It’s good to be back this year with the latest updates. This post will focus on key innovations with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2302 with the Sustainability LoB. I will be covering the latest and greatest from SAP Sustainability Control Tower, SAP Product Footprint Management and the latest update from Sustainability in Finance. For the last update, have a look at my previous blog post “SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Product Update Series H2 2022: Sustainability“. 

Let’s begin with a quick overview of the latest and greatest from Sustainability LoB. Watch my video below and lets get right into it.

Overview of Sustainability LoB Innovations Delivered with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2302

Release video: Sustainability – Key Innovations with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2302

Table of Contents

This blog post covers the following topics:

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises – Brief Overview

SAP Sustainability Control Tower

• KPI Tracking with “Our Ambitions”
• EU Taxonomy Content

SAP Product Footprint Management

• Calculate Freight Transport Footprints

Sustainability in Finance with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

• Starter Content for Building Forms to Collect ESG Data

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises – Brief Overview

As always, I will start the blog post with an overview of SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises.

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises is a comprehensive cloud offer that integrates data and process to manage carbon footprint, reduce material waste, and achieve social sustainability. Supported with the power and expertise of a global ecosystem.

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises brings together data and business process solutions to address:

• Holistic Steering and Reporting: Gain deep insights into sustainability performance to steer your business
• Zero Emissions with Climate Action: Reduce your carbon footprint and emissions across the value chain
• Zero Waste with Circular Economy: Shift to circular business models by reducing material waste and increasing reuse across your supply chain
• Zero Inequality with Social Responsibility: Drive ethical business across employees, suppliers, and communities

SAP Sustainability Control Tower

SAP Sustainability Control Tower, as part of “Holistic Steering and Reporting”, allows user to drive holistic steering by setting targets, monitor progress and gain actionable insights from dependable sustainability data. This in-turn gives trust by establishing robust and auditable Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting. It also facilitates assessing and improving performance regarding sustainability matters:

• For strategic performance management and related reporting.
• Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and financial / operational data integrated for a holistic view.
• Facilitate the journey towards having the right data in the right place.

In my previous blog post, I introduced the product. You can read more details in my blog post “Introducing SAP Sustainability Control Tower”

KPI Tracking with “Our Ambitions” App

Building on the capabilities of “Sustainability Metrics Catalog”, as presented in my previous blog post “Sustainability Metrics Catalog App for an Overview of the Available and Configured Sustainability Metrics“, we are proud to introduce the Our Ambitions App.

The Our Ambitions App lets users visualize ambitions and KPIs related to sustainability targets, set long-term ambitions and analyze current and forecasted events.

Why use the Our Ambitions App?

• Setting long-term ambitions – Create clarity by defining a long-term ambition and operationalize via granular target setting
• Visualizing current performance – Compare current performance against target in order to drive targeted action toward reaching ambitions
• Analyze current and forecasted trends – Understand past performance and act based on expected future trend
• Drilldown and compare – Drive targeted action via drill-down and comparing different business units and locations

Following is a system demo of Our Ambitions App. Note that configuring data through Sustainability Metrics Catalogue is a prerequisite. More information is available in the demo and in my previous blog post.

Demo: SAP Sustainability Control Tower – Our Ambitions App

Main Features: Add/Edit Ambitions

The user may use this feature to add or edit existing ambitions in the Our Ambitions app.

The following fields are available to create new or edit an existing ambition.

Main Features: Compare Ambitions

This feature lets users compare existing ambitions to determine if they are on/off track and perform other useful tasks.

• Overview Pannel – displays On Track and Off Track information, current performance of the organization, Total Variance and Total Target Completion for the selected units.
• Ambition Period – select the time period; Year, month and/or quarter
• Hierarchies –chose from three hierarchies; Business Location, Legal Entity, and Reporting Line

Main Features: Ambitions Groups

An ambition can be added to a group. This can make it easier for you to navigate and find specific ambitions through tabs at the top of the page where all groups are listed.

For more details, refer to the SAP Help Documentation

EU Taxonomy Content

We are glad announce the release of The EU Taxonomy Regulation. Which aims to establishe an EU classification system of economic activities that is intended to provide businesses and investors with clear definitions to identify the degree of environmental sustainability of business activities. It requires corporations to publicly disclose the proportion of their turnover, CapEx, and OpEx that is eligible (economic activities in scope of the EU taxonomy) and aligned (economic activities meeting the relevant criteria). The EU Taxonomy is published in the form of a delegated act that specifies the content, methodology, and presentation of information to be disclosed.

Following is a system demo explaining individual concepts and step-by-step guide.

Demo: SAP Sustainability Control Tower – EU Taxonomy Content

The EU Taxonomy regulation establishes six environmental objectives:

• Climate Change Mitigation
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Sustainable Use and Protection of Water and Marine Resources
• Transition to a Circular Economy
• Pollution Prevention and Control
• The protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems

Different means can be required to assess whether an economic activity contributes to each objective. To assess the degree of alignment with the preceding environmental objectives, the EU taxonomy defines Technical Screening Criteria for each economic activity. A business activity or asset associated to an eligible economic activity is considered aligned if it fulfils three sets of criteria:

• Substantial Contribution: The business activity substantially contributes to one of the preceding environmental objectives.
• Do No Significant Harm: The business activity does no serious harm to any of the other five environmental objectives.
• Minimum Safeguards: The organization meets certain standards when it comes to human and labor rights, bribery, taxation, and fair competition.

