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Issue
At the group level, Syensqo is required to collect and consolidate a broad set of environmental indicators from its industrial sites. This is necessary not only to meet external reporting requirements—such as those defined under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) —but also to monitor progress against internal sustainability targets and ambitions set by corporate, as well as answer institutional questionnaires such as Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).
This data collection is currently conducted through an annual campaign using the PURE platform, in which sites are asked to complete the Syensqo Environmental Reporting File (SERF - 7 forms in 2024). The data consolidation is then performed in PURE. Data is audited and can then be subsequently used for the annual report process or other questionnaires answering.
Since sites data will originate from SAP EHS EM and should eventually be disclosed in SAP SCT, the goal of this KDD is to evaluate if the process could be conducted fully in SAP, including the corporate consolidation, or if PURE is still needed in the target landscape.
Background & Context
Syensqo operates in a regulatory environment where environmental data must be collected, validated, reported, audited both at the corporate level and at the individual site level.
On an annual basis, each site within the defined reporting scope is required to submit a comprehensive set of environmental indicators to the corporate Industrial team. These indicators include:
- Emissions to air and water
- Water balance (intake, use, discharge, losses, circularity)
- Waste shipment and treatment
- General information (Environmental fines, climate change related information, additional information on water for CDP, summed production volumes....)
To standardize this process, the corporate team has developed the Syensqo Environmental Reporting File (SERF), which are implemented through the PURE application (UL 360 platform). The SERF covers more than 1000 KPIs and is structured to support corporate-level reporting requirements under frameworks such as CSRD, as well as internal environmental performance monitoring.
Site representatives are prompted annually to fill out the SERF questionnaires within PURE, after which the corporate team validates, consolidates, and extracts the data for use in the group’s sustainability disclosures.
Group reporting is done on operational and financial perimeter depending on the requirement. The calculation perimeter may be modified based on the properties of the reporting entities (start- and stop-date during their lifetime) and the exact inquiry (e.g. historical perimeter is with inactive sites included, running perimeter is without the past contribution for the past sites). It therefore allows executing ad hoc analysis of past data, for example in the event of a carve-out or spin-off.
Constraints
- System and data should be auditable. Users should be able to add the comment if there is any change in value when data is validated
- The system should keep all historical values for the same indicator / reporting entity and period combination; together with the reasons for the corrections, the name of the person who asked for the correction, the date, etc
- Auditors may impose to make some changes in the reporting process at site or group level to better cater for CSRD requirements
- Need to maintain complex formulas (If and Else) and the full flexibility for the SERF Manager to modify calculation equations and consolidation settings
- Need to be able to update data collection forms every year to cater for reporting frameworks updates
- Need to have flexible reporting to cater for ad-hoc requests and cover both operational and financial reporting parameters
- Need to be able to use time-variable calculation constants and time-variable consolidation rates, the latter is needed for the computation of the financial perimeter
Impacts
- Potential for reduced manual work
- Risk of data inconsistency if systems are not well integrated
- Increased IT and business (site and corporate) workload during the transition phase
- Need for training and change management at site and corporate level
Business Rules
- Indicators must be traceable to source data and auditable
- Any system must support future expansion of KPI scope or manual update of definition or calculation rule with traceability.
- Site Input data is made available in SAP EHS EM, either through manual input or leveraging models
- SAP version will be S/4 HANA 2025 Private Cloud
Options considered
Option A: Move end to end process to SAP EHS Environment
Single, Integrated Solution: SAP EHS Environment becomes the sole platform to manage group waste, emissions and water reporting end to end.
- After setting up some prerequisites and that sites have submitted their data, calculations are launched at corporate level and results reviewed before being pushed to other SAP modules for reporting.
Pros:
- Both site level and corporate level data would be present in single system. Easy traceability and auditability
- Effort required for integration with other SAP component is limited
- More cost efficient as less licensing and maintenance cost is required
- Opportunity to merge the “water live dashboard” and the SERF report for sites in scope: the quarterly data will be used for the annual reporting
Cons :
Limitation in equation parameter, lengthy equations need to be broken down to smaller ones. This would result in more effort during initial setup.
- More change impact for the PURE Admin
Our recommendation: Option A is the most future-proof approach and more streamlined design.
Option B: Keep PURE + create some integration with SAP
In this architecture, all industrial sites use SAP EHS EM as the standardized platform for site-level environmental data capture and compliance reporting. The corporate environmental reporting platform PURE (based on UL 360) remains in place for annual group-level consolidation and reporting, including CSRD compliance. Data from SAP EHS is exported and integrated into PURE for the Syensqo Environmental Reporting Form (SERF) campaign.
Sites operate in SAP EHS, entering data on:
Emissions to air and water
Waste transportation and disposal
Water intakes, uses ,releases ,losses and reuse
Data is validated locally using SAP EHS validation rules and audit trails.
On a yearly (Frequency could be varied based on requirement) basis, the data required for SERF is extracted from SAP EHS, transformed as needed, and uploaded or integrated into PURE, where corporate teams run:
Campaign monitoring
Plausibility checks
Final calculations and KPI aggregations
External reporting formats
PURE can still be used for questions not covered in SAP EHS EM
- Results are extracted from PURE and sent SAP Sustainability Control Tower via Datasphere.
Pros:
- Ability to handle complex computation better in 1 formula
- Null value input can be used in logical equations
- Perimeters can be managed more directly in PURE
Cons :
- Fragmented data as site level and corporate level data would reside in 2 different systems
- Integration needs to established between SAP EHS EM to PURE and from PURE to SAP Datasphere.
- Additional licensing cost for PURE and maintenance needed for integration with SAP
- Very limited user basis and functional scope for PURE
Evaluation
Option A : Move full scope to SAP EHS Environment | Option B : SAP EHS at Site + PURE at Corporate | |
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| System Integration |
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| Compliance and Performance management |
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Computation Flexibility |
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Standard Auditability & Traceability of Data |  Pro: improved traceability since everything is 1 system. No risk of data corruption during integration or mapping |
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Change Management Impact |
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See also
Insert links and references to other documents which are relevant when trying to understand this decision and its implications. Other decisions are often impacted, so it's good to list them here with links. Attachments are also possible but dangerous as they are static documents and not updated by their authors.
