With Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives becoming more ingrained into companies’ business strategies, sustainability initiatives will see more significant strides this year, according to software company SAP.

With climate change challenges becoming even more pronounced than before, more companies felt compelled to do their part by reducing carbon footprint, investing in renewable energy sources, and promoting ethical practices.

To enable businesses to achieve their sustainability goals, SAP said they should have visibility of operations not only on the ground but also on the back end. By streamlining the processes using technology, organizations will not only reduce the carbon footprint generated by stakeholders but also improve operational efficiency.

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Supply Chains   

There is an existing demand for businesses to ensure resilient supply chains. Nowadays, most greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions originate from businesses’ supply chain activities. Citing a recent study by the non-profit organization CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Program), SAP said these activities make up at least 92% of the whole GHG emitted by a business.    

“In recent years, businesses have seen the importance of having resilient supply chains,” said Rudy Abrahams, managing director of SAP Philippines. “As disruptions still happen across various industries, digitalizing supply chains help organizations ensure that they provide consumers consistently with the goods and services they need and reduce their carbon emissions.”

Business transformation 

As companies further strengthen their sustainability and ESG initiatives this year, Abrahams noted that embracing technology remains critical to implement these changes. Companies like AC Energy (ACEN) and Globe Group have been strengthening their business transformation initiatives to achieve their goals.   

For instance, ACEN, the listed energy platform of the Ayala Group, has been leading the charge in the renewables revolution and toward adopting technology. But the company knew that its green journey should start from within and by ensuring that necessary solutions are available to improve their processes.   

Recently, ACEN implemented SAP S/4HANA, an enterprise resource planning software for large enterprises, on Azure to create a unified digital business platform covering finance, procurement, inventory, and asset maintenance across multiple entities. SAP S/4HANA has been helping the company have visibility across its entities. This is crucial to enable collaboration among ACEN’s teams as they formulate and execute strategies to increase solar and wind plant capacities while reducing inefficiencies and waste.   

ACEN also aimed to achieve efficient day-to-day operations with streamlined processes on a digital platform by improving corporate governance, reducing cybersecurity risks, and minimizing paper wastage. In addition, learning a new skill, such as SAP S/4HANA, helped contribute to human empowerment in the workplace.  

For Globe, on the other hand, the effective use of organizational data to make more informed decisions is critical in improving sustainability outcomes. As the country’s top telco and digital solutions platform, Globe has various entities with different processes and reporting formats.  

To address this challenge, Globe migrated to SAP S/4HANA to improve fragmented processes, manual workloads, inefficiencies, lack of insights, and delayed decision-making. It also integrated SAP Fiori to improve the user experience and access to insights. Automation and fewer reconciliations also enable quicker processing of financial transactions, quicker book closing, and error-free reporting.  

“These are the industry trends that we believe will share the world of business this 2023 and beyond. On our part, SAP remains committed to helping organizations transform into fully digital, resilient, and sustainable enterprises, enabled with data visibility into their business functions and processes to make the most critical strategic and operating decisions,” Abrahams said.