Posts Tagged ‘Green initiatives’

Sustainability Performance Management software from SAP BusinessObjects

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

We live in a time when sustainability is becoming a rising priority for companies as a vast number of stakeholder groups such as investors, management and employees try to understand the social and environmental implications of the company’s operational and financial activities and decisions. Sustainability has become “both a strategic imperative and a performance driver” that strives to maximize business impact (Gorbach, 2009)

SAP is one of the major companies in the world with an interest in identifying new solutions for tracking and measuring Sustainability Performance Management. SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management Application is an example of such a solution.  It aims to help organizations measure and communicate their sustainability performance, by enabling them to “ set goals and objectives, manage risks and monitor activities” all these with the promise of shortening the time to collect data and significantly reducing the costs associated with this activity.

Starting from the premise that in today’s business world more than 80% of the Global FORTUNE 250 companies report their sustainability performance, SAP identified a large number of business challenges  that companies face when reporting their sustainability performance and built the application by targeting these challenges with key features, expected to deliver specific benefits:

  • Business Challenges, encountered while measuring sustainability performance:

• “Resources tied up in collecting sustainability data

• Multiple overlapping sustainability standards and guidelines

• Lack of auditability and transparency in performance reporting

• Lack of alignment between sustainability activities and other management activities

• Inability to implement a sustainability strategy that the rest of the organization will follow” (SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management, 2009)

  • Key Features of the SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application:

• “Defining reporting frameworks – Manage multiple sustainability frameworks and key performance indicators (KPIs) while optimizing opportunities for reuse

• Data collection – Automatically gather quantitative and qualitative sustainability performance data from people and systems

• Performance management – Align sustainability KPIs to corporate objectives and risks; turn sustainability data into actionable information to improve financial and sustainability performance; and set goals to motivate improvement

• Integration – Leverage existing data and management processes by integrating with other SAP applications” (SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management, 2009)

  • Business Benefits of the SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application:

• “Reduce the cost of measuring sustainability performance

• Turn strategy and data into actionable insights where sustainability performance improvements also improve profitability

• Improve enterprise transparency and performance by making key drivers visible

• Provide sustainability results to the right levels in the organization so information is actionable

• Manage and mitigate stakeholder risk

• Incorporate sustainability into existing management systems and processes through strategic planning, initiative creation, risk management, and process streamlining” (SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management, 2009)

By incorporating a streamlined tracking, measuring and reporting performance management system the SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application can be a good alternative for companies interested in addressing sustainability issues.

To learn more on the key features and benefits of the application follow www.sap.com/solutions/sustainability.

References:

• SAP, Sustainability Performance Management – drive social, environmental, and economic improvement, United States official website, viewed 2nd June 2010, http://www.sap.com/usa/solutions/executiveview/sustainability/sustainability-performance/index.epx

• SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management (2009) – Solution brief: Find opportunity in sustainability, viewed 2nd June2010, http://download.sap.com/download

• Gorbach, Greg (2009) – SAP Analyst Report: Deliver sustainability promises – New SAP Solution Helps Companies Deliver Their Sustainability Promises, viewed 2nd June 2010, http://download.sap.com/download

Additional Resources:

• smartkpis.com 2010, CSR/ Sustainability/ Environmental Care KPIs Examples, viewed 2nd June 2010, http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/csr-sustainability-environmental-care/

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Eco KPIs – tracking ink and paper reduction initiatives with green metrics

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Green Bay saves money by going green with green fonts

An excellent example of going green and saving money is provided by the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. In order to reduce campus printing costs, their Computing and Information Technology Department had the initiative to change their preferred font from the most commonly used one – Arial to the Century Gothic font.

The new font uses 30% less ink or toner. Taking into account that ink accounts for about 60% of the cost of the printed page, and it is also quite expensive – about $10,000 a gallon, with toner cartridges and drums not far behind – the savings are substantial (University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, 2010).

The IT department switched automatically the default font for Outlook across campus to Century Gothic, and strongly encouraged everyone in the campus to do the same for other software programs too, such as Word, Excel and Entourage for Macintosh.

Such initiatives to reduce ink and toner, can be complemented with initiatives that address paper consumption. Both types of initiatives – targeting the volume of paper and volume of ink used can have a big impact on lowering printing costs. More than reducing costs, a green attitude like this one will generate supplementary benefits for the people involved and gradually can make and impact on environment overall.

smartKPIs.com (2010) contains a variety of measures and eco KPI examples that can help keeping track of the impact of efficient paper use initiatives:

More resources on green fonts and ink reduction initiatives

The resources used and recommended by the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay are:

References

University of Wisconsin – Green Bay, 2010, Going green with Century Gothic, available at  http://www.uwgb.edu/compserv/topics/CenturyGothicGreen.htm (accessed 20 April 2010)

smartKPIs.com (2010), “KPI examples for Environmental Care”, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/csr-sustainability-environment-care/environmental-care/ (accessed 20 April 2010)

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Green metrics and Key Performance Indicator examples for reducing paper consumption

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Efficient Paper Use: Where the Environment and Business Intersect

Paper is an omnipresent element in any office, both indispensable for current activities and seen as a great burden when it starts to create piles of documents which need to be looked after.

According to the World Resources Institute the global paper and paperboard consumption per capita per year in 2005 in countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and United States of America exceeded 220 kilograms, and some even 300 kilograms.

Companies spend huge amounts of money on purchasing paper, but also with paper storing, labor in handling paper, postage, lost or obsolete documents and with printing and copying. In their efforts to improve their internal operations and reduce costs, many companies managed to save thousands or even millions of dollars through their paper reduction efforts, and also improve efficiency. Additionally, they also earned a reputation for being environmentally responsible.

In order to achieve efficient paper use, a company should follow the next steps:

smartKPIs.com contains a variety of measures and KPI examples which support campaigns of paper reduction and efficient paper use:

Using KPIs in projects of paper reduction and efficient paper use not only that are vital, but can make the difference between an initiative and a great success.

  • General Electric, through their Make Side initiative, managed to identify approximately $1.5 billion in potential cost-savings by 2001, and estimates an up to $10 billion cost reduction in the coming years through digitizing many of its processes.
  • Legacy Health Systems saved $279,000 in reduced paper consumption by centralizing files, reducing distribution lists, and consolidating forms.
  • Lockheed Martin estimates savings of eight million sheets of paper and $250,000 by putting a 100-page manual on the Internet.

More details:

http://www.smartKPIs.com list of KPI examples: CSR / Sustainability / Environmental Care
Forest Ethics, Business paper
World Resources Institute, Earth trends
US Environmental Protection Agency, WasteWise Success Stories
Krames, J. (2002), The Jack Welch lexicon of leadership

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