Sustainable Technology for Responsible Business Practices

Today’s business leaders are facing rising demands for sustainability prioritization from consumers, investors, regulators, and their employees. Gartner expects that by 2025, the performance of more than 50% of CIOs will be judged based at least partially on sustainability initiatives. To embrace this change, organizations should curate responsible technology, a vital enabler of sustainability from accelerating net zero transitions to building more viable value chains.

Key Benefits of Embracing Sustainable Technology

• With millennials actively wanting to contribute to positive change in the world, organizations can attract top talents
• Better business output by switching to renewable energy for day-to-day operations and attracting business investments
• Boost your bottom line with effective and efficient utility of resources thereby gaining competitive advantage
• By making workplace healthier, employee morale and productivity are boosted
• Attract more eco-conscious customers who are willing to pay more for sustainable goods
• Let sustainability be the strong pillar of your corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and lead by example for environmental awareness

Top 5 Sustainable Technology Trends

Sustainable technology not only optimizes costs, energy performance, and asset utilization but also drives environmental, social, and governance (ESG) outcomes that ensure responsible business practices. According to Gartner Technology Trends 2023, outlined below are few key trends of sustainable technology impacting businesses and key stakeholders:

• Cloud services
  • Cloud migration approach uses less energy and has a lower impact on the environment
• GHG management software
  • Transparent reporting – Integration of various data sources to provide a single pane of view on emissions across direct, indirect, and non-specific emissions
  • Insights to drive actions for improving emissions performance
  • Support plan, forecast, and portfolio optimization
• AI from embedded IoT and systems
  • From selecting pertinent data for analysis/modeling to edge computing to intelligent grid systems, image annotations and more; thereby constantly monitoring the systems through smart systems and unveiling patterns to detect energy emission reductions
• Ethical supply chain
  • Integrated blockchain and smart contracts drive transparency, and traceability of transactions. This helps organizations to monitor their supplier’s sourcing performance to reduