By Nathan Dukes
SAP has set its eyes on the sustainability market with a new BusinessObjects application that allows businesses to track their sustainability goals and performance.
Today, businesses are giving priority to improving their sustainability. Whilst some know what needs to be done, SAP says many have found it difficult to manage accountability across their businesses.
To tap this growing need, SAP has introduced SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management, which allows businesses to set sustainability objectives, and measure and communicate their performance.
The application presents a holistic view of the organisation’s sustainability indicators with an uncomplicated interface which streamlines internal and external reporting.
The application features a library of sustainability KPIs, and has the ability to automatically collect KPI data from a variety of sources, allowing customers to move beyond error-prone manual data collection.
Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer and executive vice president of Sustainability Solutions at SAP AG, said environmental sustainability is only the first step for big business.
“To truly be seen as sustainability leaders, businesses need to look beyond carbon footprinting and start proactively managing the full spectrum of sustainability opportunities, including economic, social and environmental obligations,” he said.
The application leverages SAP BusinessObjects analytical tools and sits within a set of other similar sustainability applications, including SAP ERP, SAP Environment, Health, and Safety Management, and SAP Carbon Impact Management.
Dr. Stephen Stokes, vice president of Sustainability and Green Technologies at AMR Research, said sustainability is increasingly mission-critical across the corporate world.
“It is becoming a key element of business strategy, with the potential to deliver new levels of efficiency and operational performance, innovation and organisational transformation,” he said.
“Managing and reporting an organisation’s sustainable performance via transparent and high quality data collation, analysis, optimisation and modeling is a new basis for defining and communicating operational excellence.”
John Gagel, manager, of Sustainable Practices – Environmental, Health and Safety at Lexmark, said Lexmark strives to promote sustainability in their business practices.
“As a global company, it can be challenging to track sustainability metrics across our business. As a co-innovation partner with SAP during development of the sustainability performance management application, we were able to define our sustainability needs and ensure they were addressed in the software,” he said.
The application is the first solution to be certified by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an international network that has developed the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework.
