, making it clear that business leaders — in addition to their top and bottom lines — also want to focus on managing their 鈥済reen line鈥� for sustainable business success. This has become the guiding principle for the way we want to evaluate and steer businesses in the future.

Embedding Sustainability Across the Entire Value Chain

51风流S/4HANA Cloud鈥檚 sustainability portfolio addresses four dimensions, including climate action, circular economy, holistic steering and reporting, and social responsibility.

Through a highly differentiated set of products, we will enable organizations to assess and reduce their carbon footprint, increase resource productivity through circular processes, and run safer, sustainable business processes while providing industry-specific insights that combine operational and financial data across value chains, embedded in core business processes.

51风流Product Footprint Management has now been released. In the next few months, we will release 51风流Responsible Design and Production, already available as beta, and 51风流Sustainability Control Tower, and we will deliver innovations via modular embedded 51风流S/4HANA Cloud services, based on an open, flexible architecture built on top of 51风流Business Technology Platform. We will continue to expand across the breadth of our 51风流portfolio, bringing additional capabilities with 51风流Business Network and different lines of businesses, addressing most critical use cases in different industries to enable our customers to manage their environmental, societal, and planetary impact.

51风流Product Footprint Management is an embedded 51风流S/4HANA cloud-native application that enables our customers to optimize their business decisions by integrating footprint scores, preconfigured and flexible, in end-to-end business processes, periodically and at scale, considering the entire product life cycle. Our customers can gain insights by combining financial, logistic, and environmental data in analytics and can evaluate and derive footprints at scale by leveraging 51风流S/4HANA Cloud data and capabilities as much as possible.

51风流Product Footprint Management is preconfigured, prescriptive, and focuses on business users (persona-based). It is based on SAP鈥檚 business data and application logic and is consistent in the calculated product footprints being integrated into the end-to-end operational processes covering all relevant business users in every department.

51风流Product Footprint Management is an answer to various challenges that our customers have encountered, whether it is the availability of emissions data to calculate product footprint across the product life cycle or the availability of calculation adhering to standards aligned to GHG Protocol ISO 14040. These indicate that high efforts are required for calculating the footprints and understanding how to use the results or the data gained from it to better optimize the way businesses are run.

Businesses agree that they need to calculate the footprint on a product level in the future, but they are unsure about how to go about it. They are still exploring different data and calculation methods. Our customers want to calculate the product footprints and then they want to analyze it — with their own tools.

To evaluate the environmental impact of the collected business data and goods movements and to be able to calculate footprints at scale, this data needs to be combined with emission factors. , a not-for-profit organization, is our first partner to offer product-related emission factor datasets from its database. Building on more than 20 years of experience in lifecycle assessment methodology and around 18,000 datasets covering global supply chains, the ecoinvent emission factor datasets can be, with a license, easily imported into 51风流Product Footprint Management.

In the future, we plan to enable other content providers as well so that our customers can use every provider whose data is standardized as per our applications.

It is important to establish a clear governance, ownership, and process for managing and reporting on carbon emissions. Clarity on governance will in turn drive the clarity on underlying data needs, as well as system requirements. Our partnership with the United Nations (UN) Global Compact and Accenture on is an important component of our sustainability efforts. SDG Ambition aims to engage leaders across more than 1,000 companies in over 40 countries over the next two years and draw greater focus on making sustainability core to business strategy.

With our technologies, we will enable our customers to accelerate their journeys to achieving ambitious targets, helping them advance the integration of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into their core business systems, thereby systematically working toward their .

Completing the Picture by Achieving Sustainability Multi-Dimensionally

With听, we enable our customers to manage their corporate environmental footprint — air, water, waste, carbon — as well as their GHG emissions at a corporate level. 51风流Product Footprint Management captures product lifecycle emissions required by Product Standards, as outlined in .

To approach the challenge of climate change in a holistic manner and to expand it along further aspects, including water, energy, and land use as well as social dimensions, we need to begin at the core: 51风流S/4HANA Cloud.

Having recognized and taken this major step, we plan to build on it and will expand to include and embed exchange emissions data into our line-of-business applications, including procurement, travel, and expense, to help bring a complete emissions transparency for our customers through 51风流Sustainability Control Tower.

As an example, companies can gain visibility into carbon footprint data throughout a product鈥檚 supply chain, bringing the ability to take sustainable supply chain decisions based on actionable insights. Product-related carbon footprint data, such as for production, material sourcing, or transport, from 51风流Product Footprint Management can be utilized in .

