Sustainability needs decisions

The sustainability debate in companies is often stuck in a recurring pattern: collect data, create a report, year after year. In light of Earth Day on April 22, Nagarro is calling for a rethink. Sustainability must be transferred from reporting to daily decision-making and artificial intelligence plays a central role in this.

Stefan Bär, CTO of Nagarro © Nagarro

"The question is no longer whether companies want to act sustainably. The crucial question is whether they can integrate sustainability into their operational decisions, just as naturally as with financial key figures," says Stefan Bär, CTO at Nagarro. The pressure on companies is growing due to regulatory requirements, rising investor and customer expectations and a lack of transparency - especially in supply chains.

"This gap is particularly evident in the supply chain," explains Bär. "It causes the majority of environmental impacts, but is also the least transparent area. Scope 3 emissions are on average more than eleven times higher than a company's direct emissions, but are often only estimated." AI can help here to automate data and enable well-founded decisions.

From reporting to real-time control with AI

In the long term, this will shift the role of sustainability away from a pure reporting obligation and towards an operational management tool. However, a targeted use of technology is crucial. "Artificial intelligence is not an end in itself. It unfolds its value where it makes real processes more efficient and sustainable," says Bär. "At the same time, we need to learn how to use technology more consciously and carefully examine where its use makes sense - and where it doesn't."

Great potential for AI in supply chains

The market for AI in supply chains is growing rapidly and, according to estimates, will rise to over 70 billion US dollars by 2030. However, many companies are still in the early stages. Numerous initiatives remain stuck in pilot projects, and more than half are not yet actively using AI for sustainability. Earth Day should therefore serve as an impetus to integrate sustainability more strongly into the core of business decisions.