United for progress

Anita Varshney's Story

"Sustainability is a transformation journey, which needs collaborative efforts across teams, technologies, industry players and sometimes even with your competitors"

How Anita integrated sustainability into SAP’s core products culture. core products and culture.

Anita Varshney, VP of SAP Sustainability Product Success & Customer Adoption. Anita is enabling SAP’s global customers to achieve their sustainability ambitions using SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises products portfolio.

As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience

 

Sector: ERP software producer

 

Geography: Headquartered in Germany, but operates globally

 

Employees: over 105,000 employees from 157+ countries

 

Website: www.sap.com

Challenges
faced

Five years back, Anita’s journey within SAP began with numerous challenges. She aspired to drive changes at two different levels. One was being at client-side, changing the industry for the better through software solutions. The other being internal, challenging the way SAP worked across the diverse sustainability topics and enabling their customer’s transformational journeys. Fast forward to today, one of the biggest changes she faces is scaling, as it’s clear that sustainability solutions cannot be onesize-fits-all across different industries.

Another major challenge is the lack of available expertise around sustainability across customers, maturity varying across
geographies.

 

She provides insightful action to address this issue where she translates “goals set at the top” into actionable goals, creating a win win partnership both internally and externally to the company.

"The biggest problem is that each sector is facing their own set of unique decarbonization challenges. You can’t talk to a food manufacturer in the same way you would talk to a mining company – this is unique to sustainability because you need to understand the needed business transition from their perspective."
"Often, we don’t have experts who know what carbon accounting methods are needed and are material to the company’s needs"

Actions
taken

Despite these early obstacles, Anita took small, consistent steps each day to drive change. Now, she works closely with product management, focused on creating product features that enables companies to measure and report their environmental performance with greater precision.


Anita is in regular exchange with business leaders across industries. She actively listens to their unique needs and adapted SAP’s offerings accordingly. Now, based on innovations from a sustainability engineering team within SAP, she is able to leverage the power of technology to address environmental challenges.

"I was one of the earliest at SAP who truly advocated for the need to embedded sustainability into our customer conversations, based on innovations from a sustainability engineering team within SAP, leveraging the power of technology to address environmental challenges"
"It's not enough to just go on stage, have a beautiful one-hour event with 17 global goals stuck on my chest and do nothing about it.”

To bridge the knowledge gap, Anita uses her strengths on regulatory frameworks and deep understanding of SAP’s technologies to educate and guide her engineering teams on emerging sustainability concepts. According to her, clients need more than just Excel sheets to capture data. They need the right ESG system to measure their progress in an integrated way and use the outcomes meaningfully towards their sustainability goals. She has also previously co-authored a consulting guide with Accenture and UNGC, providing companies with a practical framework for integrating sustainability into their operations. Anita connects clients across industries, and across value chains, who are facing similar problems, helping them learn from each other.

 

This was one the reasons, many years back, she recognized a gap in SAP’s offerings and pushed for the creation of a dedicated sustainability engineering team. Her efforts were instrumental in early development and integration of sustainability features into SAP’s portfolio.

 

Anita also actively participates in client-facing industry events and forums, sharing her insights and learning from other sustainability leaders. She values collaboration and is building alliances to accelerate progress on a larger scale.

Resonance
of impact

Anita’s persistent efforts started creating ripples of change, leading to significant shifts in operations and culture. By providing tools for accurate measurement and reporting, she empowers companies to better understand their environmental footprint, track progress, and identify areas for improvement. Her work led to the integration of sustainability features into SAP’s core products, making it easier for clients to manage their environmental impact.

 

Her direct engagement with customers fosters stronger relationships, increasing the relevance of SAP’s solutions, and drives greater adoption of sustainability practices across various sectors. She connects people across the industry and brings them on the sustainability journey. 

 

By showcasing SAP’s own journey and sustainability commitment to customers, Anita fosters a culture of responsibility within the company, encouraging employees to embrace sustainable practices both professionally and personally.

"The requirement for deep climate expertise or a software which solves all problems on a press of a button is less important than it is made out to be. Sustainability is a transformation journey, which needs collaborative efforts across teams, technologies, industry players and sometimes even with your competitors."

Anita’s impact extends beyond SAP as her participation in industry events and forums facilitates knowledge sharing, fosters innovation, and strengthens the collective effort to advance sustainability across industries. By launching her guide at the World Economic Forum and championing the formation of a sustainability-focused team, Anita paved the way for a cohesive ESG strategy, driving sustainable practices and fostering interdepartmental collaboration across SAP’s client base.

 

Through her relentless dedication and passion, Anita Varshney has turned everyday conversations into sustainable actions at SAP, creating a lasting impact that continues to resonate within the company and

beyond.

What Anita found helpful during her ESG journey

Relevant resources to Anita's work

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