Reporting and shaping the pursuit of sustainability goals is not just a fad, but is increasingly recognised as an equal and indispensable element of modern corporate management. In view of the European Union's ambitious climate targets such as the net zero target and stricter regulations such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the EU Taxonomy and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), companies are obliged to disclose their environmental and social performance. In addition to financial reporting, this creates another area of reporting by which stakeholders measure companies and their performance.

ESG reporting is also seen as having a formative significance in supply chain management. Companies are increasingly required to document their ESG performance, not only to fulfil regulatory requirements, but also to increase their competitiveness. The CSRD requires companies of a certain size and listed companies to disclose detailed information on environmental, social and governance-related issues. However, companies can only provide services within a network of value chains: The obligation to report and manage does not always end at the boundaries of one's own company.

The extensive use of third-party logistics (3PL), the outsourcing of logistics services to external service providers, offers companies the advantage of focusing on their core business processes while benefiting from specialised logistics solutions. The determination of CO2 emissions in such scenarios is important for the complete recording and targeted management of environmental impacts as part of ESG reporting requirements. On the one hand, this is relevant in order to fulfil legal regulations and international standards, but also to assume environmental and social responsibility as a company and to create new competitive advantages.

In order to accurately record CO2 emissions, comprehensive data on fuel consumption, transport routes and the types of vehicles and service providers used is required. Based on its many years of experience in supply chain management with SAP ERP and S/4HANA, its extensive partner network and accurate 3PL logistics data in the fully SAP-integrated add-on M.TransportCommunicator, Mercoline can provide efficient support in collecting the relevant emissions data for 3PL logistics processes - for example, in setting up a reporting system for CO2 equivalents for transport-related emissions in the context of 3PL logistics processes.

The commitment to shaping sustainability aspects also opens up new business areas, such as the use of low-emission means of transport or the optimisation of supply chains to reduce CO2 emissions. This focus on sustainability offers the opportunity to be recognised as a preferred business partner, as customers and business partners increasingly value environmentally friendly practices that support their own sustainability goals - which is increasingly becoming a quality feature of the services and products sold and can be offered to customers as added value. In addition, proactive sustainability reporting enables companies to identify and minimise potential risks, such as regulatory penalties or reputational damage, at an early stage. Last but not least, companies that invest in sustainable innovations can secure competitive advantages and strengthen their market position in the long term.

Under the motto ‘Triad of the future: users, SAP and partners as pacemakers of transformation’, the German-speaking SAP user community is inviting you to Leipzig at the exhibition centre in October. This triad is also crucial in the pursuit of corporate sustainability goals to achieve legal compliance and to build new, resulting competitive advantages in order to combine digital and ecological transformation. The design of supply chain management in particular can benefit from the additional data-driven perspective on sustainability in order to realise entrepreneurial opportunities. This can be achieved in particular through clear integration into existing ERP resources and the resulting leverage effect in terms of end-to-end data transparency along the entire value chain.

See you in Leipzig? The Mercoline team is already looking forward to numerous interesting discussions on compliance, foreign trade and transport logistics with proven and new solutions for S/4HANA and ERP in Leipzig in October!

¹ (see DSAG-Jahreskongress 2024 (plazz.net) resp. Einladung_und_Agenda_JK24.pdf (dsag.de) )