Winner: 2024 Best Run Chris O'Brien
Powerlink: Empowering sustainable change through climate reporting leveraging SAP Datasphere and Sustainability Control Tower. Download the DocumentSAP Australia and New Zealand
Best Run Awards 2024
Best Run Awards 2024
Best Run SAP
Industry WebsiteProduct and Services Featured SAP Solutions
Energy https://www.powerlink.com.au/Electricity transmission SAP Datasphere and Sustainability
Control Tower
Powerlink is a leading Australian provider of high-voltage electricity transmission network services, supplying power to more than five million Queenslanders and
253,000 businesses. Its network extends 1,700 km from Cairns to the NSW border, comprising over 15,000 circuit km of transmission lines and 147 substations.
Through its central role in the Queensland power transmission system, Powerlink’s mission is to provide customers with a world class energy future and is actively
contributing to reducing Australia's carbon footprint. This includes guiding the market and working with the QLD government to create Renewable Energy Zones
that can take advantage of leading renewable generation, storage and grid technologies.
As part of its mission, Powerlink is involved in the ambitious goal of creating a Queensland renewable “super grid”, contributing to a substantial number of wind,
solar, battery and hydro projects. To achieve success in tracking data and sustainability ambitions across its supply chain, aligned to Queensland climate targets,
Powerlink needed a robust solution and has delivered SAP’s Datasphere and Sustainability Control Tower (SCT) to drive its efforts to enable the transition to low-
carbon business processes.
Empowering Sustainable Change Through
Climate Reporting
Powerlink
Chris O’Brien
Industry WebsiteProduct and Services Featured SAP Solutions
Energy https://www.powerlink.com.au/Electricity transmission SAP Datasphere and Sustainability
Control Tower
Powerlink is a leading Australian provider of high-voltage electricity transmission network services, supplying power to more than five million Queenslanders and
253,000 businesses. Its network extends 1,700 km from Cairns to the NSW border, comprising over 15,000 circuit km of transmission lines and 147 substations.
Through its central role in the Queensland power transmission system, Powerlink’s mission is to provide customers with a world class energy future and is actively
contributing to reducing Australia's carbon footprint. This includes guiding the market and working with the QLD government to create Renewable Energy Zones
that can take advantage of leading renewable generation, storage and grid technologies.
As part of its mission, Powerlink is involved in the ambitious goal of creating a Queensland renewable “super grid”, contributing to a substantial number of wind,
solar, battery and hydro projects. To achieve success in tracking data and sustainability ambitions across its supply chain, aligned to Queensland climate targets,
Powerlink needed a robust solution and has delivered SAP’s Datasphere and Sustainability Control Tower (SCT) to drive its efforts to enable the transition to low-
carbon business processes.
Empowering Sustainable Change Through
Climate Reporting
Powerlink
Chris O’Brien
Challenges
Powerlink identified the need to accurately track Environmental, Social, Governance and Economic (ESG) and
sustainability targets across its supply chain aligned to Queensland climate targets and Australian legislative
financial reporting requirements, which commence on 1 July 2024.
To do this, Powerlink was guided by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which creates a global common
language for organisations to report their impacts and maintains the world’s most comprehensive sustainability
reporting standards.
When assessing the current state, it was identified that most existing processes within Powerlink to deliver
mandatory reporting is manual, and therefore time consuming, relying on many internal and external touch points
to complete.
Further investigation also revealed that most internal Enterprise and corporate metrics are also manually
constructed with variations of similar metrics, often from different sources, released into the organisation causing
the potential for conflicting information.
Powerlink identified the need to accurately track Environmental, Social, Governance and Economic (ESG) and
sustainability targets across its supply chain aligned to Queensland climate targets and Australian legislative
financial reporting requirements, which commence on 1 July 2024.
To do this, Powerlink was guided by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which creates a global common
language for organisations to report their impacts and maintains the world’s most comprehensive sustainability
reporting standards.
When assessing the current state, it was identified that most existing processes within Powerlink to deliver
mandatory reporting is manual, and therefore time consuming, relying on many internal and external touch points
to complete.
Further investigation also revealed that most internal Enterprise and corporate metrics are also manually
constructed with variations of similar metrics, often from different sources, released into the organisation causing
the potential for conflicting information.
Solution
Powerlink embarked on a discovery activity of the SCT solution where a core team was assembled to evaluate
SCT’s capabilities against Powerlink’s needs. Using both an SAP demo environment and a temporary Sandbox
set up for this purpose, Powerlink focused on understanding data structure management, data loading,
integration, and front-end UX design.
Based on these findings, a solution that combined the strengths of SAP Datasphere and SAP SCT was decided
on, integrating Datasphere into the existing Enterprise Data and Analytic stack as the aggregated data source for
SCT to streamline data handling and improving governance.
