Currently in beta, the agents help organizations deliver measurable results: a greater than 50% reduction in packaging compliance review hours, scenario simulation time cut from a day to 20 minutes, up to 80% reduction in manual GHS classification effort, and over 20% fewer packaging compliance errors.

The agents handle multi-step workflows that previously required hand-offs between teams and systems, including sustainability reporting preparation, packaging and product compliance assessments, carbon footprint simulation, and workplace safety documentation. They address mounting pressure across the enterprise: giving finance teams visibility into how carbon exposure affects forecasts; helping procurement teams manage regulatory risk without slowing down innovation; enabling supply chain teams to spot emission hotspots while maintaining service levels; and supporting operations in connecting safety observations to proactive, audit-ready actions.

New AI sustainability agents

The Sustainability Regulatory Readiness Agent helps organizations prepare for upcoming sustainability regulations such as the by translating materiality assessments into a defensible reporting scope and mapping the right data and metrics to each disclosure requirement. This enables sustainability teams to capture, validate, track, and ultimately disclose ESG information with far less manual effort.

For finance teams that need to manage carbon costs and disclosure risk while balancing the financial implications of sustainability performance, the agent automates financial-grade data mapping between material topics, regulatory requirements, and 51风流finance data, improving audit readiness and turning an existing materiality assessment into a clear, defensible reporting scope. Unlike a standalone sustainability point solution that only surfaces issues or a generic AI model that drafts narrative text, this agent works inside and the broader 51风流landscape to keep reporting scopes aligned to policy and keep underlying data structured and traceable.

The Footprint Optimization Agent brings together carbon, energy, and waste data from across Scope 1, 2, and 3 sources and pinpoints where emissions and other environmental impacts are highest across products, plants, and supply chains. It then runs side鈥慴y鈥憇ide simulations of different reduction levers and turns the results into reports, supplier requests, and targeted initiatives that support decarbonization projects and ESG goal tracking. For operations, the agent makes it easy to test 鈥渨hat鈥慽f鈥� operational changes and see their projected impact on carbon and other environmental footprints. It reduces scenario simulation time from approximately one day to about 20 minutes, making operational decisions based on real impact projections available at workers鈥� fingertips. This directly addresses the financial implications of carbon exposure: with ESG data often derived from industry averages that can vary by 30 to 40% or more from actual values, the ability to simulate and act on granular, accurate data carries significant margin protection value.

The Packaging Compliance Agent reads and interprets evolving packaging regulations starting with the , maps supplier and product documentation to a structured data model, infers and flags missing information, and checks product designs for conformity at scale. It turns scattered, often unstructured packaging data into an auditable compliance record for each SKU, shipment, and product run, reducing manual review effort and error rates in the process.

Procurement and sourcing teams facing growing pressure to ensure supplier eligibility, material compliance, and traceability while managing cost and availability now have an agent that helps protect revenue by catching packaging issues before they block orders or trigger fines. This equates to a greater than 50% reduction in manual compliance review hours and over 20% reduction of packaging compliance assessment errors. As sustainability moves to the transaction level鈥攃ompliance per SKU, per shipment, per product run鈥攖his kind of automated, embedded compliance capability becomes an operational necessity.

The GHS Classification and Labeling Agent collects the required input data, applies the relevant Globally Harmonized System (GHS) rules, and proposes classifications and label elements that can be used directly in downstream product compliance processes.

By automating these steps, it delivers up to an 80% reduction in manual efforts and a 60% reduction in GHS labeling and classification errors. For product and compliance teams that must keep launches on schedule and avoid shipment holds or market access denials, the agent embeds GHS product compliance into everyday workflows, turning a historically expert鈥慸riven, error鈥憄rone process into a consistent, auditable control point across the portfolio.

The Workplace Safety Agent supports workplace safety by analyzing reported observations and proposing follow-up tasks, risk assessments, and controls. It generates updated, approved safety instructions based on those observations to help organizations strengthen safety governance. With operations under increased pressure to ensure safe work environments without compromising service and speed of production, the agent delivers proactive, standardized safety management at scale, reducing the risk of incidents and unplanned downtime. At the same time, HR and EHS leaders can point to a clear trail of actions and updated instructions to demonstrate continuous improvement in safety culture to employees, regulators, and boards.

Only AI can deliver sustainability at scale

To ensure compliance and enhance strategic decision-making, sustainability data needs to become granular. It should move beyond a record of what happened and become a driver of future outcomes. To reach this level of insight, sustainability data needs to be analyzed at transaction level. Getting transaction-level data at scale is not something that can be done manually.

Granular sustainability data allows businesses to ensure compliance, control carbon and cost exposure, safeguard product marketability, and strengthen supply chain transparency and resilience. Perhaps most important is the ability to embed sustainability into business performance and across all business functions. This final point is the key to unlocking sustainable business autonomy.

In the sustainability context, becoming an Autonomous Enterprise means that sustainability policies are executed automatically inside enterprise workflows. This includes connecting financial and sustainability data for trusted steering, automating disclosure and performance insights, and blocking non-compliant shipments. Ultimately, sustainability becomes a governing factor in enterprise decisions, as opposed to a reporting or compliance activity.

Enterprise autonomy entails gradual AI maturation:

• Intelligence: Faster visibility into reporting and materials compliance risks across the enterprise
• Optimization: Data-driven decisions that balance cost, risk, and sustainability impact
• Autonomy: Actions executed directly within operational workflows, eliminating manual coordination

The choices enterprises make now鈥攈ow data is structured, how decisions are supported, and how sustainability is integrated鈥攚ill determine whether they can safely scale automation later or whether complexity and risk increase as systems evolve.

With the Autonomous Enterprise, leaders can deliver sustainable outcomes at scale.

Why SAP?

AI needs three things to successfully run autonomously: business and process context, data connection and integration, and a reliable governance structure.

Generic models can read data, but without business context they cannot reason how a business actually runs. They see tables, not operations, and provide recommendations that may be commercially or operationally unviable. Without data that is integrated and connected across all business departments, AI has to perform in siloes, unaware of how sustainability decisions might impact financial targets, or how procurement decisions affect supply chain risk. SAP’s rich ERP data foundation ensures that enterprise AI has the full business picture, not just fragments of it.

Finally, AI that lacks governance and cannot be audited or controlled can be more harmful than helpful to a business. SAP’s more than five decades of business process expertise anchored in governance, risk, and compliance, mean that AI for enterprise deployment can be managed safely and reliably. Sustainability agents operate within defined parameters, ensuring that automation scales without sacrificing control or compliance.

This is the foundation that makes everything possible. Without it, an enterprise has AI experiments. With it, it has an operating model.

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

In his kickoff keynote at 51风流Sapphire Orlando, Florida, Klein and other 51风流Board members detailed how 51风流plans to bring agentic AI to the world’s most critical business workflows so that humans and AI can meet the accelerating demands of global business profitably, strategically, and safely.

鈥淭oday I鈥檓 super proud to launch our new 51风流Business AI Platform, which forms the basis for our vision of the future of business: the Autonomous Enterprise, where agents run the business and you can focus on what truly matters,鈥� Klein said.

Enterprise AI is at an inflection point, Klein told his 30,000-strong in-person and virtual keynote audience, and 51风流is in a unique position to deliver what customers need to turn their businesses into autonomous enterprises.

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The business AI imperative

Across industries, organizations are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, yet many still struggle to translate that investment into meaningful business value. At 51风流Sapphire, the message was clear: This isn鈥檛 a technology problem; it鈥檚 a context and execution problem.

While 80% accuracy may be sufficient for consumer AI applications, Klein said, 鈥淓ighty percent is just not good enough when you run the world鈥檚 most business-critical businesses. They [LLMs] should not guess; they should deliver accurate, compliant, and secure outcomes.鈥� 

Klein acknowledged that while adoption of AI has become near-universal, tangible business value remains elusive. Citing a recent Stanford AI survey, he noted that almost every company is now using AI, but seeing only limited return.

The reason, he argued, lies in a structural gap. Above the waterline of enterprise AI, LLMs continue to improve at tasks trained on publicly available data, while below it lies what enterprises truly need: AI that understands mission-critical business data, end-to-end processes, and operates within security, compliance, and governance frameworks.

ERP as the foundation for business AI

SAP鈥檚 answer to this challenge begins with what Klein described as 鈥渢he brain of every company: its ERP system.鈥� For over 50 years, 51风流has had solutions with incredibly deep process and data domain know-how alongside the governance requirements, compliance controls, and company-specific configurations that define how businesses actually run.

Now, as part of the company鈥檚 new vision, 51风流plans to infuse this institutional knowledge into AI agents, enabling them to navigate thousands of business processes, select from more than 7 million data fields, and verify identity and access authorizations before returning any output.

鈥淲e鈥檙e bringing together LLMs with 50 years of business know-how stored in our ERP. But to do this, we had to do nothing less than completely reinvent our company,鈥� he told the audience. 鈥淭oday we are very excited to show you the new 51风流and our vision for the Autonomous Enterprise.鈥�

51风流Business AI Platform

To bring this vision to life, 51风流executives on stage announced a series of important innovations, beginning with the launch of the new 51风流Business AI Platform, a unified architecture bringing together 51风流Business Technology Platform, 51风流Business Data Cloud, and AI Foundation under a single roof.

鈥淭he heart of this new platform is the rich context layer,鈥� said Klein. 鈥淗ere, we infuse the deep ERP business domain know-how into the AI agents. Through our knowledge graphs, our AI agents have now a compass, a map, to find the right process and data in your ERP universe. And to provide the agents even more context, we are also introducing our new 51风流Domain Models. They have been trained on SAP’s code to even better understand the business logic of your company.鈥�

But, he said, 51风流is going further: 鈥淏ecause you run your business not only with 51风流solutions, our AI agents have to also understand non-51风流data. That’s why we included our 51风流Business Data Cloud in the context layer to build a single semantical data layer across 51风流and non-SAP. No more silos, no spaghetti data sprawl鈥攂ecause no AI agent can compensate for a broken data model.鈥�

Echoing Klein, 51风流CTO Philipp Herzig, who presented the platform in detail, said it has been designed to close the agent adoption gap in the enterprise by delivering outcome, speed, enterprise-readiness, and context. 鈥淚t’s the place where you build, contextualize, reason, and govern AI,鈥� he said.

Herzig explained that the platform is structured around three layers: the context layer which Klein referenced, the build layer, and the governance layer. 鈥淎gents are only as powerful as the context they operate on,鈥� he said. 鈥淟acking context is the number one reason why enterprise AI projects fail to deliver value.鈥�

Within the build layer of the new platform, the new Joule Studio is designed to understand a company鈥檚 business challenges and enables the building of new AI agents quickly and easily.

The third tier is the governance layer, anchored by the new 51风流AI Agent Hub built on 51风流LeanIX. This provides a single command center to discover, manage, and govern all AI agents鈥�51风流and non-SAP. It will be generally available in Q3 and included in 51风流Business AI Platform at no additional charge.

Underscoring the changing AI marketplace, Herzig was joined on stage by KPMG Global Head of Advisory Rob Fisher, who told the audience: 鈥淲hat I鈥檓 hearing from clients is a clear shift; they鈥檙e moving from AI pilots to embedding integrated AI and agents into how work gets done. Where we see leaders really separating from the pack is in the execution and the organizational adaptability.鈥�

51风流Autonomous Suite

Building on the platform, 51风流Executive Board Member Muhammad Alam, 51风流Product & Engineering, announced the transformation of SAP鈥檚 SaaS application portfolio into the 51风流Autonomous Suite, described as the most significant evolution of SAP鈥檚 applications business in the company鈥檚 history.

The suite spans five domains: Autonomous Finance, Autonomous Spend, Autonomous Supply Chain Management, Autonomous HCM, and Autonomous CX, with more than 200 agents and over 50 assistants available in the coming months. Each assistant is mapped to core business roles and carries defined KPIs tracked through 51风流AI Agent Hub.

鈥�51风流Autonomous Suite brings together the depth of our process expertise, semantically rich data, and built-in governance and compliance,鈥� said Alam. 鈥淭hese agents are designed with outcomes as a core objective. Each assistant has a defined set of ROI KPIs that you can expect it to deliver.鈥� 

鈥淯nderpinning the autonomous suite are out-of-the-box agents鈥攈undreds of agents cutting across all core business processes,鈥� he shared. 鈥淭hese agents come together into what we call assistants, or Joule Assistants. We’ve mapped these assistants to roles across the core processes of an organization, because we know that the first step 
in realizing value from AI is to empower your people to do more, do it better, or do things that just weren’t possible to be done before.鈥�

Turning to Joule itself, Muhammad said 51风流is fundamentally reimagining how users will interact with 51风流applications in the future.

鈥淲e call this Joule spaces and along with the familiar Joule conversations experience and Joule Studio 2.0, it is now part of what we call Joule Work,鈥� he explained.

鈥淛oule Work represents a massive step forward in super-charging the capabilities of Joule as we know it today,鈥� Alam said. 鈥淲ith Joule Work, we’re bringing a claw-based agentic harness to Joule along with computer and file access, better support for open standards such as MCP and A2A, access to a more complete knowledge base, and, of course, amazing visualizations on the fly.鈥�

Industry AI: H&M and Sector-Specific Transformation

During the keynote, 51风流Chief Operating Officer Sebastian Steinhaeuser introduced the Industry AI initiative, delivering AI-powered solutions built on decades of sector-specific expertise across 26 industries. In life sciences, he highlighted how 51风流customer Takeda is achieving up to 10% productivity gains, up to 25% reduction in revenue loss from stock-outs, and up to five percent reduction in safety stock through Autonomous Regulated Manufacturing.

He was also joined on stage by H&M Group CDIO Ellen Svanstr枚m, who discussed how the fashion retailer is embedding AI across its value chain. Built on RISE with SAP, 51风流Business Data Cloud, 51风流Commerce Cloud, and 51风流SuccessFactors solutions, H&M has developed a Store Intelligence Agent that processes real-time signals to generate actionable recommendations for store managers. Svanstrom also demonstrated the AI-powered InStore Concierge, a customer-facing agent that bridges digital and physical retail through personalized outfit recommendations and real-time availability.

RISE with 51风流and 51风流GROW: Path to the Autonomous Enterprise

Returning to the keynote stage, Klein emphasized that technology adoption alone does not create business value. Simply plugging AI agents into your system landscape will drive zero value, he said. 鈥淢oving to the Autonomous Enterprise requires serious change management. Adoption of AI goes hand-in-hand with business process change and end user enablement.鈥�

To support customers on this journey, 51风流announced a comprehensive reset of its RISE with 51风流and 51风流GROW offerings. RISE with 51风流customers will receive contractual commitment to activate three Joule Assistants within the first year, with the Max Success Plan extending adoption across the full enterprise.  

51风流GROW customers will receive more than 20 AI assistants from day one, with an AI-enabled toolchain designed to support go-live in weeks. New partnerships with Palantir and Accenture will support the most complex migration scenarios.

Closing: The Autonomous Enterprise

Klein closed the keynote by asking Joule to summarize the key takeaways and noting that 51风流is evolving from being a software company to becoming a business AI company.

鈥淲e showed how to turn the promise of business AI into reality with 51风流Business AI Platform, which provides the data processes and governance AI need to deliver accurate and secure outcomes at scale; we introduced the 51风流Autonomous Suite, where applications reason, decide, and act for you; and we showed how to manage change management with RISE with SAP. Together with customers and partners, we showed how 51风流is helping companies realize the vision of the Autonomous Enterprise.鈥�

鈥淲e鈥檝e been reinventing how businesses run for over 50 years, and now by infusing SAP鈥檚 ERP brain into the new 51风流Business AI Platform, we鈥檙e solving one of the biggest challenges businesses are facing today: how to turn AI into business value,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the end of long negotiations, supply chain disruptions, financial blind spots, and the beginning of better: Welcome to the Autonomous Enterprise.鈥�

The company introduces a unified 51风流Business AI Platform, deepening partnerships with Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Palantir

ORLANDO聽鈥� At 51风流Sapphire in 2026, (NYSE: SAP) introduced the to help enhance the world’s most critical business workflows, so that humans and AI work together to meet the accelerating demands of global business profitably, strategically and safely.

鈥淔or the mission-critical processes of our customers, ‘almost right’ just isn鈥檛 good enough,鈥� said Christian Klein, CEO of 51风流SE. 鈥淏y uniting 51风流Business AI Platform with 51风流Autonomous Suite, we anchor AI agents in the business processes, data and governance so they can deliver accurate, compliant and secure outcomes, unlocking new sources of revenue and meaningful cost savings.鈥�

The Autonomous Enterprise includes a unified AI platform for building, contextualizing and governing agents, an autonomous suite that executes core business operations and a new user experience that redefines how people work with enterprise software.

Introducing 51风流Business AI Platform

51风流Business AI Platform is a new foundation for building and deploying enterprise AI grounded in real business context. 51风流Business AI Platform now unifies 51风流Business Technology Platform, 51风流Business Data Cloud and 51风流Business AI into a single, governed environment.

