Sustainability LIVE Singapore: SAP – AI Sustainable Business
At Sustainability LIVE Singapore, Susanna Hasenoehrl, Head of Sustainability Solutions at SAP Asia, offered a sharp focus on the intersection of AI, sustainability and responsible business practices.
She began by painting a clear picture of the environmental crises driving urgent action – from plastic waste to biodiversity loss to excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
“Each of us ingests about five grams of plastic every week. That corresponds to the weight of a credit card,” she noted.
Asia-Pacific’s economic reliance on nature heightens the stakes.
“In Indonesia, 77% of GDP is nature-dependent; in China, it's 58%,” she added.
Her argument – sustainability must be embedded across enterprise functions and technology, particularly AI, has a critical role to play.
Susanna shared that more than half of sustainability practitioners surveyed by KPMG see AI as a core tool to consolidate and analyse sustainability data. But data fragmentation, siloed processes and limited insights continue to hinder many businesses.
“Sustainability processes are often run manually by a few experienced practitioners,” she said, highlighting how AI can step in to automate, streamline and enhance.
AI applications transforming sustainability
With a series of real-world demos, Susanna explored how SAP is applying AI to improve environmental and social outcomes across functions.
First, she spotlighted ESG reporting – typically a time-consuming process for sustainability teams.
“Instead of toiling months over many ESG reports, it can now be accomplished in draft quality within just a few minutes,” she said, with generative AI able to automatically generate reports based on internal datasets.
Another example addressed Scope 3 emissions, particularly in procurement. AI can now scan thousands of SKUs within an ERP system and match them to emissions factors from lifecycle assessment (LCA) databases.
“It alleviates the need to be an expert to find the right emission factors,” she said.
She also discussed the growing expectation for product-level sustainability certificates.
“If you're receiving lots of deliveries with certificates, validating all of them is labour-intensive,” she noted. SAP is developing AI-powered services to accelerate certificate verification and management.
Shifting from environmental to social dimensions, Susanna highlighted AI’s role in inclusive recruitment. Using SAP SuccessFactors, businesses can now apply AI to write job descriptions that avoid bias and appeal to a broader candidate base.
“We all have biases, and they can creep into job ads. This helps counter that,” she explained.
Responsible AI use must be the foundation
While the benefits are clear, Susanna was careful to emphasise that AI must be used responsibly.
“AI is only as good as the data that fuels it,” she warned, underlining the need for high-quality internal and third-party data to ensure meaningful outcomes.
She laid out SAP’s rigorous governance model for AI development, which begins with three core questions for every project – could this harm the environment, society, or individual freedoms?
If yes, development stops immediately. If no, the project is categorised by risk level and assessed accordingly.
“It’s become a best practice,” she noted, adding that SAP is one of just six software firms to meet all AI quality indicators set by the World Benchmarking Alliance.
AI should also remain transparent, she added. “It should not be a black box – logic and recommendations must be explainable.”
Susanna stressed that embedding human agency and oversight is essential to keeping AI aligned with sustainable, inclusive outcomes.
From industry to impact: AI’s real-world potential
One of the most moving examples Susanna shared came from healthcare. In partnership with SAP, Clear Vision, and Narayana Nethralaya, an AI solution is helping screen premature babies in India for preventable blindness.
“We have treated over 4,000 babies,” she said. “The AI helps manage the sheer volume of images and supports rural access to care.”
She then returned to her opening theme – how AI supports SMEs and supply chains. Susanna emphasised the need for digital transformation to unlock sustainability impact.
“If your data isn’t digitised, there’s not much you can do with AI,” she said.
She cited Japanese SME Matsumoto Precision, which used SAP’s cloud ERP and sustainability solutions to track both production costs and carbon footprints of individual products – gaining a competitive edge in the global automotive market.
And for those just beginning their journey, she pointed to the SAP Business Network, the world’s largest supply chain collaboration platform.
“It allows companies of all sizes to share carbon information via a simple web interface,” she said.
In closing, Susanna delivered a clear message: “AI holds great promise to increase enterprise sustainability—but it must be done in the right way.”
The tools are ready, she said. The challenge now is to use them responsibly.
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