This week in New York, business leaders from all over the world are united to address evolving global challenges and accelerate solutions. At multiple events and stages, SAP shares how the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Edge is helping key companies shape the future of their businesses by turning environmental, regulatory and market pressures into opportunities for action.
AI can unlock insights to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 5%-10% by 2030 with already proven applications. More than half of sustainability executives say one of their biggest actions over the next three years is expanding their use of AI and enhancing ESG capabilities, according to KPMG.
Most companies have yet to realize that AI is reaching its full potential for sustainability. In fact, only 14% of businesses are currently using AI to reduce their carbon footprint. But those ready to do so will get a critical advantage over reducing emissions. SAP's ERP-centric approach allows organizations to deliver sustainable outcomes using applications, data, and AI built into their SAP business suites. Sustainability reporting, data processing, automation and strategic insights allow AI to navigate business through today's climate challenges and ensure competitiveness for tomorrow.
Turn on ethically and responsibly
Scaling AI solutions involve significant energy and water use. To secure net profit, this must be part of the revenue from the investment conversation. However, robust governance and support for renewable energy allows AI to reduce emissions more than it generates.
All SAP data centers are equipped with 100% renewable energy, and emissions from using third-party AI systems are calculated and included in the company's range 3 emissions.
Ethical and responsible AI can be a catalyst for sustainable business transformation. Below are eight ways businesses can use SAP's AI-driven systems to build sustainable benefits:
Automation improves efficiency
1. Compliance Information Processing
SAP S/4HANA Product Compliance, AI-Assisted Compliance Information Processing feature automatically extracts compliance information from updated documents and maps information to compliance requirements.
This allows you to automate the process to reduce the cost of product compliance disclosure, reduce environmental management penalties and fines, and reduce the risk of manual errors.
This will turn a 50-minute task into a 5-minute task, reducing processing and evaluation costs by 90%.
2. Declarative image analysis
AI-assisted declarative image analysis feature SAP Green Token allows you to automatically extract data and information from sustainability declarations regardless of format.
This reduces review time, eliminates the risk of manual errors, and ensures that reports are prepared for external audits that require reporting.
Without AI, it takes about 5 minutes to review, extract and post information from the declaration. With AI, it only takes 20 seconds.
3. Permission Management
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, EHS Environment Management, and AI Assisted Permit Management can read hundreds of pages in seconds, extract compliance requirements, and propose clear tasks to meet authorization requirements.
This AI assist feature saves you on days of permission review and interpretation, removes the need to hire an external consultant, and can lead to an 80% reduction in environmental punishments and fines.
Your Personal AI Carbon Consultant
4. Emission Factor Mapping
SAP's sustainability footprint management allows SAP's AI-enhanced solutions to calculate and assign emission factors directly to purchased products. If the actual supplier emission data is given, it can be sourced from the ERP system. If estimates are required, the most accurate emission coefficients can be automatically found.
Audit-enabled emission factor mapping transforms a 10-minute manual task into a 2-minute verification.
5. Report generation
The SAP Sustainability Control Tower solution allows you to generate comprehensive ESG reports with just a few clicks.
- Automatically generate reports that are consistent with internal sustainability strategies and meet external requirements such as the Enterprise Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
- Data collection is 30 to 30 minutes, and report the creation and drafting of 30 to just 5 hours. Meanwhile, eliminate the risk of confusion and manual errors.
6. Carbon emission analysis
From today's reporting to tomorrow's plan, Joule, SAP's Copilot, can capture current carbon emissions data, return actionable insights that can help reduce emissions and guide corporate sustainability strategies.
By combining financial and carbon data, Joule can create carbon strength KPIs and become the ultimate corporate sustainability consultant.
AI Safety Officer for the EHS Team
7. Safety observation report
Complex safety reporting procedures discourage employees from reporting potential hazards. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, EHS workplace safety, and AI-assist's safety observation reporting capabilities allow basic users to enter safety observations in natural language, and the AI model processes them into formal incident reports and asks users for missing details.
This increases the likelihood that employees will report safety hazards and helps prevent serious incidents by identifying potential safety issues in advance.
8. Generating safety instructions
AI safety personnel can generate clear safety instructions for specific equipment based on the latest risk assessments and job hazard analysis.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, EHS workplace safety, and generation of AI-assisted safety guidance dramatically reduces the time and effort of manually prescribing and updating safety instructions.
We will solve today's sustainability challenges while preparing for tomorrow
Proper AI integration will ensure future operations are tightened while shedding light on paths that drive competitiveness.
What sets SAP apart is the suite-first AI-first approach that ensures that Sustainability is not an add-on, but a strategic enabler that can deliver measurable results at scale. SAP's single sustainability data model can drive consistent reporting, deeper insights and confident decision-making across any sustainability process, products and partner network.
Responsible AI partners allow companies to achieve measurable financial returns on AI investments and unlock sustainability benefits. Automate documents with many manuals. Identify emissions and guide businesses towards a decarbonized economy. And based on a single source of truth, it makes environmental impact tracking visible to every business line. With a unified set of capabilities, SAP Sustainability Solutions helps businesses address their sustainability needs across topics overall. The result is speed, trust, and traceability, turning sustainability into a strategy, as well as compliance.
See how SAP can help business power with sustainability solutions.
Monica Molesag is the global head of Sustainability Communications at SAP.
