Tag: SAS

Tech company sustainability reports reviewed

Corporate Social Responsibility
Original photo by ATIS547

I was asked on Twitter recently where to find a list of links to tech companies’ CSR reports.

I didn’t know where to find one, so I built one and as well as just the links, I also added in a few extra observations I noted about the reports.

Company Latest Report Format Remarks External Audit GRI Index CEO involved
SAP 2009 Online with downloadable data Highly interactive, includes social media, video & ability to comment inline Independently audited by KPMG Yes – A+ Rated Yes
BT 2009 Online and PDF Granular links and multiple PDF download options Yes Yes – A+ Rated Yes
Intel 2009 PDF custom builder High level of granularity No Yes – A Rated Yes
Dell 2009 PDF Very detailed document – v little detail on website No Yes – B Rated Yes
HP 2009 Online with PDF download Granular links, some videos & interactivity Some, yes Yes Yes
Cisco 2009 Mostly PDF’s with some info available on web Lots of good videos Some Yes Yes
Sony 2009 Online and PDF Comprehensive report No Yes Yes
Microsoft 2009 PDF Lacks necessary detail No No Yes
Nokia 2008 Online No obvious link to a downloadable report Some, yes No No
Logica 2008 Online and PDF Comprehensive report No Yes Yes
IBM 2008 Online with PDF download Granular links & Social Media options No Yes Yes
Adobe 2008 Online and PDF Lots of pretty pictures but light on text No No Yes
CA 2008 PDF CA’s first sustainability report – good 1st effort No Yes – C Rated Yes
SAS 2008 PDF Good PDF report badly left down by poor supporting website No Yes – C Rated Yes
Oracle 2008 PDF Summary of 2009 report available but full report still not out No No President
Apple None
Amazon None
Google None

As previously reported here…

This is a very opportune time to be investing in sustainability management software!

Greenhouse gas emissions
Photo credit James Jordan

I wrote about SAP’s launch of their Sustainability Performance Management software recently. This is a space which is of massively growing importance given the increasing regulations around greenhouse gas emissions, for example.

I was heartened then to hear in a recent discussion with SAS that their Sustainability Management software was launched in April 2008!

For background, SAS are a business analytics software company with with an enviable record of 34 years growth and profitability reporting global revenues of US$2.31 billion in 2009 up 2.2% over 2008. SAS invested 22% of 2008 in R&D (an unusually high figure in the industry) have over 11,000 employees, and 45,000 customer sites in 100 countries. This is a significant company with a serious track record in research and development.

No surprise then that their solution, like the SAP one, is also very comprehensive, encompassing industry templates (GRI, CDP, IPIECA, etc.), customisable pre-built KPI dashboards, reporting, forecasting, scenario modeling (using the AMEE universe of data for scenario analysis – [disclosure – AMEE are a GreenMonk client]).

And, according to Alyssa Farrell, Marketing Manager for SAS Sustainability Solutions, the software is extremely inter-operable:

SAS also recognises that organisations may have other technologies in-house, so our software can be adapted to whatever environment they may already have. SAS has read/write access to any ERP system, we work within the Microsoft Office environment, so you can even use Excel to pull down SAS Analytics. SAS recognises that there is not one solution for everybody and so all the different solutions from SAS recognise that we need to work within this very complex technology application environment.

SAS have had some big customer wins with their Sustainability software:

With Microsoft and CA also entering this space, I think it is fair to say, Sustainability software is here to stay. In fact, Groom Energy Research reported that climate venture capital investment in Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) firms topped $46m last year, the number of companies offering carbon software solutions grew from 40 to 60 over the course of the year and they predicted that the emerging US market for carbon reporting software is set to grow seven fold over the next two years.

Obviously aware of these trends when we asked Alyssa about pricing, she responded:

The way that our solution is priced is scaled to the size of the organisation [or a division of an organisation] and recognising that it is an early market and we need to get out there and seed our customers, this is the time to buy SAS for Sustainability!

Now, it would seem, would be a very opportune time to be investing in sustainability management software!

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SAP’s Sustainability Performance Management software launched

SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management

I wrote a piece on SAP’s new Sustainability Performance Management (SPM) tool a few weeks back. At time of writing it was very much in the realms of speculation as the product was, as yet, unreleased.

Last Thursday, Dec 10th, SAP announced the release of the software and having been given a preview of the software the previous day by SAPs Charles Zedlewski, I thought it time to circle back with an update on my previous speculations.

It turns out that I jumped the gun a bit when I posited that:

SAP have taken the next logical step with their Sustainability report. They have productised it!

The current version of the SPM will not output a sustainability report similar to SAP’s hugely innovative one of earlier this year although executives I talked to would not rule out that coming in future versions.

What the SPM will do for organisations is reduce the amount of time spent tracking down, collating data and creating reports. It can automatically collect KPI data across all sustainability dimensions (economic, social and environmental) from a variety of sources, so customers can move beyond manual data collection and spreadsheet-based recording.

The library of nearly 400 KPI’s includes a variety of sustainability metrics, including those based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standard as well as the Walmart sustainability index. If you require customisation (and what organisation doesn’t?) building your own custom KPIs or editing the installed ones is quite straightforward.

The data can be pulled from existing SAP apps within the organisation, it can integrate with 3rd party systems or information can be entered manually and then quickly reported either internally or externally. Audit trail functionality helps ensure integrity and transparency of the data.

Two further things I would like to see from this application are:
1. The ability to output at the touch of a button a Sustainability Report similar to SAP’s recent one and
2. An on-demand option (on-demand is SAP for SaaS!) – an on-demand version would ensure that organisations are always using a version which is abreast of the latest green regulations

Having said that, this is a very solid looking v1 with an intuitive UI and a very comprehensive back-end.

I have a call with SAS this afternoon to learn more about their SAS for Sustainability Management product – it will be interesting to see how it stacks up beside SAP’s SPM.

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