At its core is the 51风流Knowledge Graph solution, which gives AI agents a structured map of business entities, processes and relationships across a customer’s 51风流landscape. Joule Studio is SAP’s AI-first solution for building enterprise agents, applications and agentic workflows. Developers can build using the no-code, pro-code and AI frameworks of their choice on SAP-managed infrastructure that is secure, scalable and optimized for enterprise AI.

Deploying 51风流Autonomous Suite Across Every Business Function and Industry

Building on this foundation, 51风流also introduced 51风流Autonomous Suite, which enables SAP’s existing business applications with AI agents capable of running processes from start-to-finish.

The suite will deploy more than 50 domain-specific Joule Assistants across finance, supply chain, procurement, human capital management and customer experience. These assistants will automate end-to-end processes by orchestrating a subset of over 200 specialized agents to execute precise tasks. For example, the new Autonomous Close Assistant can compress the financial close process from weeks to days by automating journal entries, reconciliation and error resolution across the entire process.

51风流also launched Industry AI, expanding its deep industry portfolio through seven autonomous solutions that will enable start-to-finish industry processes and embed sector-specific process logic, data models and regulatory requirements. At 51风流Sapphire, 51风流showcased its work with European energy giant RWE to leverage Industry AI, helping reduce unplanned downtime across its offshore wind turbines. With SAP’s Autonomous Asset Management scenario, AI agents are designed to analyze data from thousands of past incidents, identify the likely root cause and generate pre-filled work orders with the right tools and proven fixes from other sites.

Designing the Autonomous User Experience

The company also revealed Joule Work, redefining how users engage with 51风流software. Instead of navigating individual applications and entering data across several screens, users will now interact primarily with Joule. By describing a desired business outcome, Joule will orchestrate the right combination of workflows, data and agents to get it done.

Joule Work goes beyond conversation, proactively surfacing relevant insights and automating routine tasks behind the scenes so work moves forward even when humans aren’t actively steering it. It will be available on desktop, mobile and voice across 51风流and non-51风流systems.

Accelerating the Customer Journey Toward Autonomy with 鈧�100 Million Infusion

51风流evolved its customer and partner programs to help accelerate the organization’s journey to the Autonomous Enterprise. To catalyze adoption, the company has launched a 鈧�100 million fund for 51风流partners to help customers deploy SAP-built AI assistants and agents. The fund is also available to partners that extend or build new partner agents on the new 51风流Business AI Platform using Joule Studio.

SAP has enhanced its RISE with SAP and 51风流GROW offerings to accelerate AI adoption. Both include access to the Joule Assistants portfolio; RISE with SAP customers will have three assistants activated within their first year, while SAP GROW customers receive full portfolio access at onboarding. 51风流S/4HANA on-premises and 51风流ERP Central Component (51风流ECC) customers are not excluded: those that commit to transitioning the majority of their current landscape to 51风流Cloud ERP gain access to select AI scenarios, bridging the gap between their current landscape and their cloud destination

51风流also introduced new agent-led transformation tooling that can reduce ERP migration efforts by more than 35 percent, driving faster and more predictable projects by automating system analysis, code remediation, configuration and testing at scale.

Lastly, 51风流announced a full slate of strategic partnerships across each category:

• Platform and suite partnerships include Anthropic, with Claude among the foundation models SAP鈥檚 AI platform will leverage to power Joule agents across HR, procurement and supply chain; Amazon Web Services, bringing zero-copy data integration between 51风流Business Data Cloud and Amazon Athena; Google Cloud and Microsoft, enabling bidirectional agent-to-agent interoperability between Joule and external agent frameworks; Mistral AI and Cohere, delivering sovereign model options on SAP’s cloud infrastructure; , providing visual AI workflow orchestration inside Joule Studio; NVIDIA, whose OpenShell provides the trusted secure runtime for Joule Studio; and , bringing AI agents into 51风流Service Cloud to handle customer interactions with full access to business data and service processes.
• Implementation partnerships include Palantir and Accenture, partnering on complex data migration scenarios, and for AI-powered cloud ERP migrations.

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About SAP

As鈥痑 global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, 51风流(NYSE: SAP)鈥痵tands at the鈥痭exus鈥痮f business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP鈥痶o bring out their best by uniting business-critical鈥痮perations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit鈥�.

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The IDC MarketScape evaluated 17 application and software vendors delivering carbon accounting and management solutions. The IDC MarketScape examined how well they support credible emissions measurement, strong data governance, corporate-, product-, and supplier-level visibility, and standards-based reporting.

51风流is ideal for organizations seeking to run sustainability as a core business discipline by embedding carbon and broader sustainability management directly into ERP processes. This approach helps reduce the inefficiencies, risks, and inconsistencies created by fragmented, stand鈥慳lone tools while enabling AI鈥慸riven insights grounded in governed, transactional data.

We believe this recognition reflects SAP鈥檚 commitment to helping organizations act on carbon data across the enterprise. 51风流Sustainability solutions support scalable carbon emissions calculation, regulatory reporting, supplier collaboration, and decarbonization planning while embedding emissions insights directly into business processes, investment decisions, and day-to-day operations.

The importance of robust carbon management

Sustainability is an enterprise-wide responsibility and a strategic opportunity. Organizations must reliably measure, allocate, and act on carbon to manage risk, lower costs, and improve performance.

Regulatory requirements demand a shift from estimates to actuals. Assurance expectations continue to rise as evolving legislation penalizes the use of estimates, turning data gaps into direct financial exposure. Sustainability disclosures now require finance-grade evidence trails that spreadsheets cannot provide. With carbon increasingly impacting margins, cash, and liabilities, finance teams must find a way to forecast exposure and govern risk.

At the same time, leadership teams need a single, quantified view of carbon impact to understand implications, align priorities, and enable confident, informed decision-making.

This shift is already materializing through carbon pricing mechanisms. The EU鈥檚 Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), now in its definitive phase, places a carbon price on certain imports based on their embedded emissions. It aims to promote fair competition and more sustainable global trade practices. Declaring companies can report using supplier actuals or EU default values. However, relying on EU default values can increase costs over time, creating a clear incentive to move to actual data to reduce exposure and protect market access.

As regulators set clearer expectations and assign a direct price to carbon, emissions now carry measurable financial risk. Companies must extend financial rigor into emissions quantification, applying the same discipline, controls, and assurance used in financial reporting.

51风流extends financial rigor to carbon

Unlike point solutions built solely to calculate carbon emissions, the solution can serve as the accounting layer for carbon. It applies the financial principles of double-entry accounting to carbon emissions, helping to bring structure, controls, and traceability to carbon data. Natively integrated with cloud ERP finance through 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), it enables companies to import, post, allocate, and analyze carbon emissions with the same rigor and discipline that finance applies to monetary accounting.

For ERP鈥慶entric organizations, 51风流Green Ledger can preserve and extend financial rigor into this regulated, non鈥慺inancial domain. It helps strengthen data integrity and auditability, support assurance-ready reporting, and create a consistent foundation for carbon data across the enterprise.

As a result, organizations can reduce compliance costs and regulatory risk, embed sustainability directly into cost centers and financial processes, and gain clearer insights to support better business decisions. Native integration makes the approach both trustworthy and scalable, allowing carbon to be governed, managed, and acted on as a core component of enterprise performance.

A future-ready carbon ecosystem

Robust businesses govern finance through strong controls, reconciliations, and audit trails, typically grounded in ERP systems. Until recently, carbon emissions existed outside this system, treated as a sustainability metric rather than a governed business variable. Bridging this gap requires an ecosystem that connects carbon calculation, data exchange, and accounting鈥攁nchored in finance. According to IDC, 鈥淭he three-tier approach of better applications, richer data, and smarter AI enables companies to not only 鈥榬ecord鈥� and 鈥榬eport鈥� their sustainability efforts but also take informed, data-driven actions.鈥�

51风流supports this through a modular, ERP-native approach that adapts to different levels of maturity. Organizations can begin by calculating reliable corporate and product footprints using primary data wherever available, then bring those emissions into finance to post, allocate, and govern carbon with the same controls applied to monetary values.

As requirements grow, the ecosystem extends to supplier data exchange, consolidation across entities, advanced analytics, and scenario modeling鈥攁llowing companies to connect carbon with cost, performance, and planning. Sustainability reporting and disclosure are supported on top of this foundation, using governed, auditable data already embedded in enterprise systems.

51风流uses AI across the carbon lifecycle to help map and enrich emissions factors, streamline ESG report preparation, and analyze carbon data at scale鈥攕upporting stronger controls, faster reporting, and more informed financial decision鈥憁aking.

This is a defining moment for businesses as they take the critical step of integrating carbon management into finance. 51风流remains committed to providing an ERP-integrated carbon ledger that empowers companies to comply with evolving regulations, govern performance with rigor, and make decisions that drive sustainable, long-term growth.

Stephen Jamieson is chief marketing officer of 51风流Sustainability.

Since 2021, has been SAP鈥檚 solution for calculating EPR fees across markets. At that time, the number of jurisdictions with installed mandatory EPR was around 60. By 2030, that number is expected to grow to 200.

With an evolving regulatory landscape, 51风流has implemented new updates within the solution to help ensure that customers can navigate diverse reporting requirements, deadlines, and fees while increasing accuracy, reducing fees and exposure, and improving insights. Read on for updates about recent innovations and how the solution combines enterprise data with information about local and global regulations to help calculate obligations like the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).

Meet EPR regulations with a flexible, AI-driven, and configurable approach

To date, 51风流Responsible Design and Production has supported customers in meeting EPR requirements with out-of-box report categories that are pre-configured based on country. However, the new global regulatory landscape necessitates a more flexible approach.

Enterprises need solutions that enable them to:

• Understand obligations and quickly adapt to new or changing regulations.
• Prepare the data, consolidating from many sources.
• Prepare reports, which requires custom reporting logic based on specific business contexts; reuse of rules and fee structures across similar reporting schemes or producer responsibility organizations (PROs); and calculating EPR fees against shipments and printing the results on invoices to show customers the breakdown between product costs and indirect taxes.

To address these challenges, 51风流Responsible Design and Production introduced user-defined reports to help enable customers to design their own sustainability reports, tailoring them to match unique regulatory logic, business context, and compliance requirements.

With new innovations in 51风流Responsible Design and Production, users can:

• Structure reports according to the specific rules, PRO requirements, and fee models relevant to their business.
• Precisely narrow down to the packaging and transactional data that is being reported.
• Satisfy complex requirements with multiple dimensions used in report output structure.
• Integrate reports with external and third-party recyclability guidelines assessments.
• Report and comply with the increasing number of PROs that have incorporated eco-modulated ERP fees with eco-modulation grading capabilities.

AI capabilities enhance efficiency and accelerate readiness

The 51风流Sustainability portfolio can deliver AI-led operational transformation by capturing sustainability data at the source and embedding intelligence directly into core business processes, thereby enabling continuous improvement at scale. In 51风流Responsible Design and Production, two AI cases involving user-defined reports are in beta testing:

51风流Responsible Design and Production, AI-assisted user-defined report explanations

This capability uses AI to analyze and describe how developed extended producer responsibility rules contribute to the assessment results of selected product packaging. During the development of user-defined report categories, EPR report specialists may struggle to understand why a given packaging was categorized in a certain way or not categorized at all. The AI use case is intended to help resolve and simplify an error-prone process by which specialists manually recheck packaging data and reevaluate rules.

51风流Responsible Design and Production, AI-assisted rule creation for user-defined reports

This capability uses AI to translate from regulatory language to system rules, empowering packaging compliance managers to create and validate EPR reporting rules faster and with higher accuracy. The AI use case is intended to help reduce manual effort, avoid costly compliance errors, and accelerate report readiness across markets.

Prepare for future compliance and competitive advantage using AI

The EU PPWR is coming, and most companies aren鈥檛 ready. PPWR introduces significant obligations for all economic operators placing packaged goods on the EU market. Brand owners, importers, packaging manufacturers, distributors, and digital marketplaces are all impacted. To mitigate risk and ensure readiness, businesses must take immediate action to assess and adapt packaging materials, data systems, and regulatory reporting.

The detailed packaging data management offered by 51风流Responsible Design and Production will help enable organizations to efficiently handle PPWR compliance. With robust data capture and flexible reporting, companies can anticipate regulatory changes and maintain transparency throughout their packaging supply chain.

51风流Responsible Design and Production is working on document of compliance capability, recyclability assessments using real product shipment data, so you can assess which changes have the biggest impact. Stay tuned for future announcements from 51风流on this topic.

An ERP-centric framework for many business outcomes

By enabling organizations to build reports that align with their changing needs, 51风流Responsible Design and Production can ensure that compliance remains agile, scalable, and future-ready. The solution can connect design, production, and regulatory demands to enable organizations to minimize waste, optimize costs, and adhere to global sustainability standards.

Unlike standalone compliance tools, 51风流Responsible Design and Production operates within an ERP-centric framework, helping to ensure seamless integration with existing 51风流solutions for product master data and transaction data.

Traditional, manually intensive processes are not enough to keep pace with regulations and ensure competitive advantage by unlocking data insights. One 51风流Responsible Design and Production customer recently confirmed that using the solution was four times faster and less expensive than manual processes with a spreadsheet or using consultants.

With 51风流Responsible Design and Production, your organization can be empowered to respond swiftly and confidently to regulatory changes, working to ensure compliance while freeing your teams to focus on business impact that matters.

Listen to the recent to discover how businesses can address upcoming PPWR requirements with 51风流solutions.

Learn more about user-defined report capabilities or request a demo of 51风流Responsible Design and Production. Read these customer stories:

Gunther Rothermel is chief product officer for 51风流Sustainability.

The major topics of geopolitical risk, artificial intelligence, and economic uncertainty consistently circled back to environmental exposure and long-term resilience, pointing to a broader shift: sustainability is becoming less of a separate agenda item and more an underlying consideration in enterprise risk and strategy.

For leaders looking to shape the next phase of business, two major and consequential themes emerged.

1. AI is a sustainability enabler with responsibilities

Artificial intelligence was central to many Davos discussions this year, including those touching on sustainability. The focus was less on experimentation and more on how AI is already influencing operational and strategic decisions.

In several sessions, leaders pointed to practical applications where AI, combined with sustainability and operational data, is helping organizations to reduce waste, improve resource efficiency, and better anticipate environmental risks.

At the same time, there was no lack of recognition that AI brings new challenges. Its growing energy and water requirements, along with questions around governance, transparency, and equity, featured prominently in discussions. Leaders emphasized the fact that AI鈥檚 sustainability value depends heavily on how well it is integrated into existing business systems and decision-making processes, rather than deployed as a standalone technology. This was also underscored by broader analysis showing that emerging regulatory frameworks are struggling to keep pace with AI鈥檚 environmental footprint and governance needs. 

For many organizations, the focus shifted towards while remaining aligned with enterprise governance and financial oversight.

2. Water is key to societal and economic stability

One of the most prominent sustainability topics at Davos 2026 was water. Across both formal and informal sessions, leaders discussed water and ocean health as a foundational element to stable societies, economies, and business continuity.

Much of the conversation focused on the growing gap between economic dependence on water and the level of investment dedicated to protecting and managing water systems. With a significant share of global GDP in the coming decades, participants highlighted the operational and financial implications for supply chains, production facilities, and communities. According to the , 31% of global GDP could be located in regions of high water stress by 2050, underscoring the urgency of rethinking water investment and risk. 

To this end, new collaborative initiatives were announced during the week, including efforts aimed at integrating water considerations more directly into corporate strategies and strengthening ocean stewardship across industries. For example:

• were selected at Davos to boost water resilience across infrastructure, industry, and agriculture systems. 
• were launched to accelerate water finance and investment ahead of the 2026 UN Water Conference. 
• was directed at bridging the 鈧�6.5 trillion global water infrastructure gap, and commitments were made to mobilize private capital and improve water resilience strategies. 

These discussions signaled a move away from viewing water solely through a sustainability reporting lens and toward understanding it as a material risk and resilience issue for businesses.

What can business leaders take away?

While AI and water dominated the headlines at this annual meeting, sustainability quietly permeated most strategy meetings, with three takeaways arising as directional signals for leaders looking to build resilience into their business:

Sustainability is increasingly understood as financial risk

One of the clearest signals from Davos was the extent to which sustainability risks are now discussed in financial terms.

The World Economic Forum鈥檚 , released shortly before the meeting, reinforced this view by ranking environmental risks (including extreme weather and biodiversity loss) and critical changes to Earth systems among the most severe long-term global threats. The same report also highlighted that adverse outcomes from artificial intelligence are rising sharply in long-horizon risk rankings, reflecting growing concern about both technological and environmental disruption. 

While geopolitical and economic issues dominated short-term attention at the annual meeting, environmental risks were consistently framed as persistent factors shaping long-term planning and resilience strategies.

