Information is scattered across SAP systems, Excel files, production systems, supplier portals, energy management solutions, and external databases. Compiling this data for a report requires a great deal of effort. However, that is not enough for effective management. This is precisely where the need for a Sustainability Data Foundation arises: a robust, reusable, and traceable data foundation for sustainability.
What is a Sustainability Data Foundation?
It links sustainability metrics to the operational data from which they are derived: procurement, production, logistics, finance, controlling, the supply chain, and external factors. The challenge is similar across many companies. ESG and sustainability managers must deliver reliable figures but often lack direct access to the relevant data sources.
Finance and Controlling need verifiable metrics but are confronted with inconsistent definitions and manual data retrieval. IT and data teams are expected to enable new reporting and analysis requirements without creating additional data silos. And management expects transparency: Where do we stand? Which measures are effective? What risks arise in the supply chain, production, or product portfolio?
The Data Foundation behind the report
ESG reporting is intended to bring clarity to sustainability data and combine regulatory certainty with added value for finances, reputation, and efficiency. SAP offers several software products for this purpose, such as the Sustainability Control Tower (SCT) and the Footprint Manager, both of which map sustainability goals and use actual data to measure goal achievement. The next logical step is to build this reporting and control logic on a stronger data foundation.
After all, CSRD, CO₂ accounting, and ESG metrics are not isolated data points. They are linked to material master records, suppliers, energy consumption, production orders, transportation routes, cost centers, product cost calculations, and financial data. If this information is collected manually from scratch every year, it creates extra work, sources of error, and uncertainty. If, on the other hand, it is properly modeled, harmonized, and made reusable, reporting becomes a true basis for management.
How does the SAP Business Data Cloud help with sustainability data?
The Business Data Cloud (BDC) provides the technological foundation for actionable sustainability. After all, simply collecting sustainability data in one place is not enough to make it actionable. What matters most is that the data can be used within the correct business context: Which emissions are associated with which product? Which metric corresponds to which plant, supplier, material, or process? Which data is reliable enough for reporting, planning, or decision-making?
The SAP Business Data Cloud helps companies make sustainability data from SAP and non-SAP systems usable within a shared business context. To create a Sustainability Data Foundation, it combines data from ERP, MES, production, procurement, energy, finance, and the supply chain with semantics and governance. This creates verifiable foundations for CSRD, CO₂ analyses, management dashboards, and future AI scenarios.
For sustainability, this means that data becomes explainable, verifiable, and usable across various departments—without every new reporting or analysis goal ending up in its own separate data logic.
Here’s an example: A company wants to not only report CO₂ emissions at the corporate level, but also analyze them by product, plant, or material group. Aggregated annual figures are not sufficient for this. Data is needed from procurement, production, energy consumption, supplier information, material usage, and cost calculations. A Sustainability Data Foundation allows these data sources to be linked in a structured way. The various departments no longer work with different data sets but instead use a common foundation.
And beyond compliance
Why Do Companies Need a Sustainability Data Foundation?
The BDC should fundamentally be viewed as a strategic solution for efficient corporate management and data & analytics. The real added value, therefore, does not lie in introducing yet another tool. The added value lies in extracting sustainability data directly from the project logic—moving away from Excel spreadsheets, one-off queries, and manual follow-up work. Toward a robust, SAP-integrated data foundation that supports reporting, management, and future AI applications.
T.CON can support companies precisely at this intersection: with SAP expertise, process understanding, and experience in production, finance, data architecture, and sustainability. In this way, regulatory pressure leads to a structured entry into data-driven sustainability management.
With a Sustainability Data Foundation based on the SAP Business Data Cloud, companies create a connected data platform enriched with business context—and lay the groundwork for interconnected data—to not only report sustainability data but also use it operationally: verifiable, scalable, and ready to meet future requirements.
