Trusted sustainability data is becoming one of the most valuable assets an enterprise holds. It shapes investor confidence, influences access to capital, and increasingly steers the decisions that determine long-term resilience. That shift is being accelerated globally by the IFRS® Sustainability Disclosure Standards, IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, now being adopted across more than 40 jurisdictions representing roughly 60% of global GDP.
As they take hold, organizations are expected to produce sustainability information that is as accurate, traceable, and decision-useful as their financial information. Sustainability reporting, in short, is becoming finance-grade, and the organizations that treat it that way will be the ones that turn disclosure into an advantage.
The challenge: establishing trusted sustainability data
The pressure to disclose has not eased. According to PwC’s Global Investor Survey, more than 70% of investors say sustainability must be integrated into corporate strategy. Sustainability data, in other words, is now central to safeguarding enterprise value.
For most organizations, the challenge is establishing a trusted data foundation that can support reporting, assurance, performance management, and decision-making at enterprise scale.
Too often, sustainability data remains fragmented across systems, functions, and geographies. Many companies still rely on disconnected processes and manual reporting, even as assurance expectations rise. EY’s 2024 Global Corporate Reporting Survey found that 96% of finance leaders have concerns about the integrity and reliability of their organization’s non-financial data.
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Reporting can no longer sit within a single function. Finance, sustainability, operations, procurement, and risk teams must work from a common, governed foundation. And with some organizations reporting against IFRS S1 and S2 for the first time, while others must now map IFRS S1 and S2 requirements onto existing European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) or Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) disclosures, building a separate process for every framework only multiplies effort, cost, and complexity.
This is a data foundation problem, and it is where SAP is positioned to help.
How SAP helps organizations meet IFRS S1 and IFRS S2
SAP provides a sustainability suite that helps take organizations from compliance obligation to business value, spanning ESG frameworks and regulatory requirements while embedding sustainability insight into operations and business models.
At its center, SAP Sustainability Control Tower can serve as the single-entry point for audit-ready ESG reporting and sustainability performance management. It helps organizations manage disclosures across IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, ESRS, and other frameworks from one governed foundation that connects sustainability, financial, and operational data. With SAP-provided IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 metrics available within the solution, organizations can reduce manual effort and strengthen reporting confidence.
SAP Sustainability Footprint Management complements this by helping to calculate the emissions, energy, and environmental data relevant to IFRS S2 climate disclosures and other ESG reporting frameworks. Crucially, it draws on the same ERP data that runs finance, supply chain, and operations, grounding footprint calculations in verified business transactions rather than estimates or manual inputs.
The principle is configure once, report across frameworks. Emissions and energy data calculated in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, together with master data configured once in SAP Sustainability Control Tower, can serve multiple disclosure obligations. Because IFRS S2 and ESRS E1 are highly interoperable for climate disclosures, a single data-collection scope can serve both. And as reporting requirements expand globally, SAP continuously evaluates regulatory developments and makes the most relevant frameworks available out of the box, so organizations can scale as requirements grow and stay focused on performance and outcomes. For IFRS S1/S2 jurisdiction-specific requirements, SAP’s partner ecosystem is well positioned to extend these capabilities to address local reporting needs.
AI extends this further. The Sustainability Regulatory Readiness Agent helps translate materiality assessment outcomes into reporting-scope decisions, while the SAP Sustainability Control Tower AI-assisted ESG report generation capability can generate structured, complete report drafts from validated metrics already in the system. Teams retain full control to review, refine, and finalize before publication, so organizations can scale efficiently while maintaining governance, transparency, traceability, and human oversight.
We see this in what our customers are doing. KNAPP AG, a value chain technology leader based in Austria, transformed its sustainability reporting with SAP Sustainability Control Tower and SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, implemented with KPMG Austria. Integrating about 200 to 250 metrics, the company completed its first round of CSRD reporting well ahead of the 2027/2028 mandate.
As Bernhard Bischof, solution reporting architect at KNAPP AG, put it: “Through our collaboration with SAP and KPMG, we are able to realize a resource-efficient and automated approach to sustainability reporting. We rely on innovative software solutions, in particular SAP Sustainability Control Tower and SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, to make our reporting efficient and sustainable.”
As organizations expand reporting beyond CSRD to include IFRS S1 and S2, the same trusted sustainability data foundation can help reduce duplication, improve consistency, and support more efficient reporting across frameworks.
From audit-ready reporting to performance management
With audit-ready ESG reporting as the starting point, the best value is derived from what trusted data enables beyond disclosure: understanding actual performance, identifying where action is needed, and making sustainability a genuine input to business decisions.
That value shows up across the organization. Trusted sustainability data strengthens governance and risk management, supports investor confidence and transparency, improves business steering, and shapes access to finance, cost of capital, and long-term resilience. KPMG’s ESG Assurance Maturity Index 2025 found that 60% of CSRD Wave 1 companies expect ESG assurance to expand their market share or client base.
SAP Sustainability solutions help move organizations from reactive reporting to proactive performance management. Embedded initiatives can turn strategy from a set of intentions into a portfolio of tracked, measured, and accountable actions, each linked to the metrics and targets that define an organization’s ESG commitments. With that foundation in place, sustainability becomes embedded in enterprise processes rather than a stand-alone reporting activity, applied where decisions are made rather than as a downstream task. This is the foundation of SAP’s vision for the Autonomous Enterprise, where sustainability is embedded in the decisions that run the business.
What organizations should do now
Two priorities stand out for leaders today. First, build a trusted sustainability data foundation, with governance, traceability, and auditability established from the start. Second, prepare to report across multiple frameworks and jurisdictions from one common foundation, rather than building parallel processes for each.
Organizations that establish trusted sustainability data foundations today will be better positioned to meet IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, strengthen governance, support investor confidence and access to capital, and create long-term business value.
For more information, visit: www.sap.com/products/scm/sustainability-control-tower
Gunther Rothermel is SAP Sustainability chief product officer.
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