SAP Sustainability Control Tower: What is it and Why is it Important?

In today's rapidly changing world, sustainability is a concept that deserves increasing attention. It is no longer enough to simply make a profit and pursue economic success. Customers, investors, and communities now expect more from companies. They want to see companies take responsibility for their impact on the environment, society, and the economy.

Regulations are also evolving. Governments around the world are imposing stricter measures regarding sustainability and reporting. To report effectively and verifiably, there is a high demand for valid measurements and data availability.

What is the SAP Sustainability Control Tower ?

The SAP Sustainability Control Tower is a solution that enables companies to monitor, analyze and improve their sustainability performance. It provides an overview of the sustainability performance within a company, such as CO2 emissions and water usage. In addition, the Sustainability Control Tower is a central place to collate these numbers from different source systems. Think of S/4HANA, Product Footprint Management or Responsible Design and Production. Because the solution can plug into relevant systems and apps, it provides automation for insight into current data. Due to this integration, the chance of an error is significantly reduced. Through APIs, other systems can be connected to the Sustainability Control Tower. Therefore, the Control Tower is not only a reporting tool, but also a data management platform for sustainability figures. From the Control Tower, it is also possible to convert data into globally developed standards for ESG reporting such as GRI, WEF or TCFD.

Why is it so important?

First and foremost, it helps companies set and track sustainability goals over time. By monitoring and analyzing current figures at different levels, companies gain insight into the regions that need improvement, for example. These improvements can relate to the product, but also to a company's network. This not only save costs in the production process but can also help forge a closer relationship with customers and stakeholders, when sustainability is placed high on the agenda.

Another crucial factor that plays a role for many companies is the legal regulations regarding sustainability reporting. In the EU, from 2024 onwards, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will come into force. This new legislation obliges no less than 50,000 organizations to integrate their sustainability goals, in a verifiable way, into their annual reports. This alone poses a huge challenge for many of our clients, who will have to pay considerable attention to this aspect in the coming years. One of the problems many of our clients currently face is the preparation and processing of data to arrive at a verifiable report.

With the SAP Sustainability Control Tower, our clients can easily collect and structure this data for the mandatory audits.

Conclusion

The SAP Sustainability Control Tower can play an important role in a company's sustainability policy. It provides insight into the sustainability performance, centralized in a location, and helps companies structure, track and adjust their own ambitions where necessary. In addition, it provides a solution for delivering mandatory sustainability reports.

The benefits in a nutshell

The SAP Sustainability Control Tower offers many different benefits:

If you would like to learn more about SAP Sustainability Control Tower, or how McCoy can help your company achieve its sustainability goals, please feel free to contact Jouri Lagarde or Arjen van der Sluijs.