NTT DATA Business Solutions AG publishes its first Sustainability Report, marking the start of regular annual reporting. Taking its cue from the guidelines of the German Sustainability Code (DNK), the report provides insights into the efforts made by the internationally operating SAP® consulting company to foster sustainability within the company and along the supply chain.
Sustainable into the future: Sustainability Report of 2022/23
Bringing forward our first Sustainability Report
On January 1, 2024, the EU Commission’s amendment to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will take effect. This will significantly expand the scope of companies that will be subject to sustainability reporting requirements in the future.
Although the company is not currently subject to a statutory reporting obligation, we see voluntary reporting as an opportunity to systematically record the status of this important societal issue as a starting point for making improvements. It also represents an important step in our preparations for the future statutory requirements on sustainability reporting.
Therefore, this report aims to provide our customers, employees, partners and suppliers and interested members of the public with an initial insight into our approach to sustainability within the company and in our supply chain. Our report provides a transparent overview of the measures that have already been initiated and those that still need to be taken in order to implement our sustainability strategy. Based on a materiality analysis, we report on our company’s sustainability along the three sustainability dimensions of environmental, social and governance (ESG) – both within the company and in cooperation with our customers.
We have a responsibility towards our employees, business partners, and customers as well as towards the environment and society generally.
Norbert Rotter, CEO of NTT DATA Business Solutions AG and EVP of NTT DATA, Inc.
Responsibility for the environment and society
As an IT service provider with its own data centers, the environmental sustainability dimension is primarily determined by the issues of “climate change and emissions” and “affordable and clean energy”. An example: At our locations in Germany, the data centers are responsible for around 80 percent of our total electricity consumption. In order to keep the resulting greenhouse gas emissions as low as possible, we paid attention to the type of power supply at an early stage. All of our servers are now powered by green electricity from a variety of sources, about 15 percent comes from our own photovoltaic system. The generation of our own solar power to operate our data centers will be further expanded in 2024 with a single-digit million euro amount. The goal is to generate our own energy supply in the future.
Sustainable data centers
Already during the construction phase in 2011, we attached great importance to the optimal energy efficiency of our data centers. For example, the servers were not equipped with water cooling, but with a more expensive, but at the time groundbreaking, adiabatic air cooling. This type of cooling still requires water, but its consumption is much more efficient and therefore more environmentally friendly than conventional cooling systems. The advantage of this method is easily explained by a natural process: When a person sweats, the sweat evaporates on the skin. The transition from a liquid to a gaseous state releases energy, causing the body temperature to drop. Adiabatic air cooling takes advantage of this energy release. The waste heat from the servers can be used to heat the office buildings. Thanks to this combination of sustainable construction and the use of green electricity, NTT DATA Business Solutions is well on its way to achieving the 2030 target for data centers in our Net Zero Vision 2040.
Climate and environmental actions
The use of energy-saving technology in our own operations is the biggest lever for making the company more climate-friendly. But it’s not the only one. Our revised travel and mobility policy aims to reduce travel, especially air travel, to a necessary minimum. The gradual conversion of our vehicle fleet to electric vehicles will further reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years.
To compensate for the loss of plant and animal habitats due to land development and use, the company will support species conservation projects such as the bee hives on its own premises. Another pillar of the company’s sustainability strategy is to offset greenhouse gas emissions that the company is currently unable to reduce itself. NTT DATA Business Solutions relies on serious, long-term offset projects such as the reforestation of the Teutoburg Forest or the tree-planting campaign by the trainees of the DSC Arminia Bielefeld as part of the Ostwestfalen alliance, which, for example, will more than offset the greenhouse gas emissions of our SAP partner event TransformationNOW! 2022. A committee of employees decides which projects to support and how much to donate.
Social sustainability actions
The report also covers the working environment of employees in our own company and along the supply chain. As a global company, it is our task to ensure the best possible and fair working conditions and development opportunities at all locations.
As NTT DATA Business Solutions’ field of activity has potential human rights risks, any violation of human rights is met with a zero-tolerance policy. To ensure this, the focus in the 2023/2024 financial year is on the human rights due diligence process.
