Thoughts on Best Practices

From Lauraibm

Environmental Issues: The Analyst View

Contents 1 AMR 2 Gartner 2.1 Environmental Actions 2.2 Presentation and Communication 3 IDC

AMR

• Need to ensure that suppliers and customers conform to modern thinking regarding sustainability and pass up those who ignore the issue.
• Environmental initiatives need to receive a large investment (many firms put most investment into environmental initiatives out of all CSR activities) this is important because sustainability can translate into a business opportunity and protect the company against prejudicial selection.
• Need to be environmentally proactive; the enterprise dashboard is helpful in achieving this. This approach provides data at all levels of the organisation so people throughout the company can view potential waste and emissions inefficiencies before committing to a process change.
• A proactive approach will provide competitive advantage against increased customer discernment. Companies ignoring the call to be proactive could soon be at a big disadvantage.
• The fact that businesses don’t really have a true picture of their spending makes an enterprise dashboard with trend analysis imperative.

Gartner

Environmental Actions

• Over the next few years addressing environmental issues will become as important as technological innovation and revenue generation.
• Need to address the issues of environmental impact throughout the life-cycle of products and services.
• Need to be proactive in reducing environmental footprint and reducing the contamination of products and services throughout their lifecycle.
• Companies should be taking simple steps e.g. switching off lighting in unused buildings to cut its carbon footprint.
• Manufacture hardware and software that uses less power, use recyclable components and provide asset recovery and recycling schemes.

Presentation and Communication

• Buyers are expected to become more environmentally concerned and informed. They will increasingly challenge vendors on their full life-cycle environmental footprint.
• Need to provide investors with proof of the industry’s environmental credentials.
• If company wants to be able to draw from the widest talent pool possible it needs to show itself as being proactive on environmental issues. (The next generation are more likely to be attracted to jobs in businesses making a positive contribution to tackling global warming than to those who do not.)
• Vendors need to highlight the benefits of IT to the environment and the achievements to date.

IDC

• IT users need to evaluate and carefully consider the infrastructure investments they make and confirm that power and cooling considerations are clearly understood and evaluated.