According to a recent SAP and Alpha Sense survey, most businesses have not embedded sustainability into their core strategies. In some cases, corporations see sustainability management as a regulatory and compliance challenge rather than a strategic opportunity for economic and social growth.
Therefore, businesses run different technologies and end up operating in silos, which prevent them from connecting financial outcomes with non-financial metrics. Additionally, companies can view sustainability as an after-the-fact reporting activity without any influence in its executive decisions.
Today, more than ever, businesses need to holistically manage their business models across their supply chains, operations, and people agenda.
At the recent COP26 climate conference, business and government leaders agreed on the urgency to reinvent their business models to accelerate sustainable business performance. Business leaders want to meet regulatory requirements, improve efficiency in their processes, and create responsible products and services.
As the leading enterprise resource management company, SAP has committed to help customers in their digital transformation to make sustainability profitable and profitability sustainable.
In this digital transformation, SAP’s approach is based on providing visibility and transparency to make sustainable decisions from the CEO’s office to the end user, connecting business processes to embed sustainability into all business functions — from carbon accounting to gender equality — and providing a global ecosystem of partners than can help SAP to scale impact through businesses of all sizes and across all industries around the world.
Providing a global ecosystem to help businesses is core to SAP’s DNA.
Julia White, chief marketing and solutions officer and member of the Executive Board at SAP SE, points out: “Sustainability is a team sport. No company or organization can do it alone. We work with many of the world’s best companies who support our vision and work together with us every day to deliver sustainable outcomes for our customers.”
Working with SAP, partners advance market development for sustainable solutions. They turn ideas and imperatives into compelling paths to action that leverage SAP solutions. Together, we advocate with thought leadership and galvanize collective efforts and methodologies in industry forums like the World Economic Forum, World Business Council on Sustainable Development, and United Nations Organizations.
SAP and its ecosystem accelerate sustainable innovation as a central element of the intelligent enterprise. Through co-innovation as well as solution and content partnerships, SAP brings more complete solutions to market faster, benefiting our customers and the planet. More broadly, SAP serves as a key player in a thriving ecosystem of sustainability innovation — helping customers more easily capitalize on emerging solutions that tie closely to their digital core. With its robust network, SAP can deliver a path to sustainability innovation that no other individual competitor can match.
Accenture
“With fewer than 2,000 working days left to 2030, the time to rewire business top to bottom to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals is now. We are proud to expand our work with SAP, which includes launching SDG Ambition with UN Global Compact that over 700 companies have joined. By committing to put sustainability at the center of all we do and everyone we work with, together we can show companies how to tackle climate change, build circular economy practices, businesses, human rights and supply chains, and focus on data-driven measurement as well as accurately report ESG performance when delivering their commitments.”
– Peter Lacy, Global Sustainability Services Lead, Chief Responsibility Officer and
Member of the Global Management Committee, Accenture
BearingPoint
“Helping our clients meet their decarbonization targets has been one of our proven market offerings for more than 10 years. At BearingPoint, we not only calculate the product and corporate footprint of our clients, we also enable them to optimize the climate impact of every product across the entire life cycle. Providing end-to-end CO2 as a service is our core enabler for our clients. We at BearingPoint, as co-development partner for SAP Product Footprint Management, believe that together with SAP we can bring our vision to life: managing the ‘green line’ as equally as the financial bottom line. As partners, we go beyond business, making a positive impact on the climate.”
– Donald Wachs, Head of IP-Assets and
Member of Management Committee, BearingPoint
Capgemini
“Our ambitions are to act on climate change by being carbon neutral across our own operations by 2025 and across our supply chain by 2030, becoming a net-zero business well ahead of 2050, and to lead to low-carbon economic transition by helping our clients achieve their environmental commitments and save 10m tons of CO2eq globally by 2030. We cannot do this without our partner ecosystem. We are a strategic partner of SAP; by combining our deep industry knowledge, our human energy, and SAP’s world-class portfolio of enterprise and sustainability solutions, we commit to delivering on our promise to co-create a greener tomorrow with our clients.”
– Aiman Ezzat, CEO, Capgemini
Deloitte
“The climate change emergency is unfolding in front of our eyes, touching all corners of the globe. The future of our people, planet, and profession depends on the business community taking measurable, decisive action on the climate crisis. Through our WorldClimate strategy, Deloitte will embed climate-smart considerations into our own operations, encourage our professionals to act on climate change at work and at home, and engage our broader ecosystem – including SAP – to create solutions that facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
– Punit Renjen, Global CEO, Deloitte
EY
“Sustainability is one of the defining issues of our time, and today there is an unprecedented opportunity to create value for all. Together with SAP and stakeholders around the globe, the EY organization is committed to making business work for sustainability and making sustainability work for business. Enterprises and people are inspired now more than ever to do the right thing — to collaborate, innovate, be inclusive, and accelerate to a more sustainable and equitable future.”
– Steve Varley, Global Vice Chair – Sustainability, EY
IBM
“With five generations in the workplace, we are witnessing the birth of an era where technological innovation is being used to create social, economic, environmental, and business opportunities for all. Businesses of all sizes need to move from ambition to action and embrace radical thinking, like IBM’s commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. We are partnering with SAP to operationalize sustainability for our customers and society using ethical innovation to build a world that is responsible, equitable, and leaves no one behind in net-zero transition. We are committed to furthering our decades-long work to address the global climate crisis.”
– Sheri R. Hinish, Global Executive Partner, Enterprise Sustainability and
Sustainable Supply Chain Practice Leader, IBM
PwC
“PwC’s global sustainability network in over 60 countries is supporting organizations to deliver ESG-related outcomes across the globe. PwC works with clients to help them create their strategy, set targets, measure impact, and report on key performance indicators relevant to internal and external ESG drivers. Together with SAP, PwC is leveraging its ESG expertise to integrate and build strategic ESG solutions leveraging SAP technology. Organizations will benefit from these integrated solutions to help set and manage net-zero targets, define ESG strategies, and mitigate climate and ESG risks to deliver transparent investor-grade ESG reporting.”
– Michael Rasch, Global SAP Alliance Leader, PwC Germany
Bernd Schmalzridt is senior director of Global Business Development for Sustainability at SAP.
