When it comes to sustainability, "short-termism" -- the idea that companies' focus on quarterly financial reports over longer-term improvements -- is often seen as an obstacle to true progress on reducing emissions and pollution.

But for SAP, taking the pulse of their sustainability efforts every three months has helped keep them on target, while refining the tools they use -- and which they sell to their customers -- to make for ever-greater results.

In addition to its annual sustainability report, the company has been reporting quarterly results since Q1 2010, and has lately been highlighting its progress in terms of cost savings to the business. And the results are impressive: Since 2008, SAP's sustainability initiatives have saved the company €185 million -- more than US$263 million -- in operating costs.

In the last quarter alone, that number has grown by more than $24 million (€15 million).

"Since 2010, on the whole we've become much more sophisticated in gathering the data using our own tools," Rami Branitzky, SAP's senior vice president of sustainability, explained in an interview yesterday. "[The evolution of the process has] been a reflection of what most companies go through on the journey. At the beginning, it's a pretty intense process to gather the data in Excel, then over time you develop the tools and methods to gather and track the data."

SAP is, of course, using its own software -- SAP Carbon Impact OnDemand 5.0 -- to measure and report the data. In addition to an "eating our own cooking" philosophy, the process has helped SAP refine and improve the tools that they're offering to companies around the world.

But at the same time, SAP faces a bit of a bind: In order to sell more sustainability (and other) software solutions, the company is largely dependent on air, rail and car travel. And travel is the single largest contributor to SAP's carbon footprint.

"We have a target of going back to 2000 levels [of emissions] by 2020," Branitzky said. "By that time we'll hopefully be 2x the size we're at right now. How do you accomplish that phenomenal growth while shrinking emissions?"

That is the question that every company is going to face in the coming years. When the economy picks up steam, companies that haven't decoupled growth from emissions will find their footprints swelling -- and potentially get in regulatory trouble as a result.

With travel and building energy use as the two prime sources of emissions, SAP has started to address their impacts in the ways you might expect from a software company.

The company bought several Cisco TelePresence systems, which Branitzky said "just takes away the need to fly." But at the same time, SAP employees' business travel is how SAP generates business: Cut business travel too much and you cut emissions, but you also cut growth opportunities.

So SAP has taken a "travel smarter" approach. Rather than send seven people on a sales call or client visit, can three go instead and relay details back to their office?