With regard to working conditions, our report addresses the legal regulation of working hours, occupational health management, the avoidance of bogus self-employment and the handling of contingent workers. Another challenge that affects the entire IT industry is gender equality. By 2028, we aim to increase the proportion of women in our workforce to more than one-third, with a particular focus on senior management. As an additional HR incentive, we have set ourselves the goal of achieving the internationally recognized “Global Top Employer” in 2023.
Sustainable corporate governance
In the area of sustainable corporate governance, we focus on ethics & compliance, data protection & cybersecurity and especially on the responsible use of technology. Protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks and optimizing data management are becoming increasingly urgent as business processes become more digital. The IT systems required for this are also moving towards the cloud. Both aspects – the digitization of processes and the secure and data-protected operation of systems – are key components of our service. The responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI), which is already changing our day-to-day work and our service portfolio, is also becoming increasingly relevant. In terms of social responsibility, dealing with attempts to deceive through deep fakes and ensuring data protection, as well as ethical aspects such as fairness, transparency and traceability, play a particularly important role.
Green innovations and sustainability solutions
Progress on our own is important, but our industry and technology expertise in collaboration with our customers is an even stronger asset. As an IT service provider, we harness technology as a powerful engine for positive change, offering our customers innovative products and digital solutions that enhance their sustainability.
Our goal is to advise companies on tracking, reducing, or even avoiding and offsetting CO2e emissions, and on the measurability of sustainability efforts along the entire value chain – from raw material producers to end customers. After all, a company’s CO2e footprint can only be truly improved through holistic and targeted emissions management.
A tracking and assistance system assigns emissions to the originator and suggests avoidance and optimization measures. We are developing this system together with experts from industry and research as part of a regional project.
In addition, we are working on digital solutions that also have a social impact. For example, our consulting services and products have already contributed to progress in the fight against dementia, the use of drones to transport medical supplies to remote regions, and to giving more children access to digital education.
After all, green IT means far more than just green energy. We are working to conserve resources more effectively and support even more customers with innovative software solutions for their green transformation.
Jürgen Pürzer, CFO of NTT DATA Business Solutions AG
About the Sustainability Report
The publication of this report is intended to drive the process of increasingly holistic and sustainable business management. For us, this means making all three ESG criteria an integral part of our business activities – internally and with our stakeholders. In the future, the benchmarks for measuring corporate success must be more diverse and go beyond the dominant financial indicators, without neglecting them. Our global sustainability strategy has been developed since July 2022 as part of a global sustainability program and is still ongoing. In 2023, the goals and KPIs will be finalized and integrated into the Sustainability Report. Our first Sustainability Report can therefore only be a prelude to further annual reports, which are essential for a transparent sustainability strategy.
German Sustainability Code
Our first sustainability report is based on the standards set out in the German Sustainability Code (GSC). In accordance with the requirements of the GSC, we have prepared a declaration of conformity with 20 criteria contained in the GSC online database. The declaration includes non-financial performance indicators in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
This sustainability report reproduces the content of the GSC declaration in a slightly looser structure and supplemented by additional content. The structure and the selection of the additional content of the report are based on our materiality analysis and the identified sustainability aspects for NTT DATA Business Solutions in the areas of environment, social and governance. We believed it was important for us to provide an insight into how we are addressing each of these three pillars in practice. We achieved this through interviews and project reports.
Materiality analysis
Our sustainability strategy is based on a materiality analysis that is updated annually. We use this to determine the issues of particular relevance to NTT DATA Business Solutions in terms of its sustainable transformation. In particular, this is the case where there are significant risks or opportunities in respect of environmental, social or economic aspects that are considered to be critical from the perspective of the company and its stakeholders.
Our most recent materiality analysis identified nine top issues that can be allocated to the three sustainability dimensions, i.e. environmental, social, and sustainable corporate governance, or ESG for short.
In evaluating the key issues, we take account of the impact of our actions on environmental and social aspects (inside-out perspective) and the impact of sustainability issues on the company (outside-in perspective).