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SAP To Achieve Net-Zero Emissions Across Their Value Chain By 2030

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Creating vibrant ecosystems is the best way leaders can help their organizations achieve sustainability goals. Take SAP, for example, which recently announced plans to accelerate efforts to achieve net-zero emissions across their value chain by 2030, rather than 2050 -– 20 years earlier than we originally planned.

 Julia White, SAP’s Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer, explained to me in detail this week the organization’s value proposition for making sustainability management the centerpiece of its new suite of products. “SAP wants to make sustainability profitable and profitability sustainable,” said White, who believes because of the transformative potential of this value proposition, sustainability is the new frontier of digital transformation.

This sentiment is shared by Professor Vijay Pereira of NEOMA Business School. Taking open innovation as an example, Pereira claims that it has proven helpful with firms reporting several positive outcomes, including enhanced firm performance, innovation performance quality, and product range and market share. Furthermore, Pereira opines that open innovation is also hailed as a way to save costs and time during a crisis, such as the ongoing pandemic.

White agrees, suggesting business leaders need tools that enable them to quantify, analyze, and act on real-time data through their end-to-end operations to establish a sustainability “green line.” Therefore, the best way to achieve profits and sustainable business operations is by embedding holistic sustainability management through the entire enterprise.

In doing so, White explains, SAP’s customers are integrating technology and big data into their operations to be more sustainable while driving bottom-line value. This is achieved by embedding sustainability data into their core business processes, so they gain the visibility to manage key sustainability areas like carbon accounting and workforce diversity. “Our focus is on helping our customers embrace the benefits of a digital transformation to solve their biggest challenges,” comments White. She adds, “It’s about using the cloud, streamlining data structures, and process integration across the organization to better manage supply chains and help solve challenges such as climate change.”

Interestingly, SAP also is bringing its customers into collaborations with a global ecosystem of partners and partnerships that help scale impact to businesses of all sizes and industries. For example, the organization is developing and using industry-cloud data sharing platforms, like Catena-X for the automotive sector, and tackling Scope 3 emissions accounting through coalitions like the WBCSD Pathfinder Initiative. With close partnerships in the ecosystem, SAP delivers a path to sustainability innovation that no other individual competitor can match. In addition, SAP’s partner ecosystem expands market reach and helps customers worldwide accelerate and enhance the impact of their sustainability journeys.

When considering how this announcement reflects on the industry, White regards SAP as a trailblazer for enterprise applications of sustainability management technologies. They enable companies to embed sustainability across their entire enterprise for holistic sustainability management. White concludes that no other technology provider can match the portfolio of sustainability management tools. This sentiment is shared by Pereira, who suggests that SAP solutions can be broadly adopted for holistic management or selectively implemented according to priority themes such as emissions management, waste and materials management, or social responsibility across value chains. “The Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises builds on our track record of offering customers proven solutions that deliver real-world value.”

Looking ahead, White believes the magnitude of the challenges we face today means the economic status quo is unsustainable. “Disconnected, piecemeal approaches won’t offer the competitive growth opportunities of implementing holistic, integrated sustainability management,” she adds. “Businesses of all sizes around the world are the most effective drivers of sustainable development. As a result, all of us in the private sector must recognize the urgency of the task at hand and become sustainable enterprises.”

Therefore, the critical message is that sustainability and long-term value creation are hand-in-hand. In other words, treating sustainability as an added cost to business is incorrect – it is a competitive advantage. To be profitable over the long term, companies need to embrace sustainability. Businesses that focus on sustainability performance will more easily comply with increasing regulation, gain competitive efficiencies, and ultimately adopt and thrive through new business opportunities as economies transition.

Becoming truly sustainable requires more than efficiency gains and tinkering on the edges of business models. It takes holistic, end-to-end approaches that bring together all facets of a business focused on creating long-term value – for the company and society alike.

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