Driving Innovation out of the SAP Sustainability Labs Markdorf and Siegen
I like to refer to one of the top messages of SAP.
Everything we do is guided by our vision “Help the world run better and improve peoples’ lives” through our integrated strategy. We enable our customers to create positive economic, environmental and social impact on the world.
This is a clear statement to sustainability as enabler as well as exemplar. But this is also a clear commitment to innovation.
“Sustainability is driving innovation”
The SAP Sustainability Lab is driving innovation in many areas. Let’s have a look at our products first. Sustainable and compliant products are a must for our customers. The SAP Environment Health and Safety (EHS) solutions are helping our customers in an efficient and effective way to fulfil their obligations for safe products.
This example shows the reach of SAP products for sustainable and compliant products.
In the last years we added a complete new cloud solution to our product portfolio. We call it EHS regulatory documentation (ERD).
Our expertise
- More than 10 years of vendor SDS management and SDS authoring experience
- More than 10 years of regulatory content development
- More than 120 chemical and regulatory experts forming a worldwide expert network and delivering the service to the customer, supplemented by a team of IT experts for connecting the customer infrastructure with SAPs backend system landscape.
Our Cloud Product
This unique expertise combining regulatory as well as chemical knowledge with IT skills has been bundled within SAP in the development and delivery department called Content as a Service (CaaS) in which also SAP BCS as a legal entity is included.
This approach led to the development of the cloud solution SAP ERD which as of today is one of the leading products for global component data management and global SDS authoring. For customers not using SAP or SAP EHS software the SDS delivery can be made via the SAP ERD portal.
The backbone of SAP ERD is the chemical component database in which all relevant properties, such as physical/chemical data, toxicity, ecotoxicity etc. as well as regulatory properties of chemical components are managed and maintained. This is forming the always accurate and globally consistent data pool required for SDS authoring as well as for subsequent compliance tasks.
Here you can find some more information concerning SAP-BCS services
Using cloud technology as simplifier
Instead of delivering software to our customers, we use our own software to deliver product compliance. This Cloud solution is a great simplifier and well accepted by the customers. It is only necessary to implement a data interface for using the cloud service.
In addition it is also a sustainable service. The IT system in the background is a shared service for many customers. So, the economy of scale is also a scaling of sustainability.
“Innovation is part of our DNA”
Any plant needs healthy soil, water and sunlight for growing. So, also innovation needs an appropriate environment for growth. An essential part of the Labs management is to enable and facilitate innovation. It is necessary to establish an innovation culture and to secure, that good ideas are brought back to the product owners. I like to show you some elements of our innovation DNA.
d-shop
An important ingredient is our d-shop. As in all other locations, the d-shop is open for all employees for following their ideas. In addition we use the maker place in collaboration with our education department for setting up an industry 4.0 environment. And we use it as playground for innovation ideas in the EH&S area.
Innovation Days
Every year we run our Innovation days as facilitating event for innovation ideas. The following picture shows an overview of our event in June. We have had participants from 5 locations. This includes colleagues from Walldorf, Sofia, Siegen, Palo Alto and Markdorf. With more than 50 developers participating, this is the biggest innovation event in the sustainability software development area.
As you can see we integrated our d-shop to this event. We are very proud that the outcome of the d-shop team is now being presented in the InnoVoyage to more than 300 colleagues.
Innovation is not limited to software development or to our products. Innovation is also part of the overall location environment.
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