Introduction: Embracing Sustainability in Business

The contemporary landscape places unprecedented importance on sustainability, with investors scrutinizing climate change risk exposure, regulators urging decarbonization, and stakeholders seeking ethical and environmentally responsible practices. SAP recognizes this paradigm shift and endeavors to contribute to a sustainable future through its innovative software solutions.

Navigating the Transition to Sustainable Profitability

Transforming a profitable business into a sustainable one poses significant challenges. Many companies, including a substantial number employing SAP software, grapple with aligning profitability with sustainability. SAP acknowledges its role in fostering a sustainable future by leveraging its digital solutions and technology to efficiently manage the planet’s limited resources.

SAP’s Commitment to Sustainability Integration

SAP aims to address sustainability needs through the development of new software solutions and by incorporating sustainability features into existing products. Beyond achieving carbon neutrality, the focus extends to responsible resource management and ethical cohabitation in our global society. SAP customers can access an expanding array of products, supporting sustainability initiatives such as climate protection and equipment recycling.

Balancing Business Interests and Environmental Responsibility

In the pursuit of sustainability, businesses face the challenge of managing the “green line” (Environmental Responsibility) without dedicated experts, minimal IT resources, and without disrupting business momentum. This underscores the necessity for a systematic solution that aligns efficiency and growth objectives with environmental responsibility. Recognizing the green line as a crucial input factor becomes paramount for making informed decisions that truly render a company sustainable.

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises: A Holistic Solution

SAP introduces the “SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises” to address the growing demand for seamless integration of sustainability into business operations. This comprehensive solution facilitates businesses in managing environmental responsibility, even in the absence of dedicated sustainability experts or extensive IT resources. By offering a strategic approach, SAP empowers enterprises to navigate the complex intersection of profitability and sustainability, ensuring a harmonious coexistence with the environment and society.

The manufacturing and utilization of virtually every product contribute to the generation of a carbon footprint. It is imperative for your company to systematically track the carbon footprint associated with each product. This monitoring process provides an opportunity to enhance the life cycles of your products and reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions they generate. This is precisely where SAP Product Footprint Management becomes invaluable. By leveraging SAP Product Footprint Management, you gain the ability to monitor and control the carbon footprints associated with your products. Informed by these insights, you can strategically optimize greenhouse gas emissions throughout your product life cycles.

SAP Product Footprint Management: Evaluating Carbon Emissions

Upon compiling business data and pertinent emission factors, the groundwork is established for footprint calculations. SAP Product Footprint Management offers a pre-configured calculation template that defines the scope for the calculation process. This template selects specific business activity data essential for the calculation run related to material acquisition, including the quantity of purchased materials from suppliers, stock transfers from other plants, and purchased materials consumed in manufactured products during the given period. The products are then linked to emission factors from the LCI database, facilitating a bottom-up footprint calculation. This linkage is accomplished through pre-shipped templates of mapping tables, which can be configured by sustainability experts to align business data and emission factors based on material, supplier, country, and material commodity code characteristics.

Following a successful calculation run, the Monitor Footprints application allows you to visualize the calculated footprint results. The results are presented per product type, per unit, and collectively, with breakdowns available at various granularity levels such as suppliers of purchased materials. Additionally, a consistent monthly average is automatically computed. Period-to-period footprint comparisons can be made to observe trends. To integrate the footprints into SAP S/4HANA Cloud or SAP S/4HANA, the application facilitates the publication of footprints to these business systems.

Introduction to SAP Responsible Design and Production:

SAP Responsible Design and Production, a cloud solution, streamlines Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) tasks effortlessly. This solution empowers you to calculate and report EPR fees, plastic taxes, and corporate commitments by connecting existing primary data, structures, and business logic in SAP ERP and SAP Product Lifecycle Management to SAP Responsible Design and Production. Furthermore, integration with third-party systems for data gathering or the utilization of Microsoft Excel template files provided by SAP Responsible Design and Production is supported. With SAP Responsible Design and Production, you can assess the impact of regulations on product and packaging material scenarios or monitor global reporting requirements for EPR schemes, plastic taxes, and public commitments.

Choosing SAP Responsible Design and Production is the optimal decision for calculating EPR obligations, plastic taxes, and corporate commitments, allowing you to optimize material choices for your company and products.