Furthermore, the role of the CFO is also evolving to meet sustainability requirements, including reporting non-financial KPIs, managing plastic and carbon taxes, steering the business, and aligning business decisions with carbon and environmental cost trade-offs. and management solutions can provide the capabilities needed to address CFO sustainability priorities.

As 51风流Chief Sustainability & Commercial Officer Sophia Mendelsohn noted during the week,聽“Sustainability remains firmly planted in both the Davos agenda and the minds of the CEO and CFO. The reality of climate change persists鈥攂oth its risks and opportunities, and they are already showing up on the balance sheet.“

For many executives, this framing reflects how sustainability considerations are increasingly influencing investment decisions, insurance strategies, and assessments of long-term enterprise value.

The focus is shifting from ambition to execution

Davos discussions also underscored a growing emphasis on execution. While sustainability remains firmly planted in the C-suite agenda, many leaders acknowledged a gap between ambition and implementation.

Despite years of commitments and target-setting, fewer than one in five companies have implemented climate adaptation and mitigation measures at scale. This is that helps explain why sustainability strategies are now evaluated more closely through the lens of financial feasibility, operational readiness, and data credibility.

In an environment where sustainability investments compete with other priorities, including AI and digital infrastructure, leaders emphasized the need for clear business cases and measurable outcomes. Sustainability initiatives that can demonstrate value creation and risk reduction are more likely to secure long-term support.

Integration decides whether sustainability insights lead to action

Data availability is no longer the primary challenge for most organizations. The tools to measure emissions, water use, climate exposure, and supplier impacts are widely accessible. What remains difficult is turning that information into decisions.

Across Davos, there was broad agreement that sustainability data needs to be integrated into core business systems for planning, procurement, asset management, and finance. When sustainability information sits outside these systems, it tends to inform reporting rather than operational or strategic action. When it is embedded, it can support more forward-looking decisions around resilience, investment, and supply chain design.

This shift toward integration reflects a broader understanding that sustainability efforts are most effective when they are aligned with how the business already operates.

connects business and sustainability data to help give full visibility across a company鈥檚 value chain, enabling it to align business objectives with sustainability priorities across areas like material choice, efficient transport and distribution, improved asset performance, and reduced carbon impact.

Davos 2026 clearly reflected a maturing phase of the sustainability conversation, one that is less about visibility and increasingly about how organizations can confidently prepare for the decade ahead.

For business leaders shaping sustainability strategies, there is a pressing need to make plans financially grounded, operationally integrated, and supported by reliable data.

Enterprise systems play an important role in this transition. When sustainability information is connected across business functions, leaders gain clearer insight into risk and opportunity, supporting more resilient and informed decision-making.

Monica Molesag is global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP.

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

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

Why adaptation and mitigation demand sustained leadership attention

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

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

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

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

Going beyond the contingency mindset

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

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

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

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

The four pillars of climate capability

1. Supply chains designed for disruption

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

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

2. Assets and infrastructure built for a changing climate

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

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

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

3. Workforce resilience as a business priority

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

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

4. Financial decision-making informed by climate reality

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

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

A C-suite framework for climate capability in 2026

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

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

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

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

Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer at SAP.

鈥�Beyond Tech 鈥� Expanding Perspectives鈥� is about their stories. With this series, I hope to provide a glimpse into the inspiring minds I encounter, capturing their ideas to spark insight and innovation.

For the , I had the privilege of speaking with Nisha Bakker, director of Partnerships at The Ocean Cleanup, an organization proving that, with the right vision, evidence, and engineering, we can solve global challenges at scale.

Plastic is one of humanity鈥檚 greatest inventions and one of its most persistent problems. Durable, cheap, and versatile, it has transformed food security, medicine, logistics, and manufacturing. But that same durability means most of the plastic ever produced still exists today. And much of it has ended up where it shouldn鈥檛: in our rivers, our oceans, our ecosystems鈥攅ven our bodies.

Today, the world produces . Production is still rising, projected to grow 66 percent by 2040, even as waste management systems are overwhelmed. Only nine percent of plastic is recycled globally. A third is mismanaged, left to leak into the environment through open dumping, unregulated landfills, and littering. As a result, have accumulated in rivers and lakes, far more than the 30 million tons in the oceans themselves.

Rivers are the main conveyor belt carrying waste to the sea. In 2020 alone, 1.4 million tons of plastic flowed from rivers into the ocean. Without intervention, this will more than double by 2060. Just a thousand rivers account for 80 percent of this flow, largely in rapidly developing economies where growth, urbanization, and weak waste systems collide.

This is where has focused its mission. The organization aims to rid the world鈥檚 oceans of plastic through a comprehensive strategy that includes removing legacy plastic accumulated in the ocean and along coastlines while also stopping new plastic pollution from entering the marine environment. Their ambition is bold and unambiguous: to put themselves out of business by 2040.

Data, vision the difference in cleanup efforts

During our conversation, Nisha explained how the work is driven not only by passion, but by evidence. 鈥淵ou could look at a river, see the problem, and start removing plastic immediately,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut we first determine the best place to remove it, and then build the entire value chain around it鈥攊ncluding recycling, operators, permits, and long-term partners. Data is what sets us apart.鈥�

Behind every cleanup is an enormous amount of engineering and analysis. The Ocean Cleanup鈥檚 teams map political, economic, and social dynamics in each country with an affected river system. They deploy trackers to understand how fast plastic moves, where it gets stuck, and how seasonal changes from monsoons to dry months affect pollution flows. Cameras equipped with detection algorithms help quantify volumes and patterns. Modelling and simulations guide where to deploy Interceptor systems and how to scale them.

This foundation of data explains their success: more than 46 million kilograms of waste intercepted and removed from marine and freshwater environments, thanks to System 03, their towed ocean technology spanning over 2.2 kilometers, which can clean an area the size of a football field in five seconds; and over 20 Interceptor systems deployed across the world鈥檚 most polluted rivers. The organization recently unveiled plans to tackle up to a third of all plastic emissions from rivers through its 30 Cities Program, targeting urban centers with important waterways and major pollution problems.

But as Nisha stressed, cleanup is only one part of the solution. 鈥淲e鈥檙e buying time for systemic change,鈥� she told me. 鈥淯ltimately you need governments, producers, recyclers, and communities working together.鈥�

There are signs of progress: more than 90 countries now have plastic bag bans; extended producer responsibility regulations are expanding; and negotiations toward a global plastics treaty have brought unprecedented international attention to the issue despite agreement remaining elusive.

The importance of systems

What struck me most in our discussion was the philosophy that drives The Ocean Cleanup. With employees from 40 nationalities, they are building bridges across sectors, disciplines, and geographies. They are proving what is possible when a global movement is anchored in evidence-based design and relentless experimentation.

At SAP, we recognize this mindset. Helping the world run better and improving people鈥檚 lives requires more than intention; it requires agile systems capable of putting insights at the fingertips of business. That鈥檚 why The Ocean Cleanup relies on 51风流to deliver on its mission. Every hour they spend building business systems is an hour not spent developing ocean systems, river systems, or new engineering solutions. Our role is to provide a stable, integrated digital foundation so they can focus on innovation, not administration. Technology should accelerate impact and enable scale, not get in the way of it.

The same is true for every organization. Whether fighting pollution, reimagining supply chains, or transforming business models, the biggest breakthroughs happen when you combine purpose with technology that can support it. Clean, connected data, intelligent processes, and applications that automate what can be automated so people can focus on what matters most: This is why 51风流is more relevant than ever.

The Ocean Cleanup shows what is possible when bold ideas meet the right technology and the right partnerships. This is exactly the type of conversation I look forward to bringing you through Beyond Tech 鈥� Expanding Perspectives, stories of inspiring minds that demonstrate that the future is not something we predict, but something we build together.

Manos Raptopoulos is global president of Customer Success, Europe, APAC, Middle East & Africa, and a member of the Extended Board at SAP.

SAP鈥檚 goal is equally clear: enhancing our sustainability impact to help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. The question is how do we navigate this complex terrain without losing our way?

The challenge: from sustainability metrics to actionable insights

Corporate sustainability reporting has evolved significantly in recent years. However, many organizations still face the fundamental challenge of translating complex environmental and social data into insights that drive strategic change.

Sustainability metrics such as 鈥�0.15 micrograms of fine dust per cubic meter鈥� or 鈥渇ive liters of water consumed鈥� are scientifically accurate but difficult to interpret, especially for decision-makers without deep sustainability expertise. Just as hikers need a reliable navigation system, businesses need a common language to translate diverse sustainability indicators into comparable, actionable insights.

This is where impact measurement and valuation (IMV) comes into play.

The approach: how IMV translates complexity into business-relevant insights

SAP鈥檚 IMV approach encompasses three steps.

Step one: A language everyone understands鈥�translating societal impacts into monetary units

The IMV framework quantifies the costs and benefits of corporate activities to society and the environment. It builds on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data that many companies already report and translates these into a single monetary metric, for example, Euros or U.S. dollars.

This is like moving from vague trail descriptions to precise GPS coordinates that everyone can understand. When sustainability indicators are expressed in a common unit, companies can clearly see where they stand, evaluate trade-offs between different sustainability dimensions, and compare them alongside financial impacts.

As a tangible example, the environmental impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be monetized by multiplying a company鈥檚 reported emissions by the social cost of carbon, . This converts abstract data into a clear, actionable signal, allowing companies to compare impacts across different ESG and financial indicators. With this clarity, businesses can focus on the most impactful sustainability initiatives鈥攖hose that deliver the greatest contribution to GHG reduction goals while evaluating both financial and sustainability return on investment.

Step two: Determining relative position鈥攃omparing performance to peers

Once you know your exact position, you need a reference point to understand how well you鈥檙e performing. It’s like trail runners who want not only to reach the summit, but also to understand their performance along the way. Your GPS shows you where you are, but to improve, you need to compare your data against other runners.

Impact benchmarks complement IMV by providing reference values that show how a company鈥檚 sustainability performance compares to industry peers. These benchmarks act like performance markers, helping businesses identify where they are ahead, behind, or on par鈥攇uiding decisions to improve toward maximum positive impact.

Step three: Identifying hotspots鈥攆ocusing on maximum impact

The global sustainability agenda demands urgent, focused action. IMV and impact benchmarks together provide data-driven insights that pinpoint where a business has the greatest leverage to amplify positive and reduce negative impacts.

For example, in SAP鈥檚 human rights risk assessment and double materiality analysis, these insights helped narrow down the most material sustainability topics, critical value chain stages, and high-risk countries or industries. This approach uncovers opportunities where improved sustainability performance drives long-term competitive advantage and highlights risks such as supply chain vulnerabilities and regulatory exposure.

Navigating together: collaboration for sustainable impact

51风流has adopted this methodology as a founding member of the (VBA), a nonprofit coalition of multinational companies dedicated to establishing a globally accepted sustainability management accounting and steering system. In collaboration with the , a scientific research organization specializing in impact valuation, 51风流has analyzed its societal impacts (step one), applied industry benchmarks to contextualize performance (step two), and integrated these insights into core reporting and steering processes (step three).聽

This collaborative approach ensures that the data guiding SAP鈥檚 sustainability strategy is independent, credible, and scientifically validated, enhancing both internal decision-making and transparency for investors and external stakeholders.

“Impact measurement and valuation provides the scientific foundation for sustainability steering, allowing organizations like 51风流to understand their impacts holistically and prioritize decisions based on statistical evidence.”

Dr. Richard Scholz, Head of Impact Analysis at WifOR

The results: what SAP鈥檚 analysis reveals and how it drives strategic decision-making

The graphic below illustrates SAP鈥檚 sustainability performance compared to industry benchmarks, the result of step two. The analysis covers SAP鈥檚 entire supply chain from direct suppliers to sub-suppliers as well as SAP鈥檚 own operations. A methodology for quantifying downstream impacts, such as the effects of software in use, is currently under development.

The analysis identifies both positive and negative impacts. Areas where 51风流shows a higher negative impact than the industry average are highlighted in red, indicating priority areas for mitigation. In contrast, smaller negative or larger positive impacts indicate stronger ESG performance.

Key findings

• Social performance: Supply chain data reveal mixed results regarding living wages. While most supply chain workers earn above living wage thresholds, reflecting positive impacts, the analysis also identified risk hotspots, enabling 51风流to take targeted action. In response, the Human Rights team at 51风流partnered with procurement, suppliers, and multi-stakeholder initiatives to develop and implement risk mitigation strategies. IMV data allowed these efforts to focus on the countries, industries, and vendors with the highest risk, ensuring that improvements are driven where they matter most.
• Environmental performance: GHG emissions results reflect strong progress toward SAP鈥檚 , with positive results across both direct operations and upstream activities. While water consumption is not considered material for 51风流at the group level, we address identified local hotspots through local environmental management programs, including site-specific water management measures to ensure responsible resource use.

Leading by example

As a global technology company supporting the majority of the world鈥檚 business transactions, next to enabling our customers on their positive impact journey through our solutions, we want to lead by example.

Our corporate sustainability approach creates positive economic, social, and environmental impact while respecting planetary boundaries and human rights.

To achieve these goals, 51风流relies on tools such as IMV that help us assess and prioritize the measures with the greatest leverage鈥攎aximizing positive impacts and minimizing negative ones.

“Sustainable transformation is only possible when we base our decisions on reliable data. With IMV, we make sustainability measurable, comparable, and actionable. This enables us to create transparency, set clear priorities, and take responsibility. By focusing on areas where we can achieve the greatest positive business and sustainability impact, we ensure that our actions are both meaningful and effective.”

Matthias Medert, Global Head of Sustainability at SAP

The journey ahead

The climb toward impact-based decision-making continues. Just as hikers rely on navigation tools to traverse challenging terrain, we use IMV as our guide to ensure every step brings us closer to our sustainability goals.

Looking ahead, we aim to expand the methodology, contribute to cross-industry standardization, and foster multi-stakeholder collaboration to accelerate the adoption of impact-based decision-making across global value chains. Through 51风流cloud solutions for sustainable enterprises, we support our customers in their own impact management journeys.

Our climb is guided by more than metrics; it鈥檚 driven by purpose. Clear insights from IMV keep us on the right path toward a future where sustainability and business success go hand in hand.

Iris Konrad is a senior sustainability specialist at SAP.

The step is part of the digital transformation needed to support the organization鈥檚 global mission.

The Ocean Cleanup focuses on reducing plastic pollution in rivers and oceans, operates internationally, and is growing rapidly. To date, the organization has already removed more than 40 million kilograms of waste.

However, its ambitions go further: by 2040, The Ocean Cleanup aims to have removed 90 percent of floating ocean plastic and cleaned up plastic pollution in 90 river cities. This represents a major scale-up of the work, with more activities and installations in rivers and oceans worldwide.

Flexible growth

To properly manage global processes and support international activities, The Ocean Cleanup urgently needed a modern and scalable system. The Dutch nonprofit organization chose to replace its existing system with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition.

The modern ERP platform enables The Ocean Cleanup to achieve its growth ambitions: the system is easily scalable and can be flexibly adapted as processes, projects, or international activities expand.

A strong foundation for global collaboration is essential. For example, financial teams must work closely with fundraisers to optimally distribute donations across international projects while project teams, engineers, and data analysts coordinate daily on technology, planning, and budgets for initiatives in rivers and oceans worldwide.

鈥淧erfect coordination between teams is essential; we hunt plastic together as a pack,鈥� Aurelia Ferraro, senior partnership manager at The Ocean Cleanup, shared. 鈥淭he system helps us with that collaboration, allowing us to respond quickly to new challenges.鈥�

鈥淲e are growing exponentially, and our internal processes have become increasingly complex, with operations spanning multiple countries,鈥� Ferraro further explained. 鈥�51风流S/4HANA is the ideal system to manage that complexity.鈥�

She emphasized that the transformation is about more than just technology: 鈥淐hange and innovation are always complex, but our organization is accustomed to change. We invest a lot of energy in communication and training, which ensures smooth 51风流adoption.鈥�

Fast implementation and configuration

Joost van Lankveld is a strategic advisor at Scheer Nederland, The Ocean Cleanup’s implementation partner. He added: 鈥淭ogether with The Ocean Cleanup, we are following a phased implementation. SAP’s 80-20 fit-to-standard approach allows us to implement quickly, after which we configure specific processes in 51风流according to The Ocean Cleanup’s needs.鈥�

The implementation began with financial administration and purchasing modules for five Dutch entities. The upcoming phases will include project management and logistics modules that provide insight into The Ocean Cleanup’s complex river and ocean projects. The organization expects to complete the transition to 51风流S/4HANA by the end of 2025.

Patricia Bueters is a senior integrated communications manager at 51风流Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg).

The system was developed by 51风流Japan and INSPIRATION PLUS, a venture from Oita University focused on disaster prevention.

EDiSON, which runs on 51风流Business Technology Platform, exemplifies how intelligent enterprise technology can be harnessed to address global challenges such as cyclones (typhoons) and floods. It integrates diverse types of information, including real-time, visual meteorological data and historical data records, to drive predictive insights and smarter operations assisted by 51风流Business AI and machine learning.