* More information can be found on the SAP Help Portal here.

** Please note: The EU Taxonomy app is a preview version with sample content. It cannot be used productively as of now. Full release is expected soon.

SAP Product Footprint Management

SAP Product Footprint Management, part of “Zero Emissions with Climate Change Solutions”, enables you to calculate product footprints periodically and at scale along the entire product lifecycle. You can extract business data (such as master data and material movements information) from your SAP S/4HANA or SAP S/4HANA Cloud systems and associate these to your emission factors. You can then run a mass calculation to generate footprints for your products.

Calculate Freight Transport Footprints

The next update is based on excerpt from the blog post “Calculating Transport Footprints with SAP Product Footprint Management” by Nico Wottke and credit goes to him for composing the original content.

Last year SAP announced partnership with BearingPoint on carbon and environmental footprint solutions (Press Release: SAP and BearingPoint Partner on Zero Emissions). Based on this partnership, we have introduced the ability to calculate freight transport footprints. This marks a huge milestone for our product and for sure also for our customers. We are now extending Value Chain Footprints from GHG Protocol Scope 3.1 (Purchased Goods) to additional categories, enabling the calculation of GHG Protocol Scope 3.4 (upstream transportation) and Scope 3.9 (downstream transportation), as well as Scope 1 (Direct emissions related to company-owned vehicles).

The Freight Transportation capabilities are integrated into SAP Product Footprint Management as additional standalone apps for calculating the transport emissions for all your inbound and outbound transports. The apps are delivered with pre-configured content, including network data like seaports, airport, rail barge terminals, as well vehicle data and emissions factor from the Global Logistics Emission Council (GLEC).

Please refer to the demo below.

Demo: SAP Product Footprint Management – Calculate Freight Transport Footprint

Manage Data app:

Configure master and transactional activity data for your transport footprints. Master data entities for freight can be created and edited in this app without requiring a connection to your ERP system, and transactional data can be uploaded via .csv templates. Furthermore, imported master data from your ERP system will be displayed as view only (cannot be edited).

Manage Data App – Viewing and Editing Vehicle Classes

Calculate Transport Footprints app:

This app gives the possibility to upload transport data from .csv flat files. Furthermore, you can review your uploads and check if they were successful. It is possible to set-up your own networks and locations, and there are embedded engines for routing and distance.

Calculate Transport Footprints App – Automatic Matching of Data Structures

Manage Calculation Errors app:

View errors in your data and restart the calculation when the errors are fixed. This app provides a dashboard giving an overview about the calculations that you have conducted as well as their status. Raw data is provided by the client and is then converted into the correct format in order to be usable within Product Footprint Management.

Manage Calculation Errors App

View Transport Data app:

This app provides you the business intelligence functionalities you were looking for by generating charts and detailed reporting on the calculated data within the tool directly. You have multiple options to select and receive the KPIs that you need for your carbon reporting. Furthermore, you can download the created sheets to easily implement them in your reporting.

View Transport Data App

View Transport Routes app:

This app lets users visualize emissions of transport flows on a map. You can select and view transportation flows and the corresponding emissions. You can chose Map Configurations and decide on the appropriate aggregation levels.

View Transport Routes App

Key Takeaways:

• Get insights about the environmental impact of the transportation of your goods, according to GHG Protocol Scope 1 (own fleet), 3.4 (upstream), and 3.9 (downstream)
• Perform mass uploads and calculate the freight transport footprints of your company
• Built-in analytics enabling reporting on different levels
• Geolocation based mapping service enabling visualization of transport flows and routes with related emissions

Sustainability in Finance with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

With this blog post, I will be touch topics across the LoBs. Sustainability has a deep impact on all forms of business. The next update is about collecting ESG Data from Finance and is based on the blog post “Finance in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition 2302“ by Ulrich Hauke.

Starter Content for Building Forms to Collect ESG Data

Group Reporting Data Collections package of sample data entry forms for ESG (environmental, social, corporate governance) metrics based on requirements of GRI and WEF SCM standards allows for quick and easy data collection from entities. Leverage Group Reporting’s existing abilities to manage and orchestrate global data collection processes for currencies, quantities, and texts for ESG scenario.

Sample forms included: Greenhouse gas emissions, Energy consumption, Water consumption and withdrawal, Personnel – diversity and inclusion, Personnel –  discrimination cases, Anti-corruption training, research and development projects description.

Value Proposition

• Increase efficiency in building your own ESG data collection forms by making use of the example forms as reference
• Easy collection of ESG data from entities together with consolidation figures
• Possibility to extend data entry forms for additional ESG metrics

Demo: Sample Forms to Collect ESG Data

More Resources on Sustainability

For more information on SAP for Sustainability and our 3 pillars of Zero Emissions with Climate Action, Zero Waste with Circular Economy and Zero Inequality with Social Responsibility check out the following links:

• Holistic Steering and Reporting
• Climate Action
• Circular Economy
• Social Responsibility
• SAP and our Responsibility by Thomas Saueressig
• Chasing Zero | Video 
• My previous blog posts covering sustainability
  • Sustainability with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2202
  • Product Update Series H1 2022: Sustainability
  • Sustainability with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2208
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition Product Update Series H2 2022: Sustainability

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
• Bert Schulze’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2302 Release Blog Post
• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here 
• Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
• Early Release Webinar Series here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community: here
• Feature Scope Description here
• What’s New here
• Help Portal Product Page here
• Implementation Portal here

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