• Prof Dr Jorge Marx Gómez

Dipl.-Wirt.Inform. Dirk Schlehf, Dipl.-Wirt.Inform. Nils Heyer, Dipl.-Wirt.Inform. Andreas Solsbach

A project group at the University of Oldenburg has a duration of two semesters and usually consists of around 12 people, in the case of Cerebral 13 members, and counts for 24 ECTS points. At the beginning of the two semesters, the project groups are given a task that the group must fulfil together. This usually involves developing software.

The aim of the Cerebral project group (Corporate Environmental REporting for Business Related Affiliates) was to develop a system that can be used in a browser to create and analyse sustainability reports.

The constant development of the internet has created a new communication platform that simplifies the publication of sustainability reports. Previously, it was customary to provide sustainability reports in paper form and this is still very common today. Some companies are already utilising the possibilities of the internet and also offer their reports for download. As mentioned above, the aim of our project group is to develop a system that overcomes the previous problems. Up to now, reports have only rarely been updated and many companies only publish their printed versions once a year. In addition, printing costs are very high. By publishing reports on the Internet, they can be updated at any time and made available to the various stakeholders. With this system, the content can be entered into the system via simple input options and interfaces and can also be displayed again via a browser. Comprehensive rights management simplifies the process of assigning rights to different users. There should be rights for individual users, but also for groups in which several users are summarised.

The aim of the Cerebral project group is to develop software for the Internet-based creation and publication of sustainability reports. Until now, companies have mostly published their sustainability reports in paper form. This has several disadvantages: Printing reports involves high costs and not many people are reached this way. It is not possible to keep a printed report constantly up to date. But especially in view of a possible legal requirement that companies of a certain size are obliged to publish sustainability reports such as annual reports at a certain frequency, the introduction of an Internet-based sustainability reporting solution would offer these companies a number of advantages, e.g:

• Permanent, immediate accessibility of the sustainability report via the Internet
• Cost savings due to elimination of printing costs
• Cost savings due to joint distributed work on a report
• Fulfilment of sustainability reporting standards (e.g. GRI 3) through the system's specifications

The Cerebral project group's system should be operated via a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. An application server and a database are to be installed on a server accessible via the Internet. In order to create a strict separation of logic and display as well as data storage, the model-view-controller model is to be used. The two central functions of the software are the creation and publication of sustainability reports. Two different interfaces are available for this purpose: an administration front end for managing and entering data (View Admin) and a front end for displaying the data (View). Several people are usually responsible for creating and editing report content. In order to ensure a clear demarcation between responsibilities, user management is necessary, which is also implemented via the administration front end. An interface to an SAP system is provided for the integration of company-specific key figures.