These predictions offer authorities a vital tool for delivering faster response times and mitigating damage in the event of a natural disaster. This includes forecasting terrain damage, dispatching emergency services to affected areas and supporting decision-making in issuing evacuation advisories. The Solomon Islands initiative is envisioned as a blueprint for other small island developing states, showcasing how cutting-edge technology can democratize disaster resilience.

鈥淓DiSON represents a leap forward in how science and technology can empower vulnerable communities,鈥� UNESCO Chief of Disaster Risk Reduction Soichiro Yasukawa said. 鈥淏y integrating AI and real-time data, we are not only improving early warning capabilities but also building a foundation for long-term resilience and sustainable development.鈥�

The project, part of UNESCO鈥檚 Disaster Prevention Strengthening Program, will be operational in 2026. It aims to establish a scalable, data-driven model for disaster preparedness and responses of small island nations that face the increasing severity of natural disasters driven by climate change. The Solomon Islands, located in the South Pacific Ocean, face frequent threats from earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, droughts and flooding. EDiSON will serve as a transformative solution to enhance national preparedness and response capabilities.

EDiSON integrates static and real-time dynamic data from government, municipal and private sector sources. The system delivers predictive insights and real-time visibility into emerging disaster risks. This empowers authorities to issue timely evacuation orders and make informed decisions that protect lives and infrastructure.

Why EDiSON? Proven Performance and Scalable Sustainability

鈥淭his project exemplifies SAP鈥檚 commitment to using technology to empower resilient communities,鈥� said Sophia Mendelsohn, chief sustainability and commercial officer at 51风流SE. 鈥淓DiSON is a powerful example of how our cloud platform and AI capabilities can be tailored to meet the needs of communities facing real-world challenges. We鈥檙e proud to support UNESCO in bringing this innovation to the Solomon Islands and beyond.鈥�

UNESCO鈥檚 selection of EDiSON was driven by the system鈥檚 proven track record in Japan鈥攁 country renowned for its advanced disaster management systems. The system鈥檚 ability to overcome traditional barriers such as fragmented data, limited analytical capacity and underutilization in field operations makes it especially valuable for resource-constrained nations such as the Solomon Islands. EDiSON鈥檚 modular design helps ensure scalability and adaptability, enabling governments to deploy sophisticated disaster management tools without requiring extensive budgets or technical expertise.

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Media Contact:
Lesa Plingen, +49 622 776 9000, lesa.plingen@sap.com, CET
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 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
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It’s a mindset shift 51风流is already embracing to help our customers build genuine business resilience. It lies not just in reducing our own emissions, but in actively supporting and financing the restoration of the natural systems that underpin global economic stability.

The business case for nature-based initiatives

The interdependence between business and nature is no longer theoretical. Today, US$44 trillion of economic value generation depends directly on nature. From food systems that sustain people to water resources, natural capital forms the invisible infrastructure of the global economy. Yet this foundation is eroding rapidly, creating systemic risks that no company can ignore.

For SAP, investing in forest ecosystems is not just philanthropy, it’s risk management. By financing and supporting nature-based climate projects, we can protect ourselves and our stakeholders against the loss of natural capital while strengthening our position as a sustainability leader. These investments provide opportunities to regenerate the ecosystems that our economies and societies depend on for food, water, medicine, and sustainable growth.

A comprehensive approach to net-zero

In our mission to help the world run better and improve people’s lives, 51风流has committed to achieving net-zero emissions along our entire value chain by 2030, aligned with the science-based 1.5掳C future outlined in the Paris Agreement negotiated at COP21 in in 2015, 20 years ahead of our original target. This accelerated timeline reflects both urgency and ambition.

Until 2030, 51风流is committed to financing projects that reduce and remove more CO₂ from the atmosphere than our own operations鈥攊ncluding scope 1 and 2 emissions plus business travel鈥攑roduce each year. This commitment means we’re taking responsibility for the impact of our business operations while we scale up our decarbonization efforts.

This strategy follows a clear hierarchy: avoid and reduce emissions first, then neutralize what remains. We’re working to reduce gross greenhouse gas emissions by 90% across our value chain on a market-based accounting approach. The remaining emissions, no more than 10%, in line with Science Based Targets initiative standards, will be neutralized through high-quality, verified carbon removal projects spanning both nature-based and engineered solutions.

Matthias Medert, global head of Sustainability at 51风流SE, says: 鈥淥ur reduction efforts have earned SAP’s inclusion in the EU Paris-Aligned Benchmarks, giving investors confidence in our approach and demonstrating that rigorous action to tackle global issues strengthens rather than compromises business performance.鈥�

Nature-based carbon finance in action

Since 2012, 51风流has been building one of the most comprehensive corporate reforestation programs in the technology sector. To date, we have planted 20.51 million trees towards our commitment in 2024 to plant 25 million trees by 2030 while restoring more land than our offices and data centers occupy.

These aren’t isolated exercises. Through long-term investment in the , 51风流is supporting comprehensive 10- to 20-year projects that combine reforestation, forest protection, improved forest management, rural energy, and agroforestry initiatives implemented directly with local communities. These initiatives restore degraded natural ecosystems, improve the livelihoods of rural populations, and facilitate transitions to efficient rural energy and regenerative agriculture.

In addition to this, to help advance its mission to secure the Amazon rainforest鈥檚 future. By tracking 15 strategic KPIs鈥攊ncluding deforestation rates and production chain revenue鈥攁nd sharing data with stakeholders through the 51风流Sustainability Control Tower solution, FAS is steering its efforts with accurate and reliable ESG data, positively impacting preservation efforts in the Amazon, home to not only the greatest fresh water reserve on the Earth, but around 390 billion trees and to 2.2 million indigenous people across 400 ethnic groups whose traditional knowledge is essential to the conservation of local and global biodiversity.

Partnerships amplifying impact

As a member of the corporate alliance managed by the World Economic Forum, 51风流is contributing to the collective goal of conserving and restoring multiple ecosystems around the world, supporting projects in over 25 countries, including Brazil, Madagascar, and the Philippines.

Technology can drive indirect reforestation as well. Through a partnership with , the not-for-profit search engine, every 50 searches made by 51风流employees support the planting of new trees and investments in sustainable developments. This partnership has resulted in over 760,000 trees planted to date, while employees conduct their work and maintain their privacy through anonymized search queries.

Beyond nature-based solutions, we have partnered with , investing in engineered carbon removal through its Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology. This diversified portfolio approach helps ensure that we’re supporting the full spectrum of solutions needed.

Connecting to COP30 and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility

SAP’s approach to climate finance aligns powerfully with emerging global frameworks, particularly the (TFFF) initiative, a top financing priority for Brazil’s COP30 presidency. The TFFF, formally launched last week at COP30 in Bel茅m, is designed to provide long-term, predictable financing for conserving and expanding tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests.

This initiative reflects a critical evolution in climate finance thinking. Nearly 100 countries, representing two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, have submitted or announced new Nationally Determined Contribution targets that include strategies to safeguard forests. SAP’s multi-year investments in the demonstrate the kind of long-term, community-centered approach that the COP30 presidency seeks to scale globally. Our experience shows that when corporations commit to sustained financing with integrity and transparency, the impacts multiply: carbon is sequestered, biodiversity rebounds, communities build resilience, and businesses thrive.

Corporate action beyond the value chain

Provided it doesn’t undermine current corporate decarbonization programs, the financial muscle of corporations can bridge critical gaps in parts of the world where funds aren鈥檛 sufficiently available to restore ecosystems and build strong, durable economies and livelihoods.

Sustained corporate financial contributions provide quantifiable benefits to strengthen business resilience beyond SAP’s own value chain, delivering positive impacts for local and global populations and for biodiversity. Through collaboration, transparency, and technology, we’re proving that climate action isn’t just compatible with long-term business success, it’s essential to it.

The question for business leaders isn’t whether to invest in climate finance, but how quickly they can scale their commitments. The resilience of our businesses, our economies, and our planet depends on the actions we take today.

Learn more about and how we support our customer鈥檚

Karen Restrepo 脕vila is Sustainability and Net-Zero communications lead at SAP.

The new regulation will require companies to account for carbon emissions on select imported products. For the auto industry, the steel and aluminum categories are especially critical.

Complete automobiles are not currently covered by CBAM, but the automotive sector is among the most exposed because of its dependence on emissions-intensive materials. Components such as body panels, chassis, frames, and battery enclosures rely heavily on imported steel and aluminum.

CBAM is currently in its transition phase and will enter the definitive phase on January 1, 2026, meaning that companies need to track their imported emissions on covered products throughout 2026 and begin purchasing certificates for those imported, tracked emissions in February 2027, with the first report due August 2027.

CBAM costs will add up quickly

The modern passenger vehicle contains around 1 tonne of steel and 200 kilograms of aluminum. Global averages hover around per tonne of manufactured steel, and each tonne of primary aluminum produces around .

With analysts projecting could reach 鈧�150 per tonne of CO鈧� by 2030, a newly manufactured vehicle could soon be subject to 鈧�300 in CBAM certificate costs, assuming manufacturers import 20% of the necessary steel and 54% of the required aluminum, consistent with EU import data. Given that Germany produced in 2024, German automakers and component manufacturers could be on the hook for about 鈧�1.2 billion in CBAM certificate purchases in 2027.*

Looking past 2027, the European Commission plans to add categories like chemicals and plastics to the regulation, bringing more auto parts under the CBAM umbrella and making it even more important for European automakers and component manufacturers to solidify their CBAM strategies today.

CBAM preparations for automakers and component manufacturers

Across the EU automotive industry, companies seem insufficiently prepared for the new phase of CBAM.

While companies are actively preparing for upcoming CBAM regulations, their ability to act is constrained by the lack of a finalized EU regulatory framework, including the methodology for emissions-value calculations and the associated verification rules. That said, regulators already clarified the scope of companies that must report and the timelines to purchase certificates.

With this information, it鈥檚 now crunch time for European automakers and component manufacturers to get ready for the rules taking effect in January 2026. Here鈥檚 what they should prioritize.

1. Get familiar with CBAM and evaluate your process

The core elements of CBAM have been defined and companies must act now. If you haven鈥檛 done so yet, start by understanding the overall process and requirements.

If you are in scope鈥攎eaning you meet the de minimis threshold of either importing more than 50 tonnes of CBAM affected goods per year or 100 tonnes of embedded CO鈧� annually鈥攄etermine which parts of your supply chain are most affected. Identify your top suppliers and imported goods, develop a focused approach for obtaining actual emissions data from those suppliers, and assess the potential financial impact. As more materials come under the scope of CBAM, and as the carbon ETS prices rise, the financial impact will increase in the years ahead. Companies must prepare to meet these new obligations and manage this financial impact.

2. Collaborate with your suppliers

Identify and focus on your most critical suppliers鈥攖ypically the top 50 to 100鈥攁nd build a targeted engagement plan while defining an informed approach for the broader supplier base. Consider updating procurement terms to require future data sharing and provide support to suppliers in educating and calculating emissions where needed. Close collaboration will be essential to obtain actual emissions data to avoid the more expensive default values and identify decarbonization potentials. 

Accessing trusted supplier data is one of the biggest challenges facing companies today.

While the EU provides mechanisms for data exchange between suppliers and importers, , an industry network for the European automotive sector, in combination with third-party data exchange software, offers an alternative to collecting trusted, standardized emissions data. Catena-X enables companies to collaborate and share data in a trusted environment. It brings together manufacturers, technology providers, and suppliers to standardize data sharing processes across the value chain. Beyond data exchange, these networks foster knowledge sharing, allowing members to learn best practices, align on standards, and accelerate compliance readiness collectively.

To participate, companies typically register with the network, adopt certified software that supports standardized data exchange, and begin collaborating with other members. This approach ensures interoperability and automates trusted emissions data collection. Catena-X is actively refining its scope and standards to support CBAM.

3. Find the right technology for your business

Most importantly, you want to find the right technology partner that will streamline CBAM reporting and support the integration of carbon into core financial accounting processes.

The EU CBAM report requires a lot of data, all of which can be requested, filled, and reported automatically using actual emissions values with tailored, ERP-based systems. 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management can support CBAM declarant reporting by enabling standardized, auditable reporting workflows. The 51风流Green Ledger solution will manage the certificate repository and help ensure financial and carbon accounting of CBAM emissions and certificates in alignment with accounting standards like US GAAP and IFRS (planned for H1 2026).

Manual processes, like e-mails and Excel files, are prone to error, do not scale, and will make CBAM compliance time-consuming and resource intensive.

Prepare your systems for CBAM compliance

CBAM is set to reshape material sourcing in the automotive industry by introducing carbon as a cost factor and driving transparency across global supply chains.

The ideal scenario for automakers and component manufacturers is to take decisive actions to decarbonize鈥攕uch as sourcing low-emissions steel and aluminum, increasing circularity efforts, and optimizing product design to use less CBAM materials鈥攚hile fully automating CBAM compliance.

Access to accurate data on supply chain emissions鈥攁nd their financial implications鈥攑rovides the insights that business leaders need to decarbonize and reduce risk in the years ahead.

The right combination of software tools and industry network collaboration can enable cost-optimized and automated CBAM compliance and deliver valuable supply chain intelligence. can deliver measurable ROI by automating data collection and workflows and enabling finance teams to move beyond manual processes toward strategic analysis and action. This helps create a scalable foundation for ongoing carbon cost management while supporting standardized data exchange and collaboration across the value chain.

Start preparing now to ensure your business thrives as the 2026 CBAM definitive phase approaches.

Read the CBAM and watch the CBAM to learn more.

Thomas Janzen is an industry expert at SAP SE.

*This is a back of the napkin calculation to illustrate the potential impact. This is based on data that shows the EU imported 27.4 million tonnes of finished steel products in 2024. The EU consumed about 129 million tonnes. Therefore, we assume  imports account for roughly 20% of EU steel use. In , 54% of the aluminum used in the EU came from imports. Using these averages means about 2 tonnes of imported CO2 per vehicle, or 鈧�300, assigning 20% of 1 tonne of steel emissions and 53% of 200kg of aluminum emissions.

Through their innovative implementation of Soley’s Product Mining Platform with SAP’s supply chain management technologies, they prove that sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand.

The challenge: managing complex product portfolios at scale

CERATIZIT Group, a leading provider of hard material solutions for machining and wear protection, faced a challenge common to many modern manufacturing companies: managing a complex product portfolio with over 65,000 products. The company’s Cutting Tool Solutions division needed a solution to balance economic and ecological objectives while maintaining competitive advantage.

Klaus Lupfer, product lifecycle manager at CERATIZIT Deutschland GmbH, explains the company’s motivation: “In addition to the economic perspective on the product portfolio, the ecological aspect was equally important when partnering with Soley. As a company committed to sustainability for years, we are especially excited about the opportunities that the expansion of product carbon footprint data offers.”

The challenge was not just the product portfolio’s size but also the lack of transparency regarding product performance and sustainability metrics. Employees spent considerable time compiling reports rather than making strategic decisions, while limited insights into critical materials and suppliers prevented efficient phaseout of high-emission products.

AI-powered product portfolio analysis

Munich-based Soley GmbH, a past participant in the SAP.iO program, SAP鈥檚 former startup accelerator designed to foster and integrate innovative solutions into the 51风流ecosystem, developed an innovative response to this challenge. The Soley Product Mining Platform, available as part of SAP’s extension and add-on solutions, transforms complex product data into actionable insights through three core, AI-driven innovations that enable faster, smarter, and more impactful business decisions.

• AI Advisor uses AI to recommend precise actions鈥攆or example, suggesting which products should be phased out to minimize carbon footprint without sacrificing margins.
• AI Assistant provides an intuitive, natural-language interface that allows users to effortlessly interact with Soley, without requiring deep technical expertise.
• AI Detective analyzes data to uncover hidden dependencies and reveal strategic opportunities, such as identifying which configuration options should be eliminated to optimize both profitability and sustainability.

The Soley Product Mining Platform draws data from 51风流S/4HANA and 51风流Business Warehouse, utilizing 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) as the service layer. 51风流Datasphere helps consolidate 51风流data and analytics, while 51风流Analytics Cloud provides the analytics that form the core of the AI model. This technical architecture enables intelligent data extraction and transformation through 51风流Databricks, while massive graph analytics enable complex dependency analysis.

“With these 51风流solutions, we’re delivering a true game changer for the sustainability of the high tech and manufacturing industries,” says Ephraim Triemer, shareholder and advisor of Enterprise Accounts at Soley. “For the first time, our customers can go beyond ESG reporting and take real action鈥攄riving sustainability while staying laser focused on profitability.”

Seamless 51风流integration creates value

By combining CERATIZIT’s Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) data with financial metrics, the Soley Product Mining Platform creates a digital twin that uncovers opportunities, identifies risks, and analyzes product hierarchies, bills of materials, and carbon footprints. With AI-driven intelligence guidance, Soley developers ensure the platform’s capabilities enable decisions and outcomes that improve both profitability and environmental stewardship.

