SAP uses software to promote sustainability, and has four approaches to engage its own employees in the practice: transparency, tools, role modeling and incentives.

Peter Graf, SAP's chief sustainability officer, detailed the company's strategies at a media event in Washington, D.C. Dec. 8.

For transparency, the company uses dashboards that reveal information such as each building's energy use and employees' printing and commuting behavior.

SAP then provides tools to promote sustainability, such as software where employees can find carpool matches depending on where they live and what time they want to arrive at work.

Graf used the carpool scheme as an example of role modeling, the third approach. He said that SAP's CEO participates in the scheme, which "gives it the ultimate stamp of approval because what could actually happen is the CEO is picking you up in the morning."

"That's a half an hour in the back of the car, with him, exclusively," Graf noted. That led Graf to the final piece of the equation: incentives. In this case, the incentive is not for the company to save money on parking spaces--it's for employees to get a chance to meet new people. Graf added that the software's algorithm matches people from different parts of the company so employees can expand their knowledge of what goes on in other departments of SAP.

A company that creates sustainability software should also be a practitioner, Graf said as he introduced a new offering that SAP has developed with Danone, the multinational food product corporation known for its yogurt and bottled water brands.

The unnamed platform, which Graf described as "product footprinting," breaks down products by component to analyze their environmental impact. For example, Danone can see how much carbon went into the production of the cup, lip and contents of a yogurt product.

SAP points to its own internal success to promote its sustainability products. Graf said the company has saved about $263 million since the start of 2008 through its sustainability programs.

For more:
- see this press release

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