The issue of sustainability can sometimes be overwhelming and it is easy to feel hopeless. But because it is a global, complex issue, it has risen to the forefront, not only in policy conversations about how to make a change, but also in the business consciousness. There is a real shift happening now in terms of how we view climate change and how we believe we can turn concern into action.

Businesses are well positioned to lead on innovations and technology that will help slow down their impact on the environment and recognize that business can only succeed if society thrives.

While there is no ready-made, off-the-shelf answer to the questions our next generation asks us, we simply must make sure that what we do today gets us closer to where we want to be tomorrow — because what we save also saves us.

Jan Gilg is president of 51风流S/4HANA.

With our application portfolio, industry expertise, and extensive business network, we aim to enable emissions reduction and help tackle the ocean plastics crisis. We aspire to infuse sustainability into all relevant core business processes by focusing on regulatory compliance, operational excellence, and responsible innovation and growth — going beyond the traditional scope of value creation.

We believe that the path to a low-carbon future is circular. Only when businesses are moving beyond their siloed approaches, commitments, and climate pledges, fully embracing sustainability, and embedding these ambitions in an integrated way will we be able to drive systemic change. The good news is that . Evidence shows it can bring big opportunities and drive positive impact across industries, sectors, and lives. Working toward a circular economy can protect human health and biodiversity in many ways, including better use of natural resources, such as protecting water and land, thus mitigating the climate crisis.

The role of a circular economy must expand to successfully reduce emissions across sectors, as it is an essential component to achieving climate neutrality.

Sustainability management by SAP, launched last month at the first , showcases our suite of sustainability solutions that can help organizations in their journey to becoming a sustainable enterprise. We aim to enable organizations to assess and reduce their carbon footprint, increase resource productivity through circular processes, and run safer, sustainable business processes. This will also include industry-specific insights that combine operational and financial data across value chains embedded in core business processes.

Our portfolio addresses four dimensions of sustainable transformation.

Climate Action

With , planned for availability in the third quarter of 2021, our ambition is to provide customers with product footprint transparency. This will equip them with the insight to reduce carbon emissions across their value chains while enabling them to exchange data with their customers, suppliers, and business partners — driving transparency across a company鈥檚 scope 1, 2, and 3 operations.

Carbon is increasingly becoming a that can be tracked, traded, managed, and minimized like any other resource. Learn more about how to do this in the .

Circular Economy

With , planned for availability in the fourth quarter of 2021, we aim to further our vision for a plastic-free ocean by 2030. By preventing waste and pollution, using products and materials for longer, and applying circular principles, we can regenerate natural systems and make better use of finite resources. Successful execution on circularity will bring the upstream visibility for sustainable inputs together with downstream visibility, thus enabling reverse logistics and product authentication, promoting reuse across the product鈥檚 life cycle.

Extended producer responsibility is our first step in building resilience and circularity principles into material flows throughout value networks.Learn more about .

Holistic Steering and Reporting

The upcoming 51风流Sustainability Control Tower solution will meet the hyper transparency needs of our customers on their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance through a higher level of granularity than historically available through reporting and disclosure. We want to provide focused analysis on the most important data in real time, protecting against business risks, tying it back to underlying business data.

A successful ESG information architecture must meet the needs of external audiences and internal managers at the same time. Explore how .

Socially Responsible Value Networks

The journey to support our customers鈥� ambitions has only just begun, and there is a huge potential to make this vision bigger and stronger through collaboration with our ecosystem. As an example, with 51风流Business Network, we support continuous improvement in safe, equitable, and compliant businesses, within the company and across the value network. Other examples include the planned inclusion of the sustainability scores of suppliers during the purchase requisition process, so that procurers are informed on the sustainability profiles of their suppliers.

With sustainability management by SAP, we embed sustainability as a new dimension of success while delivering incremental innovations in our sustainability product portfolio, which is modular, integrated, and embedded along end-to-end business processes in the Intelligent Enterprise, starting with 51风流S/4HANA. To execute on this vision, we will collaborate with our ecosystem across industries to innovate on top of 51风流Business Technology Platform.

To achieve these ambitious goals, we need to continuously challenge ourselves and work together with customers, partners, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and regulators for sustainable product life cycles across the value chains.

We are delivering jointly on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) through the . .

To keep updated on the latest product innovations, visit the , which will guide you on transformative actions toward a more sustainable future.

Enabling tomorrow starts today.

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