Innovation + Responsibility

SAP released its first sustainability report this week and the company deserves a hearty congratulations for doing so. It's always good to see new players joining the sustainability discussion and SAP is definitely coming to the table with an interesting perspective.

SAP's report is only 26 pages - it seemed a bit thin when I first opened the PDF and then I remembered that Sun's first report was just 34 pages (and that includes the front and back cover)! Hey, you have to start somewhere, right? I look forward to SAP's next report (ours went from 34 pages to 80+ and our most recent report topped out at 103 pages! I'm hoping those numbers go back down in future years, but more on that in a future post), which will surely be more robust with data and short- and long-term commitments and goals.

The most exciting (yes, I get excited about these things!) aspect of SAP's report was the stakeholder engagement piece. Along with the report itself, SAP introduced a few Web-based initiatives aimed at engaging a broad group of stakeholders in the company's sustainability efforts - a stakeholder survey and a community wiki.

I was quite intrigued by the real-time sustainability survey, which seeks stakeholder opinions on various sustainability issues. Not only can you vote on the topics you think are most important and relevant for SAP, you can also see how other people voted. So far more than 800 people have already responded to the survey to say that the top two sustainability issues are employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction (this makes perfect sense when you consider that without satisfied employees or customers, your company is not going to be viable, much less sustainable). SAP goes even further by disclosing who is actually participating in the survey. So far, most respondents have been employees and most have come from Asia, something I found rather interesting considering SAP's headquarters are in Germany. 

SAP also went out on a limb with its sustainability wiki, or, as SAP calls it, collaboration workspace. The company has created an online community for stakeholders to connect and network and share their ideas.  I think this is pretty cool!

We have something like this at Sun, but it's internal only (Sun employees can find it here).  We did try to incorporate stakeholder engagement in our most recent report by inviting readers to post their unmoderated comments directly in the report, and we are committed to responding to questions and ideas. But this community collaboration idea is interesting. I'm definitely going to be watching to see what kind of community develops there.

A most sincere congratulations to SAP on completing this first report and doing so in an innovative and engaging way - one that not only considers stakeholders, but also invites them to be a meaningful part of the company's sustainability journey.