Companies are under growing pressure – from regulators, investors, customers, and their own boards – to disclose accurate, auditable sustainability data.
Traditional ESG reporting methods, often stitched together from spreadsheets and disconnected systems, simply cannot support the complexity of emerging frameworks like CSRD, ESRS, SEC Climate Disclosure, or industry-specific reporting expectations.
SAP Sustainability Control Tower was designed to address this challenge head-on. As a cloud-based, enterprise-grade sustainability performance management solution, SAP Sustainability Control Tower enables organizations to collect, govern, analyze, and report sustainability data with the same rigor applied to financial reporting. More importantly, it embeds sustainability metrics directly into operational processes, turning ESG insights into tangible business actions.
The biggest challenge in sustainability reporting is data fragmentation. Emissions, energy consumption, waste, diversity metrics, supplier performance, and compliance indicators often reside in different systems – or worse, outside any system at all. SAP Sustainability Control Tower solves this by serving as a single point of truth for sustainability data across the enterprise.
With built-in data models and content packages, organizations can jump-start reporting without building everything from scratch. This drastically reduces the effort required to prepare annual ESG disclosures and eliminates inconsistencies caused by manual data collection.
Regulatory expectations increasingly require traceable, audit-ready sustainability data. SAP Sustainability Control Tower data lineage and governance capabilities make it possible to show precisely how a metric was calculated, where the source data came from, and who approved it. This level of transparency is critical for assurance under CSRD and equivalent regulations.
Sustainability reporting is not just about the final disclosures; it is about managing performance throughout the year. SAP Sustainability Control Tower provides real-time visibility across environmental, social, and governance dimensions so leaders can take action before reporting deadlines.
The platform enables sustainability and finance teams to speak the same language. For example, emissions reduction strategies can be evaluated not only on carbon impact but also on financial implications like cost savings, CAPEX requirements, and risk mitigation.
By surfacing insights earlier, SAP Sustainability Control Tower helps organizations move from reactive reporting to proactive sustainability management. Leaders can identify issues – high-emitting sites, inefficient suppliers, regulatory risks – and act before they turn into compliance gaps or financial liabilities.
Sustainability metrics must increasingly meet the same audit standards as financial statements. SAP Sustainability Control Tower includes robust governance workflows that ensure accuracy, consistency, and accountability across the organization.
These capabilities reduce the risk of misreporting – intentional or accidental – and make the platform suitable for companies preparing for assurance under strict regulations like CSRD.
Because data is traceable and calculations are transparent, auditors can easily verify emissions factors, methodologies, and activity data. This decreases audit cycles and reduces reliance on external spreadsheets, which are notoriously error-prone.
SAP Sustainability Control Tower becomes exponentially more powerful when integrated with SAP’s broader sustainability ecosystem. It does not exist in isolation; instead, it functions as the command center for all sustainability performance data.
Through APIs, SAP Sustainability Control Tower can also ingest data from external systems – utility meters, IoT devices, LCA tools, transportation management platforms, and third-party ESG datasets.
Modern sustainability reporting increasingly requires value chain transparency, especially around Scope 3 emissions. SAP Sustainability Control Tower enables:
This end-to-end connectivity helps companies shift from estimating data to capturing actual, activity-based sustainability metrics, leading to more credible and actionable insights.
Sustainability has evolved from a voluntary initiative to a legally mandated and financially material responsibility. Boards, regulators, investors, and customers expect accurate, auditable, real-time information – not Excel spreadsheets and inconsistent reporting practices.
SAP Sustainability Control Tower gives organizations the foundation they need to manage sustainability with the rigor of financial performance. It brings together data from across the enterprise, structures it according to global reporting standards, ensures governance and auditability, and provides actionable insights that can influence operational decisions.
For companies navigating CSRD, building credible net-zero programs, striving for supply-chain transparency, or integrating sustainability into core business planning, SAP Sustainability Control Tower offers a scalable, future-proof platform.
If you want to fine-tune SAP Sustainability Control Tower, opt for Innowise, as we have a dedicated SAP department, as well as broad ESG & sustainability expertise.