To implement the solution, Powerlink gathered a specialised workgroup and employed an Agile scrum
framework for the delivery process focusing on an initial 3 metrics. This effort involved 8 part-time members from
the Powerlink SAP and Enterprise Data and Analytics teams working collaboratively to successfully deliver the
SCT solution.
Powerlink also set up a direct dialogue with SAP teams in Singapore and Germany to provide feedback into how
the implementation was progressing and opportunities for the product itself. No partner outside of SAP was
engaged for this activity.
With the support of SAP, this worked out to at most 2 full-time Powerlink resources who delivered the
Datasphere and SCT solution in 4 months.
Pleasingly, through working with the SAP product team, both parties were able to prioritise core features that will
benefit existing and future potential customers of the SCT solution.
Powerlink embarked on a discovery activity of the SCT solution where a core team was assembled to evaluate
SCT’s capabilities against Powerlink’s needs. Using both an SAP demo environment and a temporary Sandbox
set up for this purpose, Powerlink focused on understanding data structure management, data loading,
integration, and front-end UX design.
Based on these findings, a solution that combined the strengths of SAP Datasphere and SAP SCT was decided
on, integrating Datasphere into the existing Enterprise Data and Analytic stack as the aggregated data source for
SCT to streamline data handling and improving governance.
To implement the solution, Powerlink gathered a specialised workgroup and employed an Agile scrum
framework for the delivery process focusing on an initial 3 metrics. This effort involved 8 part-time members from
the Powerlink SAP and Enterprise Data and Analytics teams working collaboratively to successfully deliver the
SCT solution.
Powerlink also set up a direct dialogue with SAP teams in Singapore and Germany to provide feedback into how
the implementation was progressing and opportunities for the product itself. No partner outside of SAP was
engaged for this activity.
With the support of SAP, this worked out to at most 2 full-time Powerlink resources who delivered the
Datasphere and SCT solution in 4 months.
Pleasingly, through working with the SAP product team, both parties were able to prioritise core features that will
benefit existing and future potential customers of the SCT solution.
Impact
SCT is driving conversations regarding corporate metric automation
and definition review beyond the Climate metrics.
Several core corporate metrics are currently in review with the goal
to enable both detailed analytics and aggregated results through
the Cloud Data and Analytics Platform and SCT.
Datasphere is now a core product within the Cloud Data & Analytics
Platform with opportunity to replace other products.
Ingested Green House Gas (GHG) Scope 1 and 2 metrics currently
reported on for NGER.
This process historically can take over 2 months to complete and
involves internal and external touch points to complete.
Using the new SAP solutions combined with the Powerlink Cloud
Data and Analytics Platform, we have commenced automating
processes with a plan to automate most of the activity reducing
effort from months to days and distribute the results in SCT for the
Enterprise.
SAP now drives Powerlink’s Climate & ESG Reporting as part of its Cloud Data and Analytics Platform by integrating SAP analytics with its
other Business Intelligence and Enterprise Solutions.
This capability gives Powerlink a catalyst to automate existing processes, align metric definitions across the Enterprise, apply improved
governance and provides Powerlink a mechanism to comply with future legislation.
Due to the rapid deployment, Powerlink will be able to run the existing manual NGER process in parallel with the new more automated process
for this financial year, providing the opportunity to compare and seek business feedback before fully transiting across to automated processes
for next financial year.
In addition, now 3 metrics have been delivered, we have developed a strategic roadmap for onboarding future metrics and how we automate
them to ensure we best leverage the technology.
SCT is driving conversations regarding corporate metric automation
and definition review beyond the Climate metrics.
Several core corporate metrics are currently in review with the goal
to enable both detailed analytics and aggregated results through
the Cloud Data and Analytics Platform and SCT.
Datasphere is now a core product within the Cloud Data & Analytics
Platform with opportunity to replace other products.
Ingested Green House Gas (GHG) Scope 1 and 2 metrics currently
reported on for NGER.
This process historically can take over 2 months to complete and
involves internal and external touch points to complete.
Using the new SAP solutions combined with the Powerlink Cloud
Data and Analytics Platform, we have commenced automating
processes with a plan to automate most of the activity reducing
effort from months to days and distribute the results in SCT for the
Enterprise.
SAP now drives Powerlink’s Climate & ESG Reporting as part of its Cloud Data and Analytics Platform by integrating SAP analytics with its
other Business Intelligence and Enterprise Solutions.
This capability gives Powerlink a catalyst to automate existing processes, align metric definitions across the Enterprise, apply improved
governance and provides Powerlink a mechanism to comply with future legislation.
Due to the rapid deployment, Powerlink will be able to run the existing manual NGER process in parallel with the new more automated process
for this financial year, providing the opportunity to compare and seek business feedback before fully transiting across to automated processes
for next financial year.
In addition, now 3 metrics have been delivered, we have developed a strategic roadmap for onboarding future metrics and how we automate
them to ensure we best leverage the technology.