Cultivate Farm-To-Fork Sustainability with S/4HANA Public Cloud

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According to Gartner, 87% of business leaders expect to increase sustainability investment over the next two years...

Although it's clear that the food and beverage industry is taking significant steps towards a greener future, there is still much to be done. In this blog, we'll be looking at how food and beverage businesses can cultivate farm-to-fork sustainability with Delaware and S/4HANA Public Cloud.

This year's Farm to Fork summit emphasised the urgent need to change how the agri-food sector operates in the face of modern challenges such as climate change, environmental degradation and rising inflation.

Although concerns arose from commentators surrounding the fruitfulness of the event, it highlighted the important role technology will position in cultivating the future of the industry. More specifically, the role that digital platforms will have in supporting firms to yield leaner, more sustainable operations, enhancing batch traceability and implementing more stringent quality control measures.

With food production accounting for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions each year, food and beverage businesses are under significant pressure to reduce their carbon footprint.

A cloud revolution for sustainability success

Traditionally, the cost of digital transformation and implementations of new digital ERP systems involved significant upfront investment in hardware, software licenses, and infrastructure.

However, with SAP’s evolution into their Public Cloud offering, the paradigm has been disrupted with a subscription-based model allowing companies to leverage the power of SAP's robust ERP solution without the burden of hefty initial costs.

Alongside this, the SAP S/4HANA Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises offers solutions based on your specific industry and common sustainability challenges. It is a comprehensive cloud offer that will integrate your data and processes to better manage your carbon footprint, reduce product waste, and achieve sustainability across your value chain.

Improve ESG transparency

Sustainability reporting is now a must. As of 2021, more than 90% of S&P 500 companies are now publishing sustainability reports.* SAP's Sustainability Control Tower (SCT) in particular, introduces you to SAP’s Holistic Steering and Reporting offering by helping you manage your sustainable performance and practices. The solution is leveraged on the Stakeholder Capitalism Core Metrics, focusing on the four pillars of Governance, Planet, People and Prosperity.

lady wearing a fluorescent jacket and hard hat looking at her tablet

It is equipped with pre-configured data models and the ability to incorporate extra data sources and generate tailored metrics without the need for manual coding . By utilising the SCT, you can personalise your interface with custom tiles which are easily configurable by your business’ process owners, supporting you in effectively tracking your sustainability goals through snapshot insights, preferred data metrics and a steering application designed to guide your journey towards meeting these goals.

Embed sustainability across all areas

With food production accounting for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions* each year, food and beverage businesses are under significant pressure to reduce their carbon footprint. SAP Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) empowers industry leaders to establish transparent, compliant processes for all EHS requirements across their enterprise.

In particular, the Environmental Management module within EHS is value driven by the need for companies to comply with emissions-related environmental regulations. By enabling firms to integrate strategies for handling environmental data, achieved through processes such as data collection, sampling calculations, and the integration of emissions into daily company operations EM supports businesses in minimising emissions and driving continuous operational improvement.

man wearing a yellow hard hat and high vis jacket looks at waste pile

Track, manage and minimise waste

Almost 3 million tonnes of edible food – valued at £1.8 billion and equivalent to 6.9 billion meals, or over 18 million meals a day – goes to waste on UK farms each year.* Combatting food waste is not only beneficial for the environment, but also serves to boost business profitability.

Within SAP EHS, the Waste Management module enables your organisation to effectively oversee and trace the entire life cycle of waste materials, spanning from their creation to disposal. This module enables you to categorise waste streams according to their unique properties and attributes as part of your master data. Subsequently, it guarantees compliance through transparent audit trails and real-time maintenance of waste-related regulations directly within the system.

Start your sustainability transformation with Delaware.

To find out more about how SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud can help your food and beverage business cultivate sustainable operations, talk to our experts today.

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