Sustainability in product procurement has been a major issue for the fashion industry at least since the mandatory publication of a CSR report for companies with more than 500 employees starting from 2017. Anyone who wants to create this report as a medium-sized company – and not just for an obligation or cosmetic reasons – will find it much easier to create it on the basis of a reliable ERP solution.

First of all: Who has to publish a CSR report (Corporate Social Responsibility) at all? Affected are companies with

1. more than 500 employees on average in a financial year
2. more than 40 million Euros turnover
3. total assets of more than 20 million Euro

Producing a CSR report can be very time-consuming. For this reason, many companies tackle this job only once a year missing therefore the opportunity of a permanent sustainability monitoring and the chance to derive important operational or strategic decisions from it.

The Challenge

Most companies are already collecting all data necessary for their CSR report. But without an integrated ERP solution, the data usually has to be compiled from many different sources. This is usually very time-consuming, error-prone, and cannot be automated. In addition, producing a CSR report does not mean to list lots of raw data in a paper but to put them into context and interpret them for future action.

ERP Systems are a Convenient Solution because…

Companies working with an integrated ERP solution have already consolidated all data about products, customers, and suppliers in an integrated software solution. This data can be easily extended with CSR-relevant key figures. The data is available in real-time and can be graphically evaluated, for example, via Microsoft PowerBI. In fact, you could produce your entire CSR report in PowerBI at the push of a button or even publish it on the Internet or send it regularly by e-mail to your stakeholders.

Conclusion: Producing a CSR report is a good thing for companies of all sizes – because it does not only promote and enforce sustainable action but also reveals financial optimization potential. ERP systems provide the necessary technological basis for this.