For our initial meeting with stakeholders, we held a conference in Palo Alto, California. Now SAP seeks more routine engagement with stakeholders, proactively reaching out to them on specific issues of interest. SAP uses online social networks when appropriate.
In 2008, we invited sustainability stakeholders from peer companies and nongovernmental organizations to join us at our annual technology show, SAPPHIRE. This enabled them to more fully understand our business. Our executives also interacted with stakeholders to expand their comprehension of the needs and concerns of key external groups and influencers. Finally, we commissioned McKinsey and Company to survey our customer base about the risk and feasibility of marketable sustainability solutions.
Company Level
SAP engaged AccountAbility, an international sustainability reporting and assurance standards body, to help assess the material issues of greatest concern to our stakeholders and the importance of these issues to SAP.
Industry Level
SAP continues to participate in an initiative led by Business for Social Responsibility to determine materiality for the software industry. Along with Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe, Autodesk, McAfee, and Symantec, SAP works to define corporate responsibility for the software sector and to identify positive contributions that the sector’s products and services can make to sustainability.
Global Level
To enable better sustainable performance on a global level, both for our company and our customers, SAP routinely engages a range of third-party organizations:
- CSR Europe
- International Business Leaders Forum
- Transparency International
- United Nations Global Compact
In addition, together with Mc Kinsey and Company we have conducted interviews with more than 50 companies across all major industries and geographic regions to identify best practices in managing sustainability and how SAP can help to support these.
Collaborative Process
Based on the feedback collected from these discussions, we prepared an initial materiality matrix. We invited input through an online stakeholder survey and an online collaboration platform, the Sustainability Collaboration Workspace. More than 1,100 returns have been received through the survey on the SAPvote.com site. Results are presented in real time using SAP® Business Objects™ Xcselsius® Enterprise Software.
Input from our stakeholders has further confirmed our original materiality analysis and influenced our new sustainability strategy and the contents of this report. For example, we found that our employees rank action on climate change to be of high importance, following the core issues of employee satisfaction, financial performance, and customer satisfaction. As a result, we set up a network of over 120 Sustainability Champions to engage employees in corporate sustainability efforts worldwide.