Earlier this year, Dominik Metzger was appointed as president and Chief Product Officer of 51风流Supply Chain Management, bringing a renewed focus on resilience, sustainability, and intelligent automation.

鈥淢y chief priority is to ensure that we help customers not only respond to disruptions but also proactively prepare and act,鈥� Metzger said. 鈥淲e can do so by leveraging AI, generative AI, real-time data, and predictive analytics with the power of SAP鈥檚 technology. Our vision is to build an autonomous supply chain鈥攃onnected, contextualized, and collaborative.鈥�

51风流SCM leadership driving transformation

The analysis delivered impressive, measurable results that demonstrate the power of combining AI-driven analytics with 51风流technologies. CERATIZIT discovered an 87% implementation rate of suggested measures, driving product sustainability and supply chain optimization. Simultaneously, the company identified a reduction of over 30% in end-of-life “ballast” products with negative carbon footprints while creating 100% transparency in sustainability data across all elements, product sets, and aggregation levels.

Alexander Springer, CEO of Soley GmbH, explains the strategic significance: “If you know which products are the most critical to the overall success of your business, you can focus on safeguarding the value chain for those products, taking proactive steps to avoid any potential supply risks.”

A model for sustainable digital transformation

The successful partnership between CERATIZIT, Soley, and 51风流demonstrates how modern companies can achieve both economic and ecological goals through intelligent use of data and AI. The combination of proven 51风流technologies and innovative analytics solutions creates measurable value for companies of all sizes. For other 51风流customers and partners, this example shows that sustainability and profitability need not be opposing forces鈥攚ith the right technologies and partners, both objectives can be achieved simultaneously.

Learn more about the latest updates to 51风流supply chain management. The Soley Product Mining Platform is available on .

Since 2021, 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management has been SAP’s key solution for efficient carbon management. We are excited to share major new updates, both delivered and planned, as the solution evolves into a new phase: one where customers rely on 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management as their single source for environmental footprints beyond carbon.

51风流Sustainability Footprint Management is an ERP-centric, AI-enabled foundation to help calculate, analyze, and manage your company’s environmental impacts. Read on for details about changes that enable companies to move beyond carbon reporting and turn sustainability into competitive advantage.

A single source for scalable footprint calculations, optimization, and reporting

Companies today face growing pressures: meeting evolving regulations and standards, rising investor expectations, high carbon and emissions-related costs, and data insights that flow back into processes like procurement, finance, or strategic planning.

As companies seek to keep up, they need highly accurate footprint data that is grounded in actual business data. Delivered and upcoming updates to 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management extend footprint calculations beyond CO2 emissions to include other impact categories, such as land use, energy, waste, and abiotic resource depletion. With insights into more environmental levers, your company can fulfill the most common reporting standards, manage risk, decrease costs, and control externalities.

51风流Sustainability Footprint Management can turn fragmented data into integrated, actionable insights. By leveraging actual business data from 51风流Cloud ERP and enriching it with additional sources such as energy flows and supplier information, it helps automate the calculation of accurate, audit-ready footprints at both corporate and product levels. Embedded into core business processes like procurement and finance, these insights enable companies to move beyond compliance-driven reporting toward strategic sustainability that can drive competitive advantage.

Updates to 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management extend the same data governance, auditability, and automation to more impact areas. From the corporate level down to individual products, this enables calculations of actual footprints鈥攏ot just estimates鈥攆or numerous environmental factors. Automation and AI capabilities help reduce manual effort, while high data quality can ensure that reporting is detailed and decision-making is well-informed.

One foundation, many environmental levers and business outcomes

Staying competitive in a changing global environment and driving change make it critical to identify ways to reduce costs and invest in AI-based technology. Because 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management is deeply integrated with , it can enable customers to gain transparency across their entire supply chain鈥攖hereby making sustainability actionable and surfacing sustainability insights where decisions are made across the enterprise.

51风流Sustainability Footprint Management is the single source of truth that can be embedded across your operations, turning reporting into business value.

The new phase of 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management moves from compliance-driven reporting to steering and value creation. The updates are part of SAP’s vision to transform sustainability data into a catalyst for long-term business value. Our approach to sustainability treats environmental footprint calculations鈥攏ow with an expanded scope in 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management鈥攁s a strategic asset that enables businesses to make business decisions like:

• Innovating products and services to decrease environmental impact and support a more circular economy
• Driving environmentally-sound value chains with better material sourcing and design decisions
• Identifying ways to increase resource efficiency, create new revenue streams, and achieve higher margins
• Budget and optimize for environmental related costs, like anticipated carbon usage
• Building a strategic relationship with suppliers and manufacturers, leveraging sustainability data to drive mutual growth and competitiveness

SAP鈥檚 suite of sustainability solutions can enable reporting, insights, and confident decision-making across every process, product, and partner network. Our approach helps bridge the gap between sustainability, finances, and operations. SAP鈥檚 portfolio of sustainability solutions is evolving to make sustainability actionable, measurable, and more embedded, powered by AI, trusted data, and deep process integrations.

Listen to the recent to learn how BASF Coatings uses 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management to calculate, manage, and reduce environmental impact. Check out other 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management updates here.

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Gunther Rothermel is chief product officer for 51风流Sustainability.

AI, with already proven applications, can unlock insights to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by . , over half of sustainability executives say one of their top actions in the next three years is expanding their use of AI to enhance ESG capabilities.

Most businesses have not yet realized AI鈥檚 full potential for sustainability. In fact, are using AI today to reduce carbon emissions. But those ready to do so will gain a decisive advantage that goes beyond emissions reduction. SAP鈥檚 ERP-centric approach enables organizations to deliver sustainability outcomes with applications, data, and AI embedded into . With sustainability reporting, data processing, automation, and strategic insights, AI can navigate your business through today鈥檚 climate challenges and ensure tomorrow鈥檚 competitiveness.

Power on, ethically and responsibly

Scaling AI solutions comes with considerable energy and water usage. To ensure net benefit, this needs to be part of return on investment conversations. With robust governance and renewables-backing however, AI is able to reduce more emissions than it generates.

All 51风流data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy and any emissions from use of third-party AI systems are calculated and included in the company鈥檚 Scope 3 emissions.

Used ethically and responsibly, AI can be the catalyst of your sustainable business transformation. Here are eight ways that businesses use SAP鈥檚 AI-powered systems to build their sustainable advantage.

Improve efficiency with automation

1. Compliance information processing

The for product compliance, AI-assisted compliance information processing capability can automatically extract compliance information from updated documents and map the information to compliance requirements.

This can reduce costs in product compliance disclosures, reduce penalties and fines in environmental management, and automate processes to reduce the risk of manual errors.

This helps turn a 50-minute task into a five-minute job and reduce processing and evaluation costs by 90%.

2. Declaration image analysis

With the , AI-assisted declaration image analysis capability, you can automatically extract data and information from sustainability declarations regardless of format.

This helps cut review time, eliminate manual error risk, and ensure your reports are ready for required external audits.

Without AI, it takes roughly five minutes to review, extract, and post information from declarations. With AI, it鈥檚 just 20 seconds.

3. Permit management

can read hundreds of pages in seconds, extract the compliance requirements, and propose clear tasks to meet permit requirements.

This AI-assisted capability can save days of permit review and interpretation, remove the need to hire external consultants, and lead up to an 80% reduction in environmental penalties and fines.

Your personal AI carbon consultant

4. Emission factor mapping

奥颈迟丑听, SAP鈥檚 AI-enhanced solution, users can calculate product and corporate carbon footprints. Where actual supplier emissions data is given, it can retrieve that information from 51风流Sustainability Data Exchange and other systems. When estimates are required, the solution can automatically find the most accurate emissions factors from databases and map those to products.

Audit-ready emission factor mapping can turn a 10-minute manual task into a two-minute verification.

5. Report generation

In the solution, you can generate comprehensive ESG reports in just a few clicks:

• Automatically generate reports that align with internal sustainability strategies and meet external requirements such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
• Take data collection from a half hour to a half minute and report creation and drafting from 30 hours down to just five hours, all the while eliminating confusion and the risk of manual errors.

6. Carbon emissions analysis 

From reporting on today to planning for tomorrow, , SAP鈥檚 copilot, can take current carbon emissions data and return actionable insights that help reduce emissions and guide corporate sustainability strategies. 

By combining financial and carbon data, Joule can create carbon intensity KPIs and can be your ultimate corporate sustainability consultant.

The AI safety officer for your EHS team

7. Safety observation reporting

Complex safety reporting procedures dissuade employees from reporting potential hazards. With the 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, EHS workplace safety, AI-assisted safety observation reporting capability, basic users can input safety observations in natural language, and the AI model can process that into a formal incident report, prompting the user for any missing details.

This can increase the likelihood that employees report safety hazards and helps prevent severe incidents by identifying potential safety issues in advance.

8. Safety instruction generation

Your AI safety officer can generate clear safety instructions for specific equipment based on the latest risk assessments and job hazard analyses.

With 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, EHS workplace safety, AI-assisted safety instruction generation, the time and effort of manually prescribing and updating safety instructions can be dramatically reduced.

Solve today鈥檚 sustainability challenges while preparing for tomorrow

The right AI integration can ensure you future-proof your operations while shining a light on the path that drives competitiveness.

What sets 51风流apart is our suite-first, AI-first approach that helps ensure sustainability isn鈥檛 an add-on, but a strategic enabler that can deliver measurable outcomes at scale. SAP鈥檚 one sustainability data model can drive consistent reporting, deeper insight, and confident decisions across every sustainability process, product, and partner network.

With a responsible AI partner, businesses can realize measurable financial returns on AI investments and unlock sustainability benefits; automate manual-heavy paperwork; identify emissions hot spots and steer their business toward a decarbonized economy; and make environmental impact tracking visible to all lines of business based on a reliable single source of truth. With an integrated set of capabilities, solutions help businesses address their sustainability needs holistically and across topics. The result is speed, trust, and traceability, which turn sustainability into strategy, not just compliance.

Get in touch to find out how 51风流can help your business power on with sustainability solutions.

Monica Molesag is global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP.

The divide between the digital skills young people possess and the needs of employers is a big challenge and contributes to a high youth unemployment rate, particularly in the Global South. The 51风流Educate to Employ initiative is set up as a digital pathway through Youth Agency Marketplace (YOMA), a public-private-youth ecosystem from UNICEF鈥檚 Generation Unlimited. The program aims to address this challenge and enable young people鈥檚 skills for a digital economy.

Nearly 90 percent of the 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world today, are in low-and middle-income countries. An estimated 22 percent do not have jobs and are not in education or training.

Globally, young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults. Edmond Shange is one of the many young people who have faced difficulties navigating the employment market right out of high school. 鈥淚n South Africa there’s not a lot of opportunities when it comes to the employment sector,鈥� the 27-year-old shared.

Making copies of a CV or resume and going to a potential employer to drop them off costs money, something in very short supply among South Africa鈥檚 unemployed youth. Despite this, Shange says that as many as 300 young people often queue up to drop off their CVs at a potential employer. 鈥淚 faced a lot of challenges trying to apply for jobs,鈥� he said. “It’s very tough for young people like me.鈥�

Shange is not alone. 鈥淚n Africa over 70 percent of the population are young people and another 4 million join the job market every single year competing for less than half a million new jobs,鈥� said Nadi Albino, deputy director at UNICEF鈥檚 Generation Unlimited.

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Youth unemployment and the lack of digital skills are a global problem, though it’s particularly acute among those who live in the Global South. While the fast-changing global economy demands increasingly specialized expertise, many young people are not learning the skills they need to get these jobs.  

The search for virtual upskilling to improve his digital skills led Shange to the Youth Agency Marketplace (YOMA), a public-private-youth ecosystem supported by UNICEF鈥檚 Generational Unlimited, which offers opportunities for young people to learn, earn, and create impact. On his pathway to employment, Shange was introduced to 51风流Educate to Employ, an initiative delivered to YOMA through the implementing partner Umuzi. The curriculum for 51风流Educate to Employ involves 700 hours of targeted training focused on building soft skills and technical expertise.

After completing the course, Shange feels much more confident with his skills. As a result, he has recently secured an internship as a software developer at a startup gaming company based at Wits University Tshimologong Precinct.

Whether young people are educated, trained, or employed has significant implications for their overall well-being and ability to promote future economic growth, development, and sociopolitical stability. Unfortunately, most traditional education systems do not address the emerging youth digital skills gap.

This realization was one of the driving forces behind the creation of 51风流Educate to Employ.

鈥�51风流Educate to Employ was created to support young people who are neither in education nor employment, providing them with training, certification, and guidance to access roles within the 51风流ecosystem,鈥� explained Eugene Ho who leads SAP鈥檚 global CSR flagship skilling programs targeted at youths in need. 鈥淭hrough its tailored curriculum, the initiative has successfully helped candidates with only high-school qualifications.鈥�

鈥淭he 51风流Educate to Employ initiative provides young people with the tools, skills, and resources that they need to get employed or to employ,鈥� Albino added in an interview with SAP. 鈥淲e have to go back to making sure that these education systems work and that they work in tandem with where the world is going.鈥�

To meet industry needs, 51风流Educate to Employ curricula has been designed for three critical roles within the 51风流ecosystem: consultant associate, developer associate, and support associate. The curriculum taps into educational content from industry-leading organizations such as Coursera, Accenture, EY, and 51风流Learning.  

51风流CEO Christian Klein is the chair of the Generation Unlimited Board.  

鈥淭he YOMA online platform alone has had over 600,000 registrations,” Albino confirmed. “A measure of success is how the ecosystem has enabled over 5 million opportunities to learn, earn, and create impact worldwide in the past two years. We are now beginning to see young people getting into jobs.鈥�

Shange鈥檚 journey with YOMA and 51风流Educate to Employ started in the living room of his grandmother’s house, a place where community has always taken center stage. 鈥淚 look up to my grandmother; she has done a lot for the community,” he said. “I hope that I could do the same — help people in the tech field create more jobs for people that are in need and just be creative.鈥�

A permanent full-time job would enable Shange to feed and look after his family, and to continue helping others in his community the same way he was helped. In his community, Shange says he is seen as something of a role model.

鈥淚 want young people to know that it’s possible [to get a job],” he said. “Keep applying and also don’t lose hope when you see something’s not working. Some things do take time, so give it your best and make sure that you see it through.鈥�

Today, 51风流extended its founding partnership with Generation Unlimited for four more years, 2026-2029, with a commitment of US$2 million.

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Yet a curious trend has emerged: many companies are pursuing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals more discreetly, a phenomenon known as 鈥済reen-hushing.鈥� In fact, found that while some companies have pulled back, about 84% are either maintaining or strengthening their climate commitments, even as they become less vocal about them. This demonstrates that despite shifting political winds, businesses recognize that sustainability initiatives remain fundamentally good for business.

A comprehensive and conducted by Economist Impact confirms this shifting landscape, revealing growing confidence in procurement鈥檚 capacity to deliver on ESG performance indicators. While risk factors are rising, so is readiness鈥攁 shift that is especially encouraging for procurement executives overseeing ESG performance. The data shows approximately 90% of respondents report strong internal collaboration between procurement and other departments, up from 75% last year.

The external picture is equally promising: over 90% of executives report that deeper supplier partnerships are yielding benefits, particularly in driving innovation and sustainability outcomes. For procurement leaders, the data tells a clear story: collaboration may be the new currency of success.

Collaboration: The silent engine of progress

Procurement鈥檚 strategic influence is expanding through tighter integration with internal stakeholders. As teams become more embedded across business functions, they鈥檙e unlocking new value through improved orchestration and proactive planning. Specialized business partner groups that bridge strategy and execution are helping meet cross-functional needs.

This enhanced collaboration has yielded key benefits, including cost savings (74%) and improved digital adoption (61%). However, a gap remains between these immediate gains and longer-term value drivers like innovation and agility. As procurement operations continue to digitize, talent development must adapt. AI proficiency and ethical technology have emerged as the top skill priorities for procurement hires over the next 12-18 months (68%), followed by sustainability expertise (55%).

Enabled by digital tools that deliver 鈥�360-degree visibility,鈥� procurement executives are seeing alignment between category strategies and broader enterprise objectives, helping them spot risks, understand market shifts, and manage supplier performance more effectively.

Supplier partnerships: Accelerating ESG progress and innovation

Forward-thinking procurement organizations are now partnering with suppliers to introduce solutions like recyclable packaging, greener materials, and low-emission logistics. These collaborations are accelerating decarbonization efforts while helping future-proof supply chains.

Despite decreased governmental prioritization of sustainability in some regions, smart companies continue pursuing ESG goals when they align with business objectives. Nearly half (48%) of executives report improved sustainability performance from closer supplier ties, and 38% cite more supplier-driven innovation.

