Today, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) announced the latest version of the SAP® Environment, Health, and Safety Management (SAP EHS Management) application, which helps manufacturers create more preventative safety cultures. Aimed at companies in asset-intensive industries, new risk assessment capabilities help companies take proactive steps to avoid costly, dangerous incidents and keep operations up and running — without interruption. In addition, the new sustainability solution from SAP has been extended with a mobile app, available on iTunes, that allows employees to report safety issues with their mobile devices.

“As one of South Africa’s largest automotive companies, ensuring the sustainability and safety of our operations is paramount,” said Lize-Marie Verhoef, general manager of corporate IT applications, BMW South Africa. “SAP’s approach to risk assessment can help companies like ours to spot risks before they become accidents. With operational risk management solutions, we can more easily keep both our employees and the environment safe, while maintaining high productivity.”;

Particularly for companies in high-risk industries such as oil and gas, mining or manufacturing, a proactive operational risk management strategy is the best way to safeguard against hazardous, costly and potentially catastrophic accidents. SAP has collaborated with companies in these industries to create a holistic, preventative EHS risk assessment approach that helps them to identify, track, analyze and reduce risks and incidents across their entire organization. Integrated with SAP® Business Suite software for asset and human capital management, the application makes it easier to unite disparate business processes allowing for more comprehensive risk oversight.

“Risk transcends departments, which is why SAP offers companies a way to manage operational risk not via point solutions but with a comprehensive, integrated approach that safeguards people, the environment and profits,” said Peter Graf, chief sustainability officer, SAP. “In this way, we link sustainability to all aspects of business operations and help companies enact a pre-emptive risk management strategy that’s embedded in day-to-day business processes.”;

SAP has a three-step vision for operational risk management, which will help customers protect people, assets and the environment while safeguarding their bottom line. The first step is enabling organizations to report incidents and gain a company-wide picture of that information. Last fall, SAP announced new incident management capabilities that let customers like Pelican Products, Inc., a manufacturer of portable lighting systems, easily report, view and analyze all data related to incidents and “near-misses,” helping them to better understand and prevent accidents.

Extending the ability to provide a 360-degree view of potential EHS problems, the new SAP® EHS Safety Issue mobile app allows workers to log issues from their mobile device via voice, video or photograph, which can be sent directly to an incident or safety manager for corrective action.

In addition, SAP EHS Management 2.0 includes new reporting and dashboard capabilities that allow companies to quickly analyze and prioritize  EHS risks by category and location.

The second step in an effective operational risk management strategy is helping companies to analyze risks and determine appropriate mitigation steps; SAP enables that with the new risk assessment features announced today. Third, companies must be able to manage change as they put those mitigation steps into place. SAP plans to introduce the SAP® Management of Change application later in 2012, an entirely new solution that is intended to help companies more safely handle significant operational changes such as introducing new processes or equipment.