Sustainability is on top of the priority list for most companies due to the growing impact of climate change and pressure from several ecosystem players such as consumers, regulatory bodies, and investment groups, among others. Tech Mahindra has launched a sustainability framework earlier this year, which has four key pillars:
- Consulting
- Industry Solutions
- Sustainable Supply Chain
- ESG Reporting
With our vision of ‘purpose beyond profits’ to embed ESG strategies into our core business strategies, the sustainability framework is enabling businesses to make conscious business decisions and reduce carbon footprint.
Tech Mahindra’s deep domain, industry know-how and consulting capabilities are leveraged combined with our SAP technology strength to provide sustainability solutions. Tech Mahindra’s framework on sustainability which is powered by SAP Intelligent Technologies and SAP Analytics Cloud aims to manage and improve the performance of the sustainability data to achieve ESG and sustainability goals. This framework enables ready to deploy flexible business rules set up and management which converts raw ESG data with the calculation factors and emission factors into meaningful insights as per the reporting requirement. The sustainability framework is built on four pillars that can enable sustainability driven business models and embed them into enterprise business strategy and operations.
Consulting
Changes in consumer behavior, developed portfolios for climate change risks and opportunities, increased regulations, and adoption of climate reduction technologies are just a few examples of how a strategic direction can be influenced to align to mitigate impact of climate change on business strategy.
Tech Mahindra has created a new competency for sustainability services and offerings through building platforms to enable enterprise sustainability requirements.
Tech Mahindra provides sustainable consulting for the program in the critical areas of materiality, sustainable business strategy, green procurement, life cycle assessment, compliance, scenario analysis ESG engagement and reporting, and risk and opportunity analysis.
Industry Solutions
There is a strong urge to adopt new business models like green energy solutions, price premium opportunities for sustainable products, developing new marketplaces and plans for product expansion, and preparing to meet new compliance laws, to name a few.
To build new sustainable business models, we have been working with partnering organizations for value co-creation to discover and solve problems by exchanging capabilities, which should work for all partners for shared economic values in a collaborative ecosystems data and platform economy.
Our industry solutions approach is based on the broader sustainability framework starting from cross-industry sector collaboration to industry specific domain drivers, which will drive specific solutions for industry problems. For example, specific solutions for the utility Industry to improve cash-flow, field service optimization, i.Renewable platform helping power utilities move past renewable power generation challenges, micro-grid and asset life cycle management by leveraging integration with SAP ERP systems.
Sustainable Supply chain
The pandemic and growth of e-commerce exposed the limitations of a global supply chain. To provide resiliency and manage massive supply chain disruption, there is a need to re-look at the redistribution of suppliers, ports, logistic routes, energy-efficient sites, warehouses, etc. Reinstalling the supply chain will require rebuilding and applying environment, social, and governance (ESG) principles to boost readiness rather than trying to make all these investments later.
Our framework can support the set-up of new business rules to make conscious decisions on the change process for better business demand and transport planning. The sustainability dimensions checkpoint for making conscious choices in real-time to embed environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) at every step and stay within critical environmental and social thresholds.
Our sustainability digital platform can support building more business rules in processes that will shape new behaviors and decision-making capabilities across the end-to-end value chain.
Bold decisions can be enabled by popping up supporting error/warning messages in the ERP system. With the end-to-end processes' capability and holistic view of business domains in SAP ERP/SaaS products, it becomes easier for rapid and efficient deployment of new (or custom) processes or change with every new regulation wherever needed to support a new value chain for circular management.
ESG Reporting
Our ESG reporting platform provides end-to-end data support from identification, data design, and data governance with the correct data entry, data extractors, and automated data acquisition template and validation.
We have developed ready-to-deploy flexible business rules, which convert raw ESG data for various emission inventory activities with the calculation and emission factors into meaningful insights as per the global ESG reporting standards and framework requirements.
The data flow seamlessly from the data acquisition layer to the analytics layer for graphs, visualizations, and actionable insights of ESG reporting. The decision-makers in manufacturing, operations, sourcing, purchasing, logistics, and sales, can track their respective sustainability performance.
We can support clients in calculating the implications of climate risk to understand better the challenges and opportunities established by the Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Reporting (TCFD).
The solution allows for the incorporation of climate impact analysis into existing processes for ESG steering and reporting.
Conclusion
The green transition in every industry will require joint cross-sector and sector-specific efforts from ecosystem value creation, development of new business models, enable data ecosystem and digital platform through underlying operating models.
Wherever you are on your sustainability journey, we can help you with our four pillars of the framework to reach from transforming compliance into a business opportunity, maturity to harmonize ESG metrics through ESG reporting, support in high-value creation by embedding sustainability into business strategy across enterprise activities.
About the Author:
Avanish Kumar,
SAP Practice Head, Tech Mahindra
Avanish has over 28 years of experience including both in the Industry and SAP domain. Avanish is passionate about working in sustainability, to enable business value driven S/4HANA sustainable transformation for the clients. He has extensive experience in developing sustainability solutions for different industries using SAP technologies and digital platforms.
He is a certified sustainable supply chain professional and a regular blogger on the topic of sustainability, supply chain and SAP. Avanish has a Bachelor’s in Engineering from IIT, Roorkee and a diploma in sustainable business strategy from Harvard Business School.
