Tags: Software Solutions, Technology Industry
By Anna Valmero
MAKATI CITY, METRO MANILA – An executive of software company SAP urged companies to adopt sustainability as a business differentiator that will in turn translate to operational efficiencies, savings and lower carbon footprint.
“More companies are now realizing the benefits of sustainability to achieve a green image, owing to the fact that consumers tend to buy things that are environment-friendly and have social impact. But more than that, adopting sustainability is a way to get ahead of the competition,” said Simon Dale, senior VP for business user organization of SAP Asia-Pacific and Japan.
But sustainability efforts should not be IT-based alone, Dale clarified.
“Sustainability should be viewed in a holistic manner, not only in terms of IT operations where you talk about reducing the power use of data centers. The IT component of businesses account only for two percent of the global carbon emissions,” he explained.
Sustainability is referred to as the “holistic management of societal, environmental, and economic risks and opportunities for increased short- and long-term profitability”.
In terms of operational risk management, sustainability lowers the cost and risk of product compliance while increasing operational efficiencies in terms of material, labor and power use, Dale explained.
Dale cited as example the new US regulation that mandates chip manufacturers from using materials from conflict zones like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is controlled by rebel groups that use profits from minerals like gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin to fuel the DRC conflict.
“If you tend to violate this, there is that risk of not selling those products,” he said.
Sustainable business practices also allows a company to gain inroads in new green markets, including those focused on green solutions and increased energy efficiency, he added.
In the SAP Sustainability Report, the software company found that plane travel of executives for meetings in different regions account for their biggest carbon footprint at 35 percent and thus, SAP held real-time meetings virtually to meet their carbon targets. This translated to huge annual savings of nearly 90 million euros.
Dale lauded some companies in the Philippines like the Ayala Group for including sustainability in its target.
“This initiative from the private business sector is better than enforced government action because it means these guys know the business and can approach the matter smartly,” said.
Businesses should therefore approach sustainability not only as mere “carbon counting for corporate social responsibility” but as a key differentiator to drive margins in business by implementing simple initiatives.
These include turning off the air-conditioning after 5p.m. and other appliances when not in use, and supply chain optimization or tapping available raw materials for manufacturing instead of importing , noted Dale.
To date, SAP has teamed up with nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project to standardize global carbon emission measurements.
SAP also used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to deliver services such as carbon footprint calculators and a road traffic application linked to GPS maps to alert the driver of possible road troubles such as accidents based on traffic tweets which is collocated in an online GPS map.
“By devising a route with less traffic, it translates to lowered carbon emissions and increased productivity for the driver,” he said.
Asked why the company keen in campaigning for sustainability, Dale answered: “Business operations of SAP’s clients account for one-sixth of the total 29 billion metric tons of global carbon emissions, said Dale. With the publication of SAP’s quarterly Sustainability Report, we aim to encourage them about the business benefits of implementing sustainable practices using smart tools.”
The manual approach to address sustainability factors is tedious and would be prone to errors, thus requiring the use online tools that can be accessed by any member of the company globally.
He cited sample sustainability tools include SAP Carbon Impact on-demand solution, the SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application and SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software.
“Sustainability is a complex business process and it is inevitable that it will be a core business process. Companies can be either passive and wait for it to be enforced or adopt it now to potentially benefit from the growing number of customers that select a company based on that ,” Dale added.
“At the end of the day, we protect ourselves when we have sustainable practices; it’s for our survival.”
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