Beiersdorf has a clear view of its sustainability progress—thanks to Microsoft Azure, Power Platform, and a central data corpus

The challenge: Make sustainability progress measurable and achievable through data analysis

In the cosmetic industry, more and more consumers want sustainable and eco-friendly products. Moreover, regulations are evolving: the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which was initiated by the EU, came into effect at the beginning of 2024. In addition to complying with the reduction guidelines laid out in Germany’s Federal Climate Change Act, companies are now also required to provide more detailed data on emissions and sustainability. That is why Beiersdorf has been working intensively on its transformation for years.

“Creating real change and being able to assess the influence of a variety of factors calls for maximum transparency,” says Dorothee Kässner, Business Program Lead Sustainability Digitalization at Beiersdorf. “Take our formulas, for instance: for the production of our materials, our suppliers can apply different feedstocks and different types of energy in the manufacturing processes, which affects its environmental footprint.”

In accordance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, Beiersdorf separates emissions into different categories along the entire value chain. First, there are Beiersdorf’s direct emissions from company buildings or vehicles (scope 1). Second, there are indirect emissions, for example from heating or cooling systems and purchased energy (scope 2). And finally, there are emissions from upstream and downstream value chains (scope 3): these include the manufacturing of materials, the selling and transporting of NIVEA, Eucerin, or Hansaplast products, employee business trips, and the disposal of packaging by consumers. To measure emissions in each of these three categories, you need to know the influencing factors. That’s why Beiersdorf has been compiling company-wide CO₂ reports for several years, albeit manually and thus in a very time-consuming way. 

“We wanted to expand our digital setup to improve data quality and gain a complete overview of our sustainability activities that we can access at the push of a button. That’s why we launched our Sustainability Digitalization Program with a cross-functional project team,” says Paco Nuguid, IT Program Lead Sustainability Digitalization at Beiersdorf. “The goal of our program is to reveal detailed sustainability parameters and integrate these into all operational processes and systems.” One of the central components is the Azure cloud platform.

The solution: Make factors affecting scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions transparent through dashboards to check the status of sustainability progress at any time

Beiersdorf has been using Microsoft Azure to manage its data and analytics since 2020. The cloud offers ideal prerequisites for Beiersdorf to pursue its Sustainability Digitalization Program. Data from many different business divisions is gathered and consolidated in a so-called “One data platform” and combined into data models. This is made possible through services including Azure Data Lake, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Databricks. This way, all parameters affecting scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions can be analyzed and made available.

One aspect of Beiersdorf’s research and development activities is to create formulas for its skin creams and other care products. Although this area is responsible for only a small amount of direct scope 1 emissions, the formula composition itself offers a lever for reducing the company’s indirect scope 3 emissions and, hence, the overall carbon footprint. For example, packaging and raw materials have the biggest lever on Beiersdorf’s carbon footprint. Therefore, the project team used Azure to build a simulation tool that considers scope 3 emissions resulting from upstream and downstream value chains.

“In the past, the effect that new formulas have on overall emissions was estimated by collating raw material data in Excel spreadsheets,” says Sebastian Pinzke, IT Program Lead Sustainability Digitalization at Beiersdorf. “Going forward, our colleagues can now compare the carbon emissions of the old and the new formulas and see how a product’s overall footprint has changed. This process is not only entirely automated, but it also creates the transparency we need to identify levers for reduction.”

A simulator for more sustainable packaging

In a nutshell, Beiersdorf’s production and delivery process for packaging materials is about filling purchased packaging blanks with the various product formulas and packing them ready for transport. That’s where the new “packaging simulator” comes in. It delivers transparency about how a packaging material change affects a product’s overall carbon footprint. This enables Beiersdorf to identify materials with high leverage and search for sustainable alternatives. Recycled materials shares can also be simulated, showing immediate results for business decisions.

Detailed overview via comprehensive dashboards

“We’ve succeeded in enhancing our data quality across the board, which means we can now provide better, faster, and more detailed answers to all sustainability questions,” Paco Nuguid says. Furthermore, the enhanced data quality provides Beiersdorf with an excellent overview of how much progress it is making toward achieving its sustainability goals. Thanks to Power BI, the company can visualize all factors that influence its carbon footprint in the form of dashboards—organized according to the various user groups and application areas.

Now, a company-wide CO₂ report—which used to be compiled only once a year—can be updated and issued on a monthly basis. The tool also makes it possible to compare data year on year and compile forecasts. For the CO₂ reporting, Beiersdorf includes not only direct emissions data but also supplier data—on raw materials and packaging materials, for example—which poses no problem for the system. In this way, all factors related to scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions are covered and visualized. “With the help of our solution based on Microsoft Azure, we’re able to simulate how planned projects will affect our overall carbon footprint in the future, and whether the actions we take keep us on track to achieve our ambitious sustainability targets. We can also detect deviations early and take appropriate measures,” says Birte Paustian-Blömer, Business Program Lead Sustainability Digitalization at Beiersdorf.

In the future, operational systems will communicate even more closely with the Power BI dashboards. For instance, the formula simulator currently runs on data that is updated once a day. In the future, when product developers want to adopt a new formula or swap out substances, the software will be able to visualize the effects in real time. The Azure cloud platform also supports the necessary integration of Beiersdorf’s various operational systems with each other, including master data and lab systems, sustainability tools, and the One data platform. An array of microservices ensures that the vast amounts of data required flow seamlessly and in real time. “Our colleagues no longer need to take the reporting route to get the information they need. Instead, they can get the answers directly from the operational systems at a central location. That calls for reporting data both to be visible on the dashboards and to be fed back into the operational systems,” Pinzke says. This allows Beiersdorf to maximize transparency with regard to its sustainability data across all systems and thus optimize its products and processes in line with its CARE BEYOND SKIN Sustainability Agenda.