Sus­tain­abil­i­ty will be top of mind for many atten­dees at ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for CoE and EA, a one-of-a-kind joint con­fer­ence tak­ing place lat­er this month.

Bring­ing togeth­er Cen­ter of Excel­lence (CoE) and Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture (EA) pro­fes­sion­als to learn from one anoth­er and con­sid­er the nature of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the four-day event (April 18 – 21; at SAP Head­quar­ters, in New­town Square, PA) seeks to unite SAP cus­tomers with SAP exec­u­tives and indus­try peers in order to gain insights, uncov­er new skills, and ulti­mate­ly answer the ques­tion of how they can evolve their com­pa­nies into intel­li­gent, sus­tain­able enterprises. 

Accord­ing to John Mar­tin, Nation­al Prac­tice Lead for Sus­tain­abil­i­ty at SAP, the poten­tial for col­lab­o­ra­tion between CoE and EA to dri­ve sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives is immense, and their ​“inter­de­pen­den­cies should be fos­tered” in order to deliv­er busi­ness val­ue greater than the sum of their indi­vid­ual parts.

Across his day-two keynote, ​“Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and the CoE,” and his day-four keynote, ​“The EA’s Role in Sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” Mar­tin will work to uncov­er con­nec­tions between the SAP CoE and EA, deliv­er­ing a ​“call to action” that any intel­li­gent, sus­tain­able enter­prise can cap­i­tal­ize on to facil­i­tate and achieve ​“cross-func­tion­al economies of scale” between these busi­ness units.

Enabling busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion is a key func­tion of both the CoE and the EA. As one cat­a­lyst for busi­ness val­ue, the CoE brings togeth­er busi­ness and IT tal­ents with indus­try best prac­tices to dri­ve and achieve val­ue from SAP tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments, lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy and peo­ple. Sim­i­lar­ly, the EA is a change agent with­in orga­ni­za­tions; it serves as a pow­er­ful con­nec­tor between busi­ness and IT, influ­enc­ing strate­gic direc­tion and pro­vid­ing enter­prise-wide per­spec­tive while also pro­vid­ing IT archi­tec­ture and influ­enc­ing tech­ni­cal strategy.

‘A Log­i­cal Interdependency’

With sus­tain­abil­i­ty a key strate­gic objec­tive and ​“mega­trend” trans­form­ing the glob­al econ­o­my, and ESG-man­aged assets set to rep­re­sent half of all pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­aged assets by 2024, more com­pa­nies are seek­ing to under­stand sus­tain­abil­i­ty to com­ply with and respond to exist­ing and emerg­ing expec­ta­tions from stake­hold­er groups. In this respect, clos­ing syn­er­gy gaps between busi­ness and IT is a task unique­ly suit­ed to CoE and EA pro­fes­sion­als and one that can dri­ve sus­tain­abil­i­ty and busi­ness val­ue simultaneously.

“Much like oth­er nec­es­sary inter­de­pen­den­cies across your orgs, you can see a log­i­cal inter­de­pen­den­cy for sus­tain­abil­i­ty between EA teams and larg­er SAP CoE teams with­in your orga­ni­za­tions,” Mar­tin said. 

Mar­tin men­tions SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Con­trol Tow­er, and its abil­i­ty to serve as a ​“sin­gle source of truth” for sus­tain­abil­i­ty met­rics and KPIs, against which com­pa­nies set per­for­mance goals and tar­gets. For exam­ple, in the case of emis­sions, SAP Prod­uct Foot­print and EHS Envi­ron­ment Man­age­ment can pro­vide trans­paren­cy into detailed and spe­cif­ic car­bon impact with­in your busi­ness. Mean­while, SAP Respon­si­ble Design and Pro­duc­tion can enable busi­ness­es to mon­i­tor their extend­ed pro­duc­er respon­si­bil­i­ty oblig­a­tions, bet­ter man­age asso­ci­at­ed oper­a­tional costs, and pro­vide bet­ter vis­i­bil­i­ty of mate­r­i­al flows, prod­uct and pack­ag­ing impacts, and opti­miza­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, to ensure a more cir­cu­lar business. 

Eval­u­at­ing and advis­ing on which of these tech­nolo­gies can dri­ve sus­tain­abil­i­ty and busi­ness val­ues is a respon­si­bil­i­ty with which both CoEs and EAs are entrust­ed. ​“The most effi­cient effort you spend is the first effort,” Mar­tin said. ​“It’s always less effec­tive to go back and change than to get it right the first time.” 

To that end, CoEs and EAs can strate­gize around dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, mak­ing orga­ni­za­tions more effi­cient while com­bin­ing peo­ple, prod­ucts, ini­tia­tives, process­es, and data on a sin­gle plat­form. This busi­ness evo­lu­tion, Mar­tin explains, is a pur­suit that can accel­er­ate com­pa­nies’ progress on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and dri­ve greater vis­i­bil­i­ty of busi­ness process­es overall. 

Mar­tin also not­ed that the EA is often a key role or stake­hold­er in an organization’s SAP CoE. ​“As such, they have a respon­si­bil­i­ty or oppor­tu­ni­ty to influ­ence sus­tain­abil­i­ty best prac­tices at a sys­tems ratio­nal­iza­tion, process inte­gra­tion, and inter­op­er­abil­i­ty stand­point, with­in the con­text of require­ments from var­i­ous stake­hold­er groups,” he said.

Explore upcom­ing learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and dis­cov­er more insights on sus­tain­abil­i­ty.