Many procurement teams are navigating uncertainty around their ESG approach, questioning whether to lead sustainability initiatives boldly or keep their efforts under the radar amid regulatory shifts. Regardless of this strategic tension, the value of supplier collaboration remains undeniable, particularly as these efforts often improve operational efficiency and reduce costs.

Procurement can strengthen this momentum by investing in platforms that track emissions, monitor regulatory developments, and support compliance. Many organizations are expanding efforts to address Scope 3 emissions鈥攖ypically the most challenging to measure鈥攚ith increasing sophistication around supplier data collection and performance expectations. This shift reflects increased accountability across the value chain and reinforces procurement鈥檚 pivotal role in advancing ESG objectives.    

While public sentiment and political consensus may fluctuate, regulators continue to advance mandatory disclosure requirements and climate accountability measures. Preparation is especially urgent as new policies鈥攆rom the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive to Germany鈥檚 Supply Chain Due Diligence Act鈥攊mpose stricter requirements on businesses.

Even if some regulations face delays or deprioritization, they are not disappearing. Organizations that act now will be best positioned to lead when enforcement inevitably intensifies.

Meeting elevated standards through supplier collaboration

The evolution of procurement鈥檚 influence rests on one fundamental capability: collaboration.

Internally, effective collaboration drives digital adoption, reduces costs, and breaks down organizational silos. Externally, it powers sustainability initiatives and fosters innovation. Without it, even the most sophisticated ESG strategies risk faltering. Poorly structured collaboration leads to critical data gaps, duplicated effort, and supplier fatigue. Today鈥檚 procurement executives must ensure their ESG and risk management approaches don鈥檛 overburden suppliers, or they risk disengagement precisely when long-term innovation is needed most.

Increased collaboration is consistently cited as the primary driver of accelerated ESG progress. Maintaining this momentum requires balance: bold action tempered by operational pragmatism, and clear expectations paired with tools that support supplier compliance and success.

Procurement鈥檚 moment of opportunity

Procurement is uniquely positioned to translate sustainability ambitions into measurable, scalable outcomes. By fostering collaboration across business units and with suppliers, it can shape the future of responsible business.

Even when ESG ambitions are pursued discreetly, the business case for action remains compelling鈥攂oth for organizational performance and broader societal benefit. Companies that maintain sustainability initiatives despite changing political priorities position themselves advantageously for the future while capturing immediate operational benefits. Procurement鈥檚 ability to embed sustainability considerations into core decisions consistently and collaboratively will define its impact in the years ahead.

solutions can integrate seamlessly with and to help businesses better track, manage, and reduce their environmental impact across the supply chain. These solutions can enable organizations to incorporate sustainability metrics into procurement decisions, improve transparency with trading partners, and help ensure compliance with evolving environmental regulations.

Many of the insights above were explored during the following Economist Impact webinar, 鈥淢easuring up: Balancing risks and goals for strategic procurement.鈥� To delve further into these topics and hear expert perspectives, . For those eager to continue the conversation and engage directly with leaders in the field, the upcoming 51风流Connect event鈥擮ctober 6-8 in Las Vegas, Nevada鈥攐ffers an excellent opportunity to join on-site and gain deeper insights into strategic procurement, ESG initiatives, and innovation. .

Baber Farooq is senior vice president and head of Market Strategy for 51风流Ariba.

Q: How does 51风流view sustainability within its overall business strategy?

A: Sustainability is a core element of business strategy and deeply embedded in our vision to help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. This means it is not a separate initiative, but an integral part of our leadership and long-term goals as a company. And as such, sustainability is a business catalyst and value driver.

What does SAP鈥檚 commitment to reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2030 mean in practice?

We recognize that with a customer base that generates 84 percent of the total global commerce, we have the responsibility and opportunity to lead in corporate climate action efforts. This isn鈥檛 just about reporting numbers; it鈥檚 a science-based transformation that is embedded in our operations, collaboration with suppliers, technology, and what we offer to our customers.

For us, it means our strategy aligns with the 1.5掳C pathway set in the Paris Agreement. We aim to reduce gross GHG emissions by 90 percent across our relevant value chain (market-based). The remaining emissions 鈥� no more than 10 percent 鈥� will be neutralized through high-quality, verified carbon removal projects. Our reduction efforts have earned SAP鈥檚 inclusion in the EU Paris-Aligned Benchmarks, which gives climate-conscious investors confidence in our approach.

What does SAP鈥檚 decarbonization strategy consist of?

Our transformation is structured around four interconnected pillars:

With cloud transformation, we鈥檙e accelerating the shift from on-premise to cloud solutions, with SAP-managed data centers already powered by 100 percent renewable electricity. In parallel, we are collaborating with hyperscalers and our customers to push renewable electricity adoption upstream and downstream. An important part of this transition is enhancing GHG accounting and moving from estimates to primary data from our suppliers.

With upstream supply chain engagement, we are revising procurement policies and working closely with our suppliers to lower emissions across the supply chain. This includes aligning on data transparency and decarbonization targets. The rise of energy-intensive technologies like AI presents new challenges, but we鈥檙e addressing them through joint commitments and shared accountability.

In internal operations, we have several initiatives in place. For instance, since 2014 51风流has been running all offices, owned data centers, and co-locations on 100 percent renewable electricity. In addition to this, we are electrifying our vehicle fleet, and we have an internal carbon pricing scheme for business flights in place. The generated funds are invested in projects that have a positive impact on local and global populations as well as climate and biodiversity.

To neutralize SAP’s residual emissions that remain beyond聽2030 after all feasible reduction efforts, we are investing in high-integrity carbon removals, ranging from nature-based to engineered solutions. Great examples of this are聽our long-term investments in the Livelihoods Carbon Funds and聽Climeworks’ Direct Air Capture solutions.聽The partnership with Climeworks聽marks a significant milestone for 51风流and our commitment to durable carbon removals. Additionally, we make聽annual contributions聽to climate finance. The voluntary investments made during our transition to net-zero allow us to take responsibility for our emissions, increase our聽overall impact聽beyond our聽own decarbonization efforts, and help the world keep their climate targets聽in reach.

Where does the fit into your strategy?

We have entered an agreement with Climeworks to secure 37,000 tons of high-quality carbon removal credits through 2034. This includes technologies like direct air capture, biochar, and enhanced rock weathering. More than just a carbon removal purchase, this is a strategic innovation partnership.

Together, we are co-creating ERP-centric carbon management tools, integrated into solutions like 51风流Sustainability Control Tower, and making it available via 51风流Store. These tools will help companies manage and mitigate emissions in real time, making carbon removal more actionable at scale.

Is Climeworks also adopting 51风流solutions?

Yes, and that is part of what makes this partnership so compelling. Climeworks has implemented 51风流S/4HANA Public Cloud through the GROW with 51风流journey and is using the 51风流LeanIX portfolio to support its rapid growth. These tools help with compliance, financial management, and operational efficiency — all critical elements for scaling in the climate-tech space.

How does this alliance benefit SAP鈥檚 business and customers?

It is a strategic move that strengthens our position economically and environmentally. As 51风流Chief Sustainability & Commercial Officer Sophia Mendelsohn recently shared, this partnership allows us to lock in carbon removal capacity at preferred rates, hedging against future price volatility. But more importantly, it enables us to create new sustainability-focused solutions for our customers, helping them meet regulatory and stakeholder expectations.

As 51风流pushes ahead with its decarbonization strategy, where do you see the biggest opportunities for positive impact, both within 51风流and for the broader ecosystem?

As 51风流advances its decarbonization strategy, the biggest opportunities for positive impact lie in leveraging our technology and ecosystem to drive systemic change — both internally and across industries.

Within SAP, our greatest opportunity is embedding sustainability directly into core business processes — such as procurement, supply chain, and finance — using our own solutions. This not only reduces our operational GHG footprint but serves as a model for our customers. Our sustainability solutions aim to empower organizations to measure, manage, and act on their sustainability goals. By doing so, we scale our impact.

We remain grounded in the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) Corporate Net-Zero Standard and see opportunities to lead by example, even beyond 2030, by continuously improving our net-zero program and sharing best practices.

In the end, we are not just preparing for a net-zero future; we are shaping it. Through collaboration, transparency, and technology, we are proving that climate action is essential to long-term success.

Karen Restrepo Avila is Sustainability and Net-Zero communications lead at SAP.

In recent years, amid the evolving regulatory landscape and interdependencies with other business areas, a new set of cross-process requirements have surfaced.

SAP鈥檚 answer is the shift from a reactive, centralized compliance management system to a proactive approach that adapts to an organization’s needs. We are transforming 51风流Environment, Health, and Safety Management from a monolithic system of record into a modular and connected suite.

Environmental management: from static tracking to intelligence

51风流solutions for environmental management address the management of waste and emissions as well as water and wastewater.

Updates to EHS solutions are intended to assist users in completing tasks more quickly and efficiently. For example, intelligent permit management is possible thanks to automated regulatory requirement extraction, making permit management tasks less tedious. In the future, proactive regulatory intelligence will prepare customers for the impacts of changing compliance requirements.

By focusing on proactive document extraction and a single entry point for compliance, customers can expect to benefit from reduced compliance preparation time and enhanced audit readiness.

Workplace safety management: from reactive to proactive

The updated workplace safety process orchestrates and extends the individual capabilities of safety performance management, operational risk management, and incident management.

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Recent and upcoming updates leverage AI and increase usability to support safety instruction, reporting, and performance tracking 鈥� enhancing customers鈥� productivity and ability to demonstrate EHS value to stakeholders. More and better documented safety observation enable faster risk prioritization and preventive action, leading to fewer near-misses and incidents.聽

Capabilities include:

• Integrated risk assessments that connect hazard identification directly to operational controls and safety protocols
• AI-assisted safety instruction generation that equips teams with relevant information about hazards to health or environment and protective measures to prevent malfunctions, accidents, or emergencies
• Performance analytics that use real-time safety data to provide proactive insights for continuous safety improvement

By streamlining or automating manually intensive tasks like risk assessment and instruction document creation, your team can reduce time spent by as much as 65 to 70 percent, freeing them to focus on what matters. In addition to time savings, AI has the potential to reduce incidents and near misses by using simple and inclusive language in the instructions that reduces misconceptions by the executing workers.

Our EHS architecture evolution: from system of record to active, modular suite

Short-term, incremental improvements cannot meet the demands of modern EHS needs. SAP鈥檚 vision for EHS transformation will take us from the reactive to proactive, and eventually predictive by leveraging AI integrations. These solutions will give customers the competitive advantage in regulatory responsiveness and operational efficiency.

Find more insights from SAP鈥檚 recent the and the

Gunther Rothermel is chief product officer for 51风流Sustainability.

This year鈥檚 London Climate Action Week was less about reaffirming action, and more about accelerating it. Now in its seventh year, this is Europe鈥檚 largest city-wide climate event, bringing together policymakers, investors, NGOs, and technologists to accelerate plans ahead of COP30 in鈥疊el茅m, Brazil. Three major themes stood out across the week.

1. Decarbonize and build resilience

Business leaders and policymakers are focused on scaling decarbonization while also confronting the reality of escalating physical risks. From industrial heat to infrastructure retrofits, the message was clear: climate disruption is now a core business risk. As resilience is becoming synonymous with competitiveness, organizations are embedding climate data into board decisions and using it to guide strategy.

This shift is urgent: climate-driven losses are no longer theoretical, and businesses should treat physical risk with the same granularity and urgency as margin forecasting.

51风流has focused on turning physical climate risk into actionable intelligence for customers. By integrating sustainability metrics with financial models, companies can frame adaptation investments as cost-avoidance with measurable return on investment.

2. Mobilize climate finance

The gap between climate capital and real-economy transformation remains wide, especially in emerging markets. But momentum is building. London鈥檚 mayor announced a new climate finance task force aimed at crowding in public-private investment, while investors discussed blended finance models and sustainability-linked instruments. To stay investable, companies must present decision-grade sustainability data and show credible transition plans.

51风流is working with customers to bridge the divide between macro-level climate finance signals and operational decisions. That means using our systems to unify environmental data with financial and risk metrics, so sustainability reporting isn鈥檛 just about compliance, but about surfacing value. With green bonds and adaptation finance accelerating, businesses that can connect site-specific risk to capital expenditure planning will be best placed to access new funding streams.

We鈥檙e helping customers uncover the hidden costs of climate disruption — whether that鈥檚 increased cooling, transport volatility, or water constraints — and link them to balance sheet impacts. The result is a stronger business case for resilience investments, and more relevant data for financial partners.

3. Digital innovation and AI

A wave of sessions focused on the power of digital tools to accelerate climate action. 51风流and fellow sustainability leaders highlighted how AI is enabling everything from emissions forecasting to supply chain optimization, while digital twins are helping companies and cities simulate disruption, model trade-offs, and optimize resources in real time.

Central to this story is responsible AI. At London Climate Action Week, SustainableIT.org recognized 51风流with the Responsible AI Impact Award for its cross-functional work to embed ethical, human-centered AI into enterprise systems, driving outcomes that are not only efficient, but also equitable and sustainable.

This approach is guided by SAP鈥檚 Global AI Ethics Policy, which is grounded in the UNESCO recommendations on the Ethics of AI, and shapes how we build and deliver AI across all our sustainability and business solutions.

At SAP, we鈥檙e designing AI to assist, not replace, human activity — to scale climate action with integrity. We are focused on delivering embedded business AI tools that turn complexity into clarity, while preserving transparency and auditability.

Applying SAP鈥檚 tech lens: from insight to impact

London Climate Action Week 2025 made one truth unavoidable: climate leadership now hinges on trusted data and innovative technology, including human-centred AI. Across sessions, AI and unified data were repeatedly cited as the accelerants of climate progress, whether mapping Scope鈥�3 emissions or modelling extreme weather scenarios.

Drawing on these insights, businesses can look to three main areas to boost their sustainability efforts:

• Make sustainability data first-class business data: posts auditable carbon and financial entries side by side, turning emissions into actionable profit and loss drivers. When linked with site-level climate risk data, 51风流Green Ledger allows businesses to understand the cost of disruption — from heatwaves to resource scarcity — and align sustainability with enterprise planning.
• Augment teams with responsible AI: With , AI-assisted declaration image analysis automates thousands of supplier documents; with , AI-assisted emission factor mapping links thousands of materials to high-quality emission factors in minutes. In , AI now also supports environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report generation, using best-practice templates to draft audit-ready reports, complete with data visualizations. This frees up sustainability teams to focus on strategy while increasing speed, accuracy, and regulatory confidence.
• Unify processes, finance, and sustainability in the cloud: 51风流Sustainability Control鈥疶ower will become an intelligent application within later this year, which will unify sustainability data and business operations on a single platform, enabling consistent reporting, deeper insight, and smarter decision-making across the enterprise.

By breaking down silos among sustainability, finance, procurement, and operations, 51风流is enabling businesses to act faster on everything from climate disclosure to adaptation investment. When ESG data is managed like financial data — with rigor, governance, and relevance — it becomes a strategic asset.

Together, these capabilities turn the rallying cry of London Climate Action Week 2025 鈥渇rom morality to materiality鈥� into a practical playbook: embed sustainability where business happens and use responsible AI to scale impact without compromise. From emissions to adaptation to finance, the future of climate leadership is not just digital, it鈥檚 enterprise-deep.

Monica Molesag is global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP.

Sustainability is an essential element of SAP鈥檚 purpose to help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. Our approach is grounded in creating positive economic, social, and environmental impact, always within the limits of planetary boundaries and in full respect of human rights. With the ambition to drive sustainability beyond our net-zero 2030 goals and a portfolio that supports broader action areas such as holistic steering and reporting, ethical business conduct, and social responsibility, it was a natural progression for 51风流to become its own customer.

As both an and enabler, we aim to make our targets and purpose a reality. At the same time, by testing our IT solutions to the limit, we share the lessons learned along the way with the product development teams to continuously improve the 51风流Sustainability portfolio.

51风流shares its clients鈥� challenges

51风流faces many of the same sustainability challenges as our customers, such as data collection, data management, and compliance with regulatory requirements. Like the many organizations we support, 51风流must manage huge volumes of sustainability data, including carbon footprints, material flows, and ESG metrics, working to ensure accuracy, consistency, and accessibility across the value chain. Demands on IT systems are high. They must grapple with collecting, integrating, and sharing data while also assuring quality, traceability, and auditability.

The evolving regulatory landscape represents another challenge, requiring 51风流and other organizations to adapt and leverage their systems for compliance and reporting. IT solutions must be scaled and adjusted rapidly to these changing regulations and be able to collaborate seamlessly with supply chain partners.

Beyond these requirements, companies need sustainability data to provide actionable insights to support decision-making and respond to stakeholders. Meeting these challenges head-on requires an IT infrastructure that is innovative, scalable, and designed to evolve as the business advances on its sustainability journey.

