CSRD Reporting to Sustainable Outcomes

To capture value, leaders are no longer talking about reporting alignment alone but about the opportunity to transform business processes for sustainable impact. By leveraging SAP Sustainability solutions, organizations can move beyond compliance and operationalize sustainability across their business.

Across industries, accurate data is the foundation for both auditable disclosures and reliable insights to steer sustainable transformation. But environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data aggregation and validation can be a daunting challenge given that most companies have not fully integrated their ESG data recording and control into their core financial, procurement, supply chain management, and human resources systems.

For over 50 years, SAP has helped businesses master complexity. With today’s evolving ESG regulatory landscape, including the arrival of the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), SAP is again rising to the complex challenges of enabling customers to record, report, and act on their sustainability obligations. This includes the difficulties in collecting accurate emissions data across internal operations and global supply chains.

Achieving Competitive Advantage with SAP Sustainability Solutions Powered by SAP Business AI

By integrating sustainability data with cloud ERP, SAP can uniquely enable businesses with the agility to keep pace with rapidly evolving ESG standards; link disparate data sources to share trusted, real-time insights with sustainability decision-makers; and achieve their net-zero ambitions.

Companies can start today by adopting SAP Sustainability Control Tower – integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud – for ESG data management and reporting. They can extend sustainability management with SAP Sustainability Footprint Management and SAP Sustainability Data Exchange to help accelerate their journey to the green ledger, managing the carbon entering and leaving their systems and balancing their “carbon books” the same way they balance their financial books.

SAP Business AI can take the value of our sustainability solutions to the next level by helping our customers set data-driven ESG and net-zero strategies, increase the transparency of supply chain emissions, automate sustainability reporting, achieve regulatory compliance, find and mitigate ESG-related risks, and better communicate the value of sustainability to their customers – all powered by the world’s largest and most comprehensive pool of foundational business data.

Combined with partner services for customer-specific data and reporting requirements, SAP Sustainability solutions can offer new levels of business insight for executive-level decision-making to help businesses reach their sustainability goals and comply with CSRD and other regulatory frameworks.

CSRD Toolbox

Companies operating in the EU face pressure from the expanding ESG regulations under CSRD to disclose their sustainability performance with a data granularity and auditability that – over time – will bring sustainability reporting on par with financial reporting. CSRD requirements will first impact large public-interest companies with over 500 employees that need to report in 2025 on 2024 ESG performance. Requirements cascade to small and midsize enterprises in coming years.

Under CSRD, companies will need to report based on the requirements of both the EU Taxonomy, which classifies sustainability disclosures for investors, and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), the disclosure rules set by the European Financial Reporting Financial Group (EFRAG), a standard-setting body of the EU. With SAP Sustainability Control Tower, companies can comply with both the EU Taxonomy and ESRS, gaining agility through the convergence of ESG data management and cloud ERP – and soon AI-driven business process optimization.

SAP Sustainability Control Tower: A Trusted ESG Data Foundation for EU Taxonomy and ESRS

With SAP Sustainability Control Tower, you can assess activities in line with the EU Taxonomy, reporting on KPIs for eligibility and alignment.

• Enable a holistic view of EU Taxonomy reporting through shared use of data  
• Kick-start EU Taxonomy data management and reporting with pre-built and adaptable templates  
• Simplify the EU Taxonomy process with integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 
• Integrate customer or partner extensions via APIs 

You can also streamline ESRS disclosures, integrating ESG data across systems and extending content and functionality.

• Gather ESG data and determine KPIs 
• Meet evolving ESG and financial disclosure requirements including ESRS 
• Set, track, and achieve targets to support sustainable business 
• Obtain a limited external assurance and prepare for reasonable assurance 

Act Now

Businesses need to start now to be prepared not only for CSRD compliance, but for gaining the insights to steer sustainability investments and future-proof long-term value. 

For over 50 years, SAP has been enabling the world’s leading businesses to master complexity, delivering the integration and innovation needed for industry-leading performance. With SAP Sustainability Control Tower and other cloud-driven innovations, SAP and its partners can help companies master CSRD as well and build the foundation for the evolution of their long-term sustainability strategies.  

To learn more, visit www.sap.com/sustainability/csrd-guide.html.

Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer and co-GM for SAP Sustainability.