Topic B.8: Data acquisition for sustainability reporting

Sustainability reports include indicators on the impact of corporate performance in terms of the three sustainability dimensions (Herzig, Schaltegger, 2006) and are mainly used to supply information to external users (Lange, Pianowski, 2008). There are links here to the topics C.2 (information management), as well as to C.3, C.4 and C.5, as these reports may be part of the concept of the relationship with private or business clients. In the course of the environmental impact reduction through the use of renewable resources, these reports’ internal decision support function becomes more important regarding the steering and controlling of company-related operations. For this task, more detailed data are required on the use of renewable resources and their ecological impact in specific individual subprocesses, but are not yet covered in sufficient detail in the operational processes.

This topic investigates which data from which database (see topics B.5 and B.6) on renewable resources use are generally included in operational sustainability reports and which should be included to enable a differentiated steering and control in corporations with regard to increasing resource efficiency. An analysis is therefore done to determine the possibilities that information technology offers to capture the material use and environmental impact of renewable resources in specific subprocesses (see topic C.2), and when it is sensible to substitute indirectly derived relevant variables with the directly, IT-supported capture of input variables. Finally, research is done on how the data can be integrated into the existing IT systems to facilitate automated reporting on the ecological impact of renewable resources for the various users. In the domain of sustainability reporting’s information supply services, especially information transmission via the internet, there are initial concepts, such as how the needs-oriented composition of information on a company’s sustainability-related performance can be formulated for different stakeholders (Isenmann, Gomez, 2008). For this purpose, standardized data formats are needed for automated reporting (see topic C.1). Business-related Environmental Information Systems (SEIS) (Teuteberg, Straßenburg, 2009) and IT systems for the acquisition, processing, and provision of environment-relevant information in companies were adequately researched in the past; however, the insufficient database still poses a challenge (El-Gayar, Fritz, 2006). The decision support function, especially regarding renewable resources, has to date hardly been researched.

Requirements for reporting on renewable resources are initially methodologically defined by means of literature analyses and qualitative surveys. Subsequently, an IT-supported data collection and an automated reporting system concept is implemented (reference modeling and prototyping) and its suitability finally evaluated (e.g., with SAP ERP). The result is a concept (e.g., reference model and prototype implementation) for automatic data collection and sustainability reporting that enables the timely analysis of complex product life cycles of renewable resources.