Nov. 11, 2008 - Business software provider SAP has created an online social networking platform where stakeholders can sound off on the company's sustainability efforts, receive feedback from SAP officials, and vote on which sustainability issues should take top priority. The new site complements SAP's first-ever sustainability report, released today.

SAP's sustainability report has been published on the company's new SAP Collaboration Workspace, an interactive microsite where interested parties can log on to share their views on SAP's sustainability efforts. Users can also secure feedback directly from SAP and interact with other stakeholders on the site.

"After a deceptively long period of planning and intense effort we launch into the world SAP's very first sustainability report," writes James Farrar, the company's VP of corporate social responsiblity, on the site's homepage. "And funny enough, what I'm most proud of is the fact that we didn't ever really finish it. Why? Because, rather than bake in all our own ideas on what our contributions and costs to sustainable development are we thought we should take every opportunity to stop, engage at every opportunity and include our stakeholders."

In addition SAP has arranged an online sustainability stakeholder survey to find out from its stakeholders what they think the company s future sustainability reports should focus on.

"Our first sustainability report is the start of the dialog," Farrar says, inviting stakeholders to "tell us and the rest of this open community what you think."

Increasingly, companies are leveraging the interactive capabilities of the web to promote transparency and communicate progress on sustainability performance. U.K. confectioner Cadbury, for example, just launched its "Dear Cadbury" microsite, which uses actual customer letters to illustrate the company s responsiveness to stakeholders' sustainability concerns. In June, IKEA Canada launched a green-themed microsite to keep tabs on its customers' attitudes toward environmentally and socially responsible products.