SAP: Sapphire 08 - Enabling Corporate Accountability to Maximize Performance
by Michael HoffmanMonday, May 5th, 2008
I am in Orlando at the major US event for SAP, the large German software company. There are about 15,000 people here with me at the Orlando Convention Center.
I was invited by SAP to be part of a workshop tomorrow about Web 2.0 and corporate social responsibility. Our workshop is tomorrow and the session I am in now is a panel of global thought leaders on corporate accountability. [It’s a long session - 3 hours — so I will blog in and out.]
The panel has:
James Farrar VP for Global Citizenship with SAP
Steve Rochlin
Head of AccountAbility North America
Graham Baxter
Director, Responsible Business Solutions
International Business Leaders Forum
Diane Osgood, PhD
VP, Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy
Business for Social Responsibility
David Seals
Strategy, Planning and Architecture
Chevron Corporation
Steve Rochlin is kicking us off talking about how expectations in corporate social responsibility is changing. He told a story about how he was on a plane for a trans-Atlantic flight sitting next to a woman and her two kids. The kids were totally obnoxious. At the end of the flight the flight attendant came up to him and said, “If you were my husband I would divorce you. The way you left your wife to be with those kids is terrible.” When told they were not his kids and the woman was not his wife the flight attendant said, “I am so sorry, the whole plane is talking about what a terrible father you are.”
He then related this to companies who might not be related to whatever issue is taking people’s attention, but because they are in the right place (or wrong place) the expectation of people is that they will be involved.
He is now telling a story about being in Marks & Spencer in London where it seemed all the clothes had labels saying they were sustainable, or didn’t have child labor, etc. “We are starting to see the tipping point… of changing consumer attitudes after 30-40 years of activism. Businesses has tremendously complex business relationship and accountability demands on them. They have to know that their supply chain, going 1, 2, 3, 4 tiers into their supply chain and know that they are not harming the environment or animals… And if they are wrong, it will blow up for them… A complex information management system for them to track and verify the data. Prove it. Prove to me that you dealt with the complex issues.”
More to come…
Continued…
David Seals is talking about operated properties where oil companies control things and non-operated properties where a national oil company might control and where the company tends to have less control over standards. A 5-10 year investment in drilling where you don’t own. Some of the legacy properties are running on old systems which presents a challenge to tracking the thousands of regulations
“Sustainability 2.0 has to be at a business process level.” James Farrar.
Interesting conversation about BP and how they have withdrawn from the public conversation about climate change and there are people within BP who are saying all that branding around green issues was a mistake because of how their accidents and safety problems and leaks have basically destroyed all that investment.
“If you can control [your processes and supply chain] and manage in this space there are huge opportunities” Graham Baxter said, using Marks & Spencer as an example because of their positioning around organic foods and the like.
Continued…
Graham Baxter is talking about his experience at BP and talking about collaborative action between oil and gas companies, countries and civil society organizations focused on operating principles around local conflicts.
He is now talking about Angola and how corrupt it was and how the company believed that this was a matter of public domain about what it was paying for its leases. John Brown (former BP head) thought he could talk about the $4 million signature bonus on an international platform. The government was furious and BP was threated with expulsion from Angola and were told not to talk about these transactions. It hurt BP and out of that the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative which is trying to create a culture to make all legitimate payments public and create transparency in those industries. It is a voluntary framework to enable companies to operate in difficult places with *some* protections.
continued…
David Seals is talking about Chevron and how they are using SAP to deal with compliance and assurance.
62,000 employeed in 182 different countries. How do you do compliance across so many local and national communities across so many people and offices. Chevron, Texaco and CalTex brands.
They have nine different SAP systems. But also some in-country operations run JD Edwards/Oracle. When you have compliance and tracking you have to span across organizations. So they have to import data from all these things. Plant maintenance on IBM platforms, etc… [Wow! What a nightmare.] Fragmented system.
In studying enterprise risk management they found that one of their refineries in California does all their carbon tracking on Excel. A 37-year employee. What are they going to do longer term? Not that.
He is describing the huge planning, budgeting and implementation projects with an SAP product to consolidate all this data and consolidate reporting.
GRC - Governance Risk and Compliance. Each part of Chevron - extraction, refining and gas stations - are all run basically independently. But they have controls and compliance issues that cross these companies, so they have to pull in data from all over.
Environment, Health and Safety. They are looking for solutions to track emissions management controls. The technical solutions will allow a corporate conversation around emissions that hasn’t happened before.
Different compliance officers in different departments. So they are talking about “enterprise risk management solution” basically a holistic look at all these issues instead of silos of independent regulations and people and divisions. This issue is on the Board agenda for the company. They are asking the question, why can’t you see this across the company.
