A Deep Dive Into Pearl and SAP's Sustainability Solutions

How did you transition into working with sustainability solutions, Erik?

My background is FICO, with a strong focus on controlling, product cost calculation, credit management and financial reporting. Sustainability reporting is becoming deeply embedded in financial structures, and it often falls under the CFO, so moving into this space was a natural step. Finance teams are now asked to audit environmental data alongside the traditional financial metrics, which is exactly why a solution like SAP Green Ledger is managed within the finance solution.

What is the current maturity level regarding sustainability data among Nordic companies, and what are the main risks of keeping this data in silos?

The maturity varies a lot by industry. Companies that build their brand identity around sustainability, or that face strict customer demands in their supply chain, are quite advanced. They use clear data as a competitive edge to win procurement contracts. Plenty of others are lagging, partly because some regulation got postponed, which let them deprioritize the transition in favor of other shifts like AI.

The biggest risk with siloed data is a complete lack of traceability. When the numbers sit in external spreadsheets or standalone systems, it is very hard to bring them into your daily operational processes. You end up with an isolated calculation tool, but you lose the ability to see how a given environmental impact connects to an actual business transaction.

Many organizations look at metrics like emission intensity per revenue. How should companies balance financial-based estimations with moving toward actual transaction data?

Financial-based calculations, often called spend-based emissions, are an excellent and necessary starting point. Early in the journey, tying emissions to financial spend lets you get a quick overview of your footprint using data that already exists in your financial systems, without a big data collection project first.

The catch is that spend-based numbers move with money, not with physical reality. If raw material prices rise and you pay more for the same quantity, your calculated emissions go up even though nothing changes on the ground. Output metrics like emissions per unit of revenue have the opposite quirk: raise your selling prices and the ratio improves on paper, while the physical volume of greenhouse gases released stays exactly the same.

To drive long-term change, the goal is to gradually move from these initial spend-based estimates toward actual quantities and material movements - such as tracking emissions per ton of produced material. By integrating both methods, companies can start fast with financial data and then continuously import actual transaction-based data into their SAP environment to achieve more granular and far easier to trace.

SAP offers several sustainability modules. How do these individual solutions interact with each other to form a cohesive foundation?

You get the most out of them when three core pillars work together: SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, SAP Green Ledger, and SAP Sustainability Data Exchange. In that order you raise the automation grade.

Footprint Management is the calculation engine. It evaluates physical business operations, such as production volumes or energy usage, and works out the associated emissions by applying the relevant emission factors. That granular data then flows into Green Ledger, where carbon figures are recorded alongside the financial ledger accounts, so you can post carbon debits and credits directly against material movements and costs. Sustainability Data Exchange is then how you share that verified data securely across the value chain, for instance sending product carbon footprints to a customer or pulling them in from a supplier.

What is SAP GreenLedger?

• The concept

  Traditional sustainability reporting relies on retrospective, top-down estimates and generic industry averages. SAP Green Ledger changes this by introducing transactional carbon accounting, treating greenhouse gas emissions with the same rigor, traceability, and controls that financial accounting has.

• How it works

  Green Ledger runs as an application on SAP Business Technology Platform and integrates tightly with finance in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, effectively acting as a subledger for carbon. Carbon data is posted as debits and credits and allocated to the same financial dimensions you already use, such as cost centers, profit centers, and specific products or plants.

• The value

  Because the carbon data sits alongside the financial data, enterprises get a real-time view of their footprint that lines up with the books. That supports CSRD disclosure directly and feeds the data you need at product level for CBAM reporting, and it lets leadership base decisions on transaction-based actuals that trace back to source rather than on estimates.

Beyond carbon accounting, what other areas does the sustainability portfolio cover?

The SAP product portfolio extends into circular economy and supply chain transparency. For instance, Green Token uses blockchain technology to track and stamp the origin of raw materials, ensuring full traceability from the source. Responsible Design and Production helps companies design products with a focus on material optimization - such as minimizing plastics to avoid environmental taxes and improve circularity. There are also dedicated tools for Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) that handle operational safety and manage the transport of dangerous goods and chemicals.

How do Pearl and SAP help companies turn these complex requirements into a competitive advantage?

A good database allows companies to move from reactive compliance to proactive business development. When carbon accounting follows established frameworks like the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the outputs map directly to CSRD reporting requirements.

By achieving transactional data clarity inside the ERP, you can export these insights to the SAP Sustainability Control Tower or SAP Analytics Cloud. This gives leadership teams pre-built, audit-ready dashboards for investors and regulators.

But the part I find more interesting is what it surfaces internally. Put financial cost and carbon output side by side per cost center, and the inefficiencies jump out. You can see exactly which outdated machine is both draining capital and driving up emissions. That is where the conversation stops being about reporting and starts being about the business.

Furthermore, Pearl has developed specific solutions that allows clients to track and trace Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) via batch data, or calculate ADR points for dangerous goods.

What is your final advice to companies looking to integrate sustainability into their core systems?

Do not wait for regulatory pressure; take the initiative to map out your existing data today. Look closely at how you currently handle carbon calculations, how you evaluate suppliers, carbon heavy processes, and what data already exists in your system.

Embracing these solutions requires organizational change and a clear investment strategy. However, having third-party verified, transparent data - such as EPDs - removes any risk of greenwashing, so that is a good way to start in order to become more credible. Relying on precise, localized metrics rather than generic industry averages allows Nordic companies to prove their lower carbon footprints, creating a definitive advantage in the market.