SAP is making a big splash around Sustainability. To their credit, they have started with an internal commitment and have a broad product vision beyond just green data centers. As Peter Graf of SAP estimates tackling just data centers would only focus on 0.5% of carbon pollution in a typical company. So they are looking at opportunities in supply chains, plants etc etc.
Nice to see them ahead of the market - I am tough on them for not being innovative enough.
But in this case are they too far ahead of the market?
At Sapphire, I went to the booth of Clear Standards, the company SAP just acquired - it allows companies to track carbon footprint data. A nice way to structure thinking and sources of data. But it is predicated on the customer having its own instrumentation or sensors or services which can feed that information - so carbon information related to employee travel would depend on feeds from travel agencies.
So, made me think how many companies implemented SAP core modules over the last 20 years only to find their operational feeder systems (or SAP's own immature vertical modules) could not capture or feed back detailed metrics.
Similar question around SAP Sustainability functionality - would it not be better to invest first in capture systems and then implement the communication/analytical layer SAP is likely to deliver?
Readers?
