Sustainability meets Digitalization

Dorothee Kässner: “In order to implement change and assess the influence of different factors, you are dependent on data transparency. That sounds logical right, but it’s a tricky thing, because the topic of sustainability is super complex. We have hundreds of different formulas at NIVEA and Eucerin alone. Let’s take the formulation of one product: the mere fact that an ingredient can consist of different starting materials and can also be processed in different ways can have a significant impact on its footprint. So, we are looking at very high volumes of data sets that need to be recorded in the system solidly. Only then, in a second step, we can take informed decisions. In the past, this work was done manually – not only a very time-consuming job, also quite prone to errors.”

Birte Paustian-Blömer: “Our company-wide CO₂ reporting, which used to be done once a year – traditionally in the form of a sustainability report – is now created automatically on a monthly basis. We are able to add comparisons with previous years and forecasts for the future with the click on a button. As Beiersdorf has set the target to massively reduce Scope 3 emissions, our system also contains data from our suppliers – in addition to our own data. These arise, for example, from the production of raw materials or packaging materials that we purchase. A few years ago, we had no transparency in this area, let alone the possibility of using the data to run simulations. Now, we can see how our carbon footprint changes based on the running projects and where we stand in terms of target achievement. We can identify trends at an early stage and discuss, manage and drive the topic based on data.”

Paco Nuguid: “The digitalization of sustainability is only possible with great teamwork – we work in an interdisciplinary project team together with Dorothee and Birte, as well as other experts from Corporate Sustainability, R&D, Supply Chain, Finance and IT. In my opinion, our co-creation approach is the key to success. Together, we have found a digital solution that improves data quality tremendously and provides an overall picture of our sustainability activities and their impact on our footprint at the click of a button. Of course, it was also important to us that the solution integrates perfectly into our existing IT infrastructure.

We are collecting the data from various internal sources on our One Data Platform, where they are consolidated and linked together in data models. Technically, we chose a data analysis platform based on various Microsoft Azure and Power Platform products. These enable us to analyze and work with all single factors that influence our emissions down to the product and production line level.

With Power BI, it is then possible for us to access all elements that influence the carbon footprint through customized dashboards for different user groups and their application needs. Monthly reports can cover and illustrate different types of emissions.”

Sebastian Pinzke: “No, we are not yet at the end of our sustainability digitalization. But we have made a massive step till now. This was recognized just recently at the SustainableIT European Impact Summit, where we received an Impact Award for our digitalization programme.   

In future, our operational systems will communicate even more closely with the dashboards we have built. For example, the formula simulator is currently updated once a day. If our product developers want to weigh something for a new formula or swap ingredients, this should be visible in the operative system in real time in future. Then our colleagues will no longer have to go through the reporting process but will be able to query the operational systems directly at a central point. This would give Beiersdorf maximum transparency of sustainability data across all systems.”

Thank you, Birte, Dorothee, Paco and Sebastian, for these exciting insights!