Managing Sustainability Initiatives

You can create, manage, and track company initiatives that support your sustainability goals via the Our Initiatives.. For example, installing rooftop solar or reducing energy consumption through energy efficiency initiatives.

Each initiative captures the responsible owner, the location and timeframe of the activity, the expected sustainability benefits related to the impacted quantitative metric (for example, avoided CO₂e emissions), financial impacts (including CapEx/OpEx, business-as-usual (BaU) comparisons, and actual expenditures), as well as defined implementation measures, enabling effective progress monitoring and investment prioritization.

When you open the Our Initiatives application for the first time, the list of initiatives is initially empty. For the time-being initiatives need to be created manually via the ‘Create’ button. Once you have created one or more initiatives, they appear in the list on the main screen, where they can be grouped and filtered by different dimensions. Specific selection variants can be saved as reusable layouts.

Each initiative is initially assigned to status ‘Proposed’ upon creation, but you can update the status during the lifecycle of the initiative to track progress up to final completion. The following statuses are available:

Progress Statuses:

• Proposed
• Planned
• In Progress
• On Hold

Final Statuses:

• Achieved
• Failed
• Discontinued

An initiative consists of the following elements:

• General Information
• Sustainability Benefits
• Financials
• Actions
• Comments and References

In this section, you describe the general purpose and objective of the initiative and assign the responsible initiative owner and contact. You can also assign the initiative to an organizational entity driving the activities and maintaining the planned investment period.

You can also add a Lever. A lever is the strategic category or focus area of an initiative that shows how it contributes to sustainability goals — for example, "switch to renewable energy," "optimize resource efficiency," or "reduce waste generation." Levers denote recognized pathways for driving environmental or social improvements. Assigning a lever classifies initiatives and aligns them with broader strategies such as decarbonization, circularity, and energy efficiency. You can import or modify levers in the Manage Master Data app, where they are also maintained and managed.

In this section, you can enter the estimated performance improvement of the associated quantitative metrics influenced by the initiative. Initially, no sustainability benefits are shown, you need to create them first (see below).

The sustainability benefits are based on the estimated improvements compared to a business-as-usual scenario reflecting the as-is without implementing the initiative. The projected benefit per year is the estimated average improvement per year after the initiative has been implemented. From this, the system calculates the State after Implementing the Initiative (business-as-usual consumption per year - projected benefit per year) and the Projected Relative Sustainability Benefit (projected benefit per year * 100 / business-as-usual consumption per year).

Let us take an example of a factory that takes an initiative to replace old light bulbs with the new led lights.

• The Initiative: Replace all old, inefficient light bulbs with new, energy-saving LEDs.
• The "As-Is": The factory is currently running and plans to increase production by 5% next year.
• The "Business-as-Usual (BAU)" Scenario: Without the new LEDs, the factory's electricity consumption would be 100,000 kWh this year. Because of the 5% production increase, it is projected to rise to 105,000 kWh next year. This is your baseline.
• The "Initiative" Scenario: After installing LEDs, electricity use for lighting drops by 40%. Even with the 5% production increase, the total electricity consumption next year is projected to be only, say, 75,000 kWh.
• The Sustainability Benefit: The benefit is the difference between the two scenarios for next year.
  • 105,000 kWh (BAU) - 75,000 kWh (Initiative) = 30,000 kWh saved.

You would not just say "the LEDs saved 40%." You would say, "Compared to a business-as-usual scenario, the LED initiative is estimated to save 30,000 kWh of electricity and the associated carbon emissions next year."

Once you have added the benefits for the metrics associated with the initiative, the impacted metrics are displayed.

Once you’ve estimated the initiative’s future impact on the assigned sustainability metrics you also can add the financial perspective related to setting up and running the initiative. You can enter the projected expenses, business-as-usual expenses and actual expenses.

1. Projected Expenses – Enter the estimated annual cost to implement the initiative, specifying projected capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating expenditures (OpEx) for each year. The app automatically calculates the total projected expenses over the initiative’s lifetime and the average projected annual expense.
2. Business-as-Usual Expenses – The expected costs your organization would incur if the initiative is not implemented. Enter business-as-usual expenses, the reference year, and the investment period. The app automatically compares these with the projected initiative expenses and populates the Comparison to Projected Expenses section, filling the "Comparison per year" and "Comparison over the investment period" fields.

   In the populated comparison fields, negative values (−) indicate an increase in expenses after implementation. Positive values are shown without a plus sign and indicate avoided expenses — savings after the initiative is implemented. All values represent the net change in costs per year or over the investment period.

3. Actual Expenses – These fields show expenses incurred while implementing the initiative. Select "Create" to insert a new row. Enter the required information.

Actions are the specific steps required to implement the initiative. Without them, the initiative remains only a concept. When no actions have been created, the Actions table appears empty.

Once actions are added, the screen displays the actions associated with the initiative. Initially, fields such as Action, Action Status, Legal Entity, Reporting Line, Business Location, Operational Period, and Action Owner Name are not visible. These fields only appear after you create an action using the Create button and complete the details in the side dialog.

After you’ve created actions for the initiative, they are displayed in the list.

Depending on the progress, the action owner can update the Action Status from "Planned" to "In Progress" or "Achieved".

Comments allow you to discuss and track feedback on an initiative in a vertical timeline where you can add, edit, delete, or reply to comments. References let you attach external sources (title + URL) to support the initiative; save to add them to the list. See details below.