Inno­va­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion were dom­i­nant themes at this year’s SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence, as SAP lead­ers unveiled new prod­ucts for sus­tain­abil­i­ty report­ing and busi­ness networks. 

As com­pa­nies world­wide react to the needs of a chang­ing reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape around envi­ron­men­tal impact, lever­ag­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty-relat­ed data has become an exec­u­tive pri­or­i­ty. Through SAP’s new green ledger, announced at the Orlan­do event, com­pa­nies can cap­ture and man­age car­bon emis­sions data with a car­bon account­ing sys­tem that par­al­lels their finan­cial account­ing system.

“In addi­tion to the top and the bot­tom line, con­sumers, your employ­ees, investors, and audi­tors all want to sup­port enter­pris­es that care about the plan­et. Today, CFOs and chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty offi­cers need to ensure com­pli­ance with 20 times more cli­mate reg­u­la­tions than in the past.”

- SAP CEO Chris­t­ian Klein

The Future of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty at SAP

SAP’s vision for trans­ac­tion­al car­bon account­ing will encom­pass three solu­tions billed by the com­pa­ny as ​“future-proof capa­bil­i­ties” to empow­er the intel­li­gent enter­prise while enabling mon­i­tor­ing and compliance:

• SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foot­print Man­age­ment, a sin­gle solu­tion for cus­tomers to track and man­age car­bon flows at the process and prod­uct lev­els across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emis­sions, cal­cu­lat­ing emis­sions through­out the orga­ni­za­tion and val­ue chain.
• SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Data Exchange, a new appli­ca­tion that enables the secure exchange of stan­dard­ized sus­tain­abil­i­ty data, such as prod­uct foot­prints, along the val­ue chain, to decar­bonize sup­ply chains more efficiently. 
• The new green ledger sys­tem for car­bon account­ing, which will be includ­ed in RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP lat­er in 2023; new capa­bil­i­ties will peri­od­i­cal­ly enhance the impact of the green ledger’s com­bined finan­cial and envi­ron­men­tal data, which will inte­grate with SAP’s cloud ERP to pro­vide native­ly inte­grat­ed finan­cial and envi­ron­men­tal decision-making.

The Key to Dri­ving Sustainability

In announc­ing new sus­tain­abil­i­ty inno­va­tions at SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence, lead­ers also intro­duced John Ker­ry, U.S. Spe­cial Pres­i­den­tial Envoy for Cli­mate, who expressed con­fi­dence in SAP’s envi­ron­men­tal com­mit­ments. He thanked SAP for being one of the first 10 com­pa­nies to com­mit to the White House’s Action Plan to guide the imple­men­ta­tion of the President’s Emer­gency Plan for Adap­ta­tion and Resilience (PRE­PARE) last fall. 

Ker­ry called on the pri­vate sec­tor to act on cli­mate change and lim­it glob­al warm­ing. He also stressed the impor­tance of car­bon account­ing, employ­ing the adage, ​“You can’t man­age what you can’t measure.”

“Rig­or­ous account­ing and trans­paren­cy are absolute­ly essen­tial,” Ker­ry said. ​“We need trust in the sys­tem. And we need to ensure that all of our actions have the high­est envi­ron­men­tal integri­ty. Rig­or­ous account­ing and strong envi­ron­men­tal integri­ty will be the key to the suc­cess of the ener­gy tran­si­tion accel­er­a­tor that we’re cre­at­ing with our partners.”

SAP Part­ners with Accenture

SAP addi­tion­al­ly announced a part­ner­ship with con­sult­ing firm Accen­ture in order to enhance SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), giv­ing cus­tomers the abil­i­ty to sim­u­late and explore busi­ness sce­nar­ios in immer­sive dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments, there­by gain­ing a com­pet­i­tive edge before encoun­ter­ing such expe­ri­ences or busi­ness mod­els in the real world. 

Through the expan­sion of their part­ner­ship, SAP and Accen­ture will also work to dri­ve sup­ply chain excel­lence by col­lab­o­rat­ing to bol­ster SAP Busi­ness Net­work, devel­op­ing a sus­tain­able trad­ing part­ner net­work that will pri­or­i­tize increased trans­paren­cy, resilience, and vis­i­bil­i­ty for cus­tomers across assets and inven­to­ry. This approach will include new capa­bil­i­ties, assets, and accel­er­a­tors for logis­tics, pro­cure­ment, sup­ply chain, and asset management. 

Dis­cov­er more insights, news, and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty updates from ASUG here.