鈥�51风流runs SAP鈥� implementation

In practice, SAP鈥檚 systems are designed to empower customers to measure, report, and act on their sustainability goals. To enable this, solutions are built into core business systems such as and (51风流BTP). This helps ensure a solid data foundation and flexible integration of data sets from various business areas such as procurement, finance, supply chain management, and product design. Sustainability-focused tools like , , and can then provide the data, analytics, and insights needed to help drive sustainable decision-making.

“By implementing 51风流Sustainability Control Tower and 51风流Green Ledger across our reporting ecosystem, we aim to elevate sustainability management to the same standard as financial reporting,鈥� said Dr. Christopher Sessar, Chief Accounting Officer, 51风流SE. 鈥淭hese powerful tools will not only streamline and automate our ESG regulative compliance efforts but also generate actionable insights that drive strategic decision-making, accelerating our journey toward measurable sustainability outcomes and long-term environmental value creation.”

Implementation lessons

SAP鈥檚 approach has evolved since the first implementation of 51风流Sustainability Control Tower in 2022. Early lessons included the need to collect emissions data in a consistent manner, anchor the project in its net-zero program governance, and expand the scope of the project beyond carbon footprint data to include other environmental topics for a more holistic approach.

The next question concerned the IT architecture, organized into three layers. The top layer relates to the collection of raw sustainability, financial, and operational data from various source systems. The middle management layer processes and standardizes the data. Finally, a bottom planning and reporting layer delivers insights for sustainability decision-making.

The rollout began by uploading carbon footprint data into 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management across one company code and will increase to five company codes before the system goes live in Q3 of this year. It is useful to note the iterative approach our team has taken, which has allowed for the collection and integration of data from different sources and the testing of use cases including our聽ability to support businesses amid changes such as those recently initiated by the EU鈥檚 new Omnibus package.

Matthias Medert is global head of Sustainability at 51风流SE.

This data-granular, verifiable, one-click solution supports the company on its path to carbon neutrality by 2030.

Challenges and opportunities

HARTING faced the challenge of finding a reliable method to calculate CO鈧� emissions across thousands of production materials while meeting customer and supplier expectations regarding sustainability. Leveraging its existing ERP application landscape with 51风流and maintaining established green production and renewable energy processes were crucial.

鈥淐onducting our business and protecting the environment are not mutually exclusive. We are convinced that we must consider both to be successful in the long run,鈥� says Dietmar Harting, member of the Board and partner of the HARTING Technology Group.

Innovations for a sustainable future

Considered the connectivity gold standard across various industrial sectors, HARTING required a robust system to accurately assess emissions. can automate data collection, scale emission calculations, and create CO鈧� transparency throughout the supply chain. 鈥淭he key to communicating our CO鈧� emissions transparently and recognizing potential for reduction lies in the automated calculation and granularity of the data provided by 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management,鈥� explains Dr. Stephan Middelkamp, general manager, Quality and Technology at HARTING.

This solution enables HARTING to provide real-time, granular data to support the 鈥淕reenLine鈥� label, an environmentally sustainable designation highlighting renewable materials offering up to a 70% CO鈧� reduction.

Strengthening sustainable production

With 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management, HARTING can now precisely calculate and report product carbon footprints. This capability is essential to address upcoming EU sustainability regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and Digital Product Passport. The solution helps simplify complex data into verifiable, one-click results, promoting sustainable production practices.

Also integrated into HARTING’s sustainability strategy is the use of , which helps the company design products responsibly from the start, reduce plastic taxes, and promote recycling.

鈥淭he site-level data derived from 51风流Sustainability Footprint Management will drive cleaner production in environmentally friendly facilities while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the impact on water and land life. Green is how we think, green is how we act,鈥� emphasizes Jordy Brinks, global environmental manager at HARTING.

On the path to a greener future

51风流is advancing HARTING鈥檚 sustainability journey by enabling the company to design products more sustainably, reduce plastic taxes, promote responsible sourcing, and further recycling practices. With these efforts, HARTING aims to achieve carbon neutrality at all locations by 2030, underscoring its commitment to sustainable growth and environmental stewardship.

“As a family business, we combine consistency with a willingness to innovate and regional loyalty. For us, this means taking responsibility for people and the environment,鈥� Harting says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not only shaping a livable planet for our future generations, we鈥檙e making the future possible. We want to shape the future with technologies for people.鈥�

The HARTING Technology Group continues to drive meaningful change, connecting business success with a greener future and aligning family ideals with sustainability goals.

HARTING at the 2025 51风流Innovation Awards

All of these efforts did not go unnoticed: HARTING has long been recognized as a pioneer in sustainability. This year, it won an , leveraging 51风流Responsible Design and Production to create 85% of its plastic packaging material from recycled materials.

This article first appeared on the German 51风流News Center.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here鈥檚 a look at what鈥檚 coming:

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

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

AI that鈥檚 already delivering value

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

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

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

What鈥檚 next: unlocking enterprise-wide sustainability insights

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

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

One sustainability data model: From complexity to clarity

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

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

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

Process intelligence meets sustainability intelligence

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

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

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

Your best, made real

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

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

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

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

Or, more specifically, to celebrate the astonishing beauty of the planet we share and to leverage an opportunity to inspire individual action to ensure a livable, thriving world for everyone.

, themed 鈥淥ur Power, Our Planet,鈥� was a reminder of the unique role we can each play in building a more sustainable future. While not everyone may feel an immediate connection to the topic of climate action 鈥� other social issues may more deeply influence the choices we make and the actions we take to leave our mark on the world 鈥� it is clear that the health of the planet has an effect on every aspect of life, from the economy to our everyday well-being.

Employees at 51风流are encouraged to bring their best, whole selves to work. One program making this possible is the Acceleration Collective. The Acceleration Collective is a virtual pro bono consulting program delivered with 51风流social impact partner MovingWorlds on the . The program pairs employees with social enterprises 鈥� for example, impact-led organizations prioritizing people and planet over profit 鈥� to help solve business challenges that organizations are experiencing.聽

Pro bono consulting for people- and planet-first companies offers employees the chance to explore what is possible at the intersection of their professional experiences and their personal values. Not only does the Acceleration Collective allow employees to influence solutions to problems they see in the world, it also allows them to gain new expertise in a practical way, especially in areas like sustainability.

In honor of Earth Day, we are sharing stories of mutual learning and leadership development from pro bono engagements that have empowered 51风流employees to partner with impact businesses focused on advancing sustainable practices and driving meaningful change for the world.

Alliance of learning and leadership

Late last year, Youssef Zekhnini, a Customer Success Manager in the Netherlands, took on a project working on a team of employees and representatives from . A circular social enterprise that helps the environment by diverting textiles from landfill and upcycling them into luxury goods, CycleUp also empowers marginalized individuals in rural Ireland through training and skill development in the art of upcycling.

Collaborating with the CycleUp team and engaging with their mission provided Zekhnini with 鈥渧aluable insights into how sustainable business models can positively affect a wide range of people within a community,鈥� and helped him realize 鈥渢hat these models are often more complex than they appear.鈥�

Their work together offered a focused opportunity for Zekhnini to strengthen his leadership skills, which 鈥渞eally highlighted the importance of clear communication, teamwork, and decisiveness,鈥� challenging him 鈥渢o step up, stay focused, and lead collaboratively in order to deliver a meaningful and impactful result.鈥�

In just a few months, Zekhnini was able to gather new learnings about himself and the capacity for leadership that exists inside all of us, and more deeply understand what is possible when businesses are built and run with sustainability at their core.

Journey of insights and impact

For Sydney, Australia-based Jason Luo, an enterprise architect, and Felicity Zare, a Customer Success partner, their work with helped them understand sustainability 鈥渁s both a mindset and a practice鈥� and reframe it as 鈥渁 long-term growth opportunity, not just a compliance topic,鈥� respectively.

In his reflection, Luo shared how the stories of specific families that have benefited from this client鈥檚 mission 鈥渃rystallized the human dimension of sustainability鈥� for him.

鈥淚 realized that ethical practices and community empowerment are not trade-offs but foundational pillars for modern enterprises,鈥� he said. 鈥淪ustainable business models succeed when they are rooted in authentic relationships and local context. Sustainability requires balancing ambition with empathy, innovation with inclusivity, and vision with adaptability — lessons I鈥檒l carry forward in all future endeavors.鈥�

Circular Cities Asia helps to foster circular innovation in Asian cities by building capacity and testing eco-solutions on university campuses through community, mentorship, and hands-on projects. Their 51风流pro bono team supported them with the prioritization of key customer segments, the development of value proposition canvases, and the design of targeted pitch decks. Beyond these deliverables, 鈥渢he insights, knowledge, and expertise [the 51风流team] brought to the table were invaluable, allowing us to refine our strategy [and gain] a fresh perspective on how to align our operations with future growth and sustainability goals.鈥�

Zare, who felt an extra special connection to this organization, as she has family from South East Asia, also shared that participating in the Acceleration Collective 鈥渉elped sharpen facilitation skills鈥� and that for her, 鈥渢ranslating our 51风流knowledge into actionable strategies for a small, impact-driven team was a valuable stretch opportunity and reinforced the need to lead with clarity, empathy, and structure.鈥�

Luo echoed this sentiment, articulating that a key takeaway from his experience was 鈥渢he importance of adaptive communication — translating complex ideas into actionable steps for both our client and my peers.鈥�

Their journey together enabled Circular Cities Asia to focus and amplify their impact and offered their pro bono consultant team from 51风流the kinds of insights and skill development that will support them as their careers continue to grow inside of 51风流and beyond.

Through their experiences working with CycleUp Textiles and Circular Cities Asia — social enterprises uniquely focused on shaping the future of sustainability — Zekhnini, Luo, and Zare have done more than just invest in their own growth. They have aligned their careers with their personal values and applied their skills in ways that can leave a lasting impact on the planet.

As environmental degradation and resource depletion continue to pose significant challenges, the world of business needs more leaders who are committed to participating in the creation of real change. These stories can show that pro bono consulting offers a stepping stone to meaningful collaboration and partnership that helps employees not only develop a growth mindset, but also a deeper understanding of what it looks like to drive sustainability from within a business.

As more 51风流employees across the globe take on the opportunity to work alongside extraordinary, inspiring social entrepreneurs through pro bono consulting, these ripple effects will continue to spread, driving innovation, encouraging collaboration, and empowering future leaders to tackle the most pressing issues of our time.

Erin LaBarge is program lead of Global Employee Engagement Strategy for 51风流Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP.

These changes bring vast challenges but large potential rewards for those who can upskill their teams and tackle the looming talent crunch.

To set up their organizations for growth, CFOs will need to be nimble in executing their strategies, evaluate the technologies they invest in, prioritize cybersecurity, integrate ESG reporting, and tackle talent crunch.  

1. Bringing to life 2024 growth plans 

In 2024, many CFOs focused on devising growth and reinvention plans to scale their businesses in a sustainable manner. In this quest, they had to be nimble and creative: according to , over 80 percent of CEOs thought that their company would no longer be viable if it did not try to reinvent itself. In order to succeed in 2025, CFOs will need to continue building trust with CEOs to partner on executing these plans successfully. 

To sell their vision in 2025, CFOs will also need to build their leadership image with the wider business, internal and external stakeholders. This is why they will need to dedicate resources to mastering their storytelling skills. This will enable finance leaders to ensure that peers and colleagues are aligned with the business鈥� short- and long-term planning, especially as it undergoes reinvention in challenging market conditions.  

2. Evaluating technologies for long-term benefit and efficiency 

According to the recent CFO Insights research by 51风流Concur, 94 percent of finance leaders say that AI has already helped improve decision-making. Also, 73 percent see a positive impact on cost and risk reduction. In 2025, CFOs need to lead the business-wide charge on delving deeper into the technologies they are investing in. As a number of companies are rushing to adopt AI, CFOs are uniquely positioned to ensure this adoption is truly valuable to the company. To do so, they can drive establishing ROI measures to ensure it is used productively and ethically.聽聽

They will need to be involved in critically evaluating the technologies that businesses invest in, ensuring that risks are properly assessed and in accordance with compliance or responsible-use frameworks.

With AI becoming an essential business tool across many industries, CFOs will need to make sure that it adheres to federal and international AI regulatory frameworks. They should also continue investing in new capabilities to strengthen their compliance, auditing, and planning toolkits. Because CFOs have a holistic view of their business鈥� data and needs, they have a unique insight into the most efficient ways to use .  

3. Prioritizing cybersecurity  

The global average cost of a data breach in 2024 is $4.88 million 鈥� 10 percent up on 2023, according to . The ubiquity of generative AI provides bad actors with more tools to commit complex fraud schemes. Consequently, in 2025, CFOs will need to dedicate resources to protecting their organizations from cybercrime in the coming year and onwards. According to CFO Insights research, 59 percent of finance leaders plan to increase their cybersecurity budget to respond to growing threats.

Because CFOs understand business risk and reporting, they are well-placed to take an oversight role. This best positions them to work with their business鈥� Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) to assess investments and the maturity of security arrangements, as well as budgets dedicated to this. 

Another way that CFOs can protect their organizations鈥� financial assets and data is to appropriately prepare their teams. Since human error remains the biggest risk for a cyber-attack, it is essential that CFOs educate their teams on best practices and develop incident response plans.  

4. Integrating ESG reporting 

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks are becoming increasingly important for businesses as wider regulation schemes are established globally. For CFOs to set up their business for success in 2025, they should embrace ESG as more than just a set of rules, but as a means to build a data base and strengthen their business鈥� profile. 

Forty-eight percent of finance leaders are focusing on sustainability and ESG to drive growth this year. Not only does collecting ESG data help boost a business鈥� revenue, but it presents them with a unique opportunity to see how they are performing and inform future related decisions. For example, giving employees sustainable business travel options and recording their decision can help inform future reporting. CFOs 鈥嬧�嬧�媠hould also set measurable goals for how sustainability data will be used to enhance the business鈥� performance and value creation. These goals will guide the development of the organization鈥檚 staff and its infrastructure. 

A CFO鈥檚 focus on integrating ESG reporting is one element of an even bigger shift 鈥� a shift from carbon counting to carbon accounting. In the future, organization鈥檚 entire carbon impact is going to become an integral part of its balance sheet, measured and managed with the same precision as the financial bottom line. A will form part of a more integrated view of reporting that goes way beyond financials. Adding this green ledger will help companies to a more holistic approach uniting financial and carbon accounting, making sustainability profitable and profitability sustainable.  

5. Retaining employees despite the “talent crunch“

In 2025, the workforce will continue to evolve, as baby boomers retire and young finance professionals re-evaluate their working priorities. CFOs will need to retain employees and keep them enthusiastic. They can do this by better understanding younger employees鈥� values and adapting development, training, and recruitment policies accordingly.  

They will also need to collaborate with HR to foster continuous learning, reskilling, and adaptability for staff. This same flexibility should be applied to bringing in new technology. By accepting to adopt these, businesses can drive more competition for the right talent.  

Similarly, CFOs can embrace using technologies such as AI to automate certain tasks, freeing people for more meaningful work. This not only resonates with the values of younger workers but will highlight to employees that their time is valued, boosting retention.  

A CFO鈥檚 role continues to evolve in challenging market and macroeconomic conditions, so adaptation and flexibility are key to unlocking rewards for themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Embracing the outlined strategies promises CFOs can continue to secure the business鈥� future and steer it toward success.

is chief financial officer for 51风流Concur.

If we can cut through the noise, proactive business leaders can not only prepare for these changes but seize the opportunity to drive strategic business value and even transformation.

My key takeaways for business:

• Large companies still have to report, while SMEs can gain an advantage through voluntary reporting
• Streamlined and integrated data management remains key for compliance and business value creation
• Get ahead by starting today

Sustainability regulations have been on a rollercoaster ride lately. To address concerns about the administrative burden, harmonization, and competitiveness, EU lawmakers have undertaken critical reviews of key policies, most notably the (CSRD).

Initial reactions to the Omnibus package ranged from celebratory to cautionary, with some media outlets pointing out “costly confusion” and even “catastrophic changes.” The slightest changes to any regulatory framework can spark confusion, but there is no need to panic. While still subject to final approval, the Omnibus package should provide companies extra time to prepare and reduced metrics to track.

Despite these proposed changes, business leaders should ensure their data management systems are equipped to handle the required sustainability metrics. Systems and processes for data management need to be instituted, KPIs identified, stakeholders managed — all of which takes time. As a rule of thumb, auditors recommend two years of preparation time before a reporting deadline hits. From automated collection and reporting to insights that drive measurable business value, an integrated data system has the potential to make sustainability data so much more than a mere component of compliance.

What are the changes in the Omnibus?

The Omnibus adjusts compliance thresholds, shifts reporting timelines, and removes the burden of CSRD reporting for small and midsize enterprises. Proposed changes include:

• Companies not yet required to report on FY 2024 will have a two-year delay (until 2028) before they must report with the CSRD
• Companies must have 1,000 employees and 鈧�50 million net turnover, or 鈧�25 million balance sheet to meet CSRD reporting threshold
• Limited assurance requirements are implemented in place of reasonable assurance
• Sector-specific reporting mandates have been eliminated
• Value chain data is only required from suppliers that also meet the reporting threshold
• Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) due diligence intervals increased from each year to every five years

All proposed changes are still subject to final approval.

What remains untouched in the Omnibus proposals?

Large European companies — those that were required to report with the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) — are still required to report with the CSRD this year for FY 2024, and are required to continue reporting despite the proposal. The pool of companies required to report will still expand, but now with a two-year delay and the timeline for non-EU parent companies has not changed. Companies with a two-year delay will still need to start preparing at least 12 months ahead of their new reporting deadlines.

Supply chain emissions, double materiality assessments, KPI identifying and tracking, and transition planning are all still fundamental to the CSRD. Supply chain data insights are still requirements of the CSDDD and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

The metrics on which companies are required to report are likely to be reduced and simplified, but regulatory compliance still remains a data challenge that requires integrated solutions. For companies that are no longer required to report, voluntary reporting can prove beneficial if data insights are deployed strategically. With the right solutions, sustainability data can unlock valuable insights to improve business performance.

How can sustainability data improve business performance?

With all the new compliance measures businesses have to navigate, it can be easy to get reporting tunnel vision and lose sight of the wider goal: sustainable business outcomes and value creation for the business.

Rigorous sustainability reporting should drive operational efficiency. Combined with a wealth of sustainability data, supply chain scrutiny and systems analysis lay the groundwork for deriving strategic business value. For example, sustainability data supports effective risk management through visibility into risks and their strategic and financial impacts, lowers costs by creating efficiency gains, and provides the insights needed to take action.

Collecting and managing data to comply with sustainability regulations requires data management software. The bare bones solution is the helpful, yet error-prone, Excel spreadsheet, while at the opposite end of the data management spectrum is the ERP-centric system.

The spreadsheet might manage to painstakingly serve the compliance function, but it lacks the ability to provide real-time insights that align sustainability goals with financial goals. What鈥檚 worse is that after data is collected and reported, it lives — and dies — on the spreadsheet, offering no added value, and certainly driving no business transformation.

In contrast, by using an ERP-centric system, data needed to comply with sustainability regulations can be pulled, aggregated, and integrated into business systems like finance, procurement, and HR. In fact, an ERP-centric system can provide access to as much as 85 percent of the quantitative data required for CSRD compliance.

ERP systems are the catalyst for strategic business transformation and streamlined regulatory compliance. ERP combined with 51风流Sustainability solutions can provide access to sustainability data that permeates all business functions. Business leaders obtain the necessary insights to reduce carbon and material usage, accelerate CSRD compliance, and accurately measure the financial and sustainability impact of their decisions.

Get ahead by starting today

To stay ahead of current and upcoming regulations, streamlined and integrated management of data from operations and supply chain is essential. An ERP-centric approach can drive both sustainability and financial performance, with compliance being just the tip of the iceberg for ERP-centric sustainability data benefits.

Even with CSRD timelines extended for some companies, forward-thinking businesses have much to gain by continuing CSRD-aligned sustainability reporting now. This delay offers an opportunity to develop a strategic, technology-enabled approach to sustainability reporting that drives long-term business value.

Take action now and leverage 51风流Sustainability solutions to transform your data management and sustainability reporting, ensuring your business not only complies but thrives in the evolving regulatory landscape. To learn even more about the Omnibus changes and how an ERP-centric system can benefit your business, read SAP鈥檚 latest white paper on mastering CSRD.

Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer at SAP.

The world has been waiting for a global plastics treaty since 2022, when representatives from 175 nations agreed on a mandate to create a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution. While progress has been made during the five rounds of negotiations to date, a final treaty has yet to be agreed. With negotiations set to continue, 51风流has collaborated with to launch the 鈥淪hift into Gear鈥� report, inciting companies not to wait but to start preparing now to meet global plastics legislation.

It’s not just a reporting duty

Plastics regulation isn鈥檛 new. It has rapidly spread across the globe like a rising tide, driven by the urgency to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and curb the plastic waste that is choking both marine and land-based ecosystems. Companies now face the growing tide of extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations and pay plastic taxes in certain jurisdictions. Globally, the corporate liabilities linked to plastic usage are projected to exceed US$20 billion by 2030.

In this shifting landscape, 51风流and Earth Action argue that plastic and data management are no longer reporting duties only, but fundamental business imperatives. Companies that fail to navigate these waters may find themselves sinking under the weight of financial liabilities, whereas those that prepare, comply with regulations, and leverage digital solutions will ride the wave, standing to gain a competitive advantage.

Disparate EPR regulations make compliance onerous and expensive

Originally designed to fund waste management, EPR regulations are now focused on the eco-design and recyclability of items. Complications for corporations arise from the variety of different EPR regulations across different territories. The report describes how one consumer goods company operating in over 180 countries can face a minefield of 30 to 50 different EPR policies, which could cost in the region of 0.5%-1% of final product revenue. For multinational corporations, this can add up to millions of euros of risk鈥攐r opportunity.

Avoidance isn鈥檛 a viable option. Non-compliance comes with significant financial risks including fines, litigation, and potential clean-up costs. Reputational risk linked to consumer protection violations, false advertising, and environmental damage is also a factor that could result in revenue loss and a decline in investor confidence.

51风流joins forces to lobby for standardization

51风流is working with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, calling for industry alignment on packaging data. Together, we are pioneering a project to enable standardized data to be exchanged throughout supply chains. This can allow businesses to access and analyze materials from a variety of suppliers to empower the design of more sustainable and recyclable packaging, which can minimize waste and reduce EPR fees and plastic taxes.

Negotiations to finalize the global plastics treaty are expected to resume with delegates due to convene for INC 5.2 in 2025.

Companies should not delay

The report is clear. Companies must not wait for a finalized treaty before taking action. With a myriad of national and regional regulations already in existence, including the EU鈥檚 Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), there is already work to do. Delaying compliance may leave companies lagging behind and unable to meet existing and upcoming regulations, leading to the financial and reputational risks already mentioned. Under the PPWR, for example, the penalties for non-compliance are not just theoretical鈥攖hey are a looming reality. Each EU member state can impose sanctions that are effective, proportionate, and dissuasive, ranging from hefty fines to sales bans or mandatory product recalls because of non-compliant packaging. In other words, the clock is ticking and the consequences of inaction could hit harder than anticipated.

Early adopters stand to benefit from their experience and will be better prepared for the shifting regulatory field when the treaty enters into force. By proactively implementing robust data management solutions and streamlining their reporting processes, they can start to make gains in terms of circularity and sustainability. In doing so, they will obtain an unprecedented view of their plastic material flows, allowing them to unlock efficiencies and reduce risk.

Data management is critical

Contrary to an often referred to argument put forward by treaty detractors, the data organizations require for compliance does exist and can be found within existing enterprise systems. Companies should look to their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and financial reporting platforms. These are treasure troves, filled with procurement records, supplier data, and waste management information鈥攌ey assets for reporting purposes.

Businesses should also coordinate with their suppliers and customers with a view to data sharing for resource optimization and to scale efficiencies.

Data management systems like help companies collect and use data by aggregating it from third-party systems. It can not only allow sustainability managers to accurately calculate fees and taxes but can give them a lifecycle view of indirect taxation costs and, by considering downstream recyclability and recycled content, the environmental impact of design choices. The solution can also allow users to experiment with switching materials, products, and altering supply chains, providing them with the information they need for agile decision-making.

Prepare for an ambitious treaty

Corporations must invest in their enterprise systems to leverage data and collaborate with their supply chain to meet upcoming legislation and avoid risks and penalties of non-compliance. The sooner they start, the better their competitive advantage. By utilizing data management systems to collect robust data and collaborate with supply chains, they will be equipped to thrive in the era of plastic regulation, limiting their costs, achieving sustainability targets, and complying with evolving regulations.

Darren West is global head of Circular Economy Solutions at SAP.

All this hard work and ingenuity has turned Schaeffler into a reliable partner in making motion more efficient, intelligent, and sustainable across the entire life cycle.

According to Christof Heurung, head of Strategic Digitalization at Schaeffler: 鈥淲e see sustainability and digitalization as key topics for our future success. By combining the right digital technologies, such as AI innovations, with our pioneering spirit, we can take sustainability to the next level and create an even more sustainable future for Schaeffler, as well as for our customers and suppliers.鈥�

Partnering for Greener Supply Chain Digitalization

Shipping diverse offerings to customers worldwide requires a wide array of containers 鈥� all of which must be managed efficiently and transparently across internal operations, suppliers, and customers. However, to be successful, this approach demands the integration of numerous business systems and applications to access and exchange information securely, streamline processes strategically, and react to new challenges and opportunities with precision.

Unfortunately, most companies fall short of achieving this advantage. Shipping containers are often managed with a fragmented application landscape. This setup challenges the ability to respond quickly to packaging trends and new business requirements. It also limits the transparency needed to reconcile customers鈥� returnable-packaging accounts accurately and outsource delivery services to the right shared-service center. Suppliers using the same containers operate on a separate third-party system, leading to disjointed operations.

鈥淎fter using 51风流solutions for around 40 years now, during the past five years, we have established a strategic partnership with 51风流to develop and introduce new IT application systems while forging ahead in our desire to run a more sustainable operation,鈥� says Gerhard Stoessel, IT program lead for 51风流S/4HANA at the Schaeffler Group. 鈥淪uch a relationship is allowing Schaeffler and 51风流to identify unmet industry needs and launch numerous innovations.鈥�

Introducing Industry-Wide Circular Logistic Flows

One of those innovations is the solution. The industry-specific solution supports circular logistic flows for returnable and reusable packaging material such as containers, boxes, and pallets 鈥� from supplier and customer deliveries to intra-company movements and the journey back to the company.

When Schaeffler first used 51风流Returnable Packaging Management, it covered only 30% of container management requirements. Sven Proschek, product owner of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud for logistics at Schaeffler, notes that the company鈥檚 close collaboration with 51风流was key to turning this trend around: 鈥淥ur partnership with 51风流enabled us to enrich the solution with the industry-relevant capabilities that companies like ours need, as well as near-seamless, end-to-end integration of the container management cycle.鈥�

Schaeffler is currently rolling out the solution across over 80 manufacturing plants in its worldwide ecosystem. This approach is streamlining the supply chain into a more efficient and robust network, resulting in fewer delivery failures and deeper transparency in the company鈥檚 packaging material inventory. The overall workload is decreasing even though the company ships products to more customers 鈥� thanks to AI capabilities such as container reconciliation automation and self-services for reordering packaging materials and checking inventory.

鈥淲e can now react quickly to new trends, support an end-to-end collaborative solution for suppliers and customers, and save time and costs through automation,鈥� Proschek reports. 鈥淓fficient container management also helps us avoid delivery failures due to shortages.鈥�

Making Sustainability More Cost-Efficient

Schaeffler is also exploring new AI-enabled capabilities for 51风流Returnable Packaging Management that can help the business, as well as its peers, further bridge the gap between sustainability and cost efficiency.

One idea that is gaining traction is machine learning-powered returnable packaging account matching. It aims to reduce the manual effort needed to analyze unmatched items and determine whether the underlying issue is a logistical exception or a discrepancy in matching attributes between incoming statements and open line items.

With this capability, Schaeffler can perform returnable account matching with the help of machine learning models and automate the matching process by activating line-item matching. Doing so streamlines the reconciliation process and enhances efficiency, empowering packaging planners to focus on strategic tasks. Additionally, it minimizes errors and increases the accuracy of the returnable packaging material inventory across the supply chain.

Expanding the Possibilities with a Future-Minded Vision

Schaeffler’s commitment to innovation and sustainability is evident in its adoption of AI-powered solutions for sustainable packaging and supply chain management. By using technologies such as the line-item matching functionality available in 51风流Returnable Packaging Management, Schaeffler is not only streamlining its operations but also reducing costs, minimizing errors, and increasing efficiency.

As Schaeffler continues to lead the way in sustainable packaging practices, it sets a compelling example for the industry, showcasing the transformative potential of cloud innovations and AI in driving sustainable business practices.

Korbinian Koblitz is Business Development lead at SAP.

Once perceived as a distant issue, food insecurity became a lived experience for millions as economic instability, layoffs, and shortages spiraled out of control. Even in the most affluent countries, the cracks became visible. In March 2020, a former refugee, , watched as social service agencies and food banks in his adoptive country of Switzerland were shuttered, risking enormous food waste and adding to the 745,000 people already living below the poverty line in one of the world鈥檚 most prosperous nations.

Meanwhile, an unprecedented lockdown created drastic shifts in consumer demand, and surplus food and other necessities accumulated in warehouses while families went hungry, amplifying another existing crisis: food waste. Millions of tons of food are lost annually in Switzerland alone, and food waste worldwide accounts for a quarter of the environmental impact of the entire food system.                                

As the pandemic wore on, Diare-Conde saw an opportunity to tackle two urgent challenges simultaneously 鈥� feeding people in need and reducing food waste. He founded (EfA), an entirely volunteer-run non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to eradicating hunger in Switzerland by redistributing surplus food to anyone who needs it. Essen f眉r Alle means 鈥渇ood for all.鈥�

The Right Partners, Across Generations, at the Right Time

Diare-Conde found an unlikely IT lead in then-thirteen-year-old , who coded the software that got EfA up and running, collecting and distributing food at its first location in Zurich. As the organization continued to grow, Beeler鈥檚 heroic, homegrown solution was struggling to keep up with increasingly complex logistics 鈥� coordinating the shifts of hundreds of volunteer workers, tracking the intake and distribution of thousands of pounds of food and other supplies, and keeping secure records 鈥� especially, Diare-Conde explained, since EfA鈥檚 IT lead was often otherwise occupied with school and homework.

EfA needed a secure, scalable, user-friendly solution that would help maximize the organization鈥檚 resources and supplies and, therefore, impact. Enter , who brought Diare-Conde a possible solution: perhaps Nadjmabadi鈥檚 employer could sponsor the organization鈥檚 new software and build EfA a cloud-based technology foundation. Nadjmabadi鈥檚 employer? 51风流Switzerland. Diare-Conde was quickly convinced. 51风流jumped on board, and within five months EfA鈥檚 new software, created using (51风流BTP), went live.

Streamlining Aid, Maximizing Reach

In the short time since, EfA鈥檚 user-friendly, cloud-based, mobile-optimized solution has streamlined food distribution and volunteer management 鈥� enabling the distribution of around 900 tons of food and the management of 10,000 volunteer shifts 鈥� while offering 360-degree visibility for planning and oversight and providing advanced analytics to enable further process innovation and optimization.

Of particular importance to EfA鈥檚 clients were the new solution鈥檚 stringent protocols for safeguarding sensitive personal data. 鈥淢any clients come to us asking if we can guarantee that [their] details will be kept securely, and I can say we work with 51风流so we have everything we need to guarantee secure data handling,鈥� Diare-Conde said.

By leveraging the 51风流BTP AI-enabled business optical character recognition (OCR) capability, new clients experience a seamless registration process with a passport scanner that securely captures their personal information, while returning clients benefit from a smooth and efficient check-in experience.

The scalable, cloud-based 51风流BTP solution that runs on a database as a service means that EfA鈥檚 technology solutions can quickly and efficiently evolve with the organization. 鈥淲e are constantly working on enhancements and improvements to the existing solution,鈥� Nadjmabadi said. 51风流BTP was instrumental in integrating and connecting the entire EfA landscape.

For now, every Saturday, volunteers from a database that has grown to 1,000 members distribute 20 tons of food to 2,000 people at up to five locations across Switzerland. And, Beeler explained, EfA鈥檚 impact is even more significant than these numbers suggest because some recipients are collecting food for an entire family, meaning that the organization鈥檚 dedicated volunteers serve as many as 10,000 people each week.

A Beacon of Hope

Unfortunately, demand for EfA鈥檚 services will only be increasing. In 2023, 30,223 refugees applied for asylum in Switzerland, up 20% from 2022. Diare-Conde plans to keep pace: 鈥淲e will cover almost all of Switzerland soon.鈥� And the NGO isn鈥檛 stopping there 鈥� the organization is currently exploring a partnership with a prominent German food bank.

But given that food waste is estimated to account for 8% to 10% of global greenhouse gases, EfA鈥檚 impact is already reverberating beyond Switzerland鈥檚 borders by directing thousands of tons of food that might otherwise be wasted onto the plates of people in need and by blazing a bold trail that others may follow.

For the full Essen f眉r Alle episode and the on-demand Better Together: Customer Conversations series, visit .

Technology Serving People

The human side of technology is about ensuring that technology serves people, not vice versa. Known for his thought leadership in intelligent automation and digital transformation, said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 about designing and implementing technology with empathy, understanding how it impacts individuals and society. Doing so enables a future where innovation benefits everyone 鈥� ethically, inclusively, and sustainably.鈥�

Timo Elliott is VP and global innovation advocate for 51风流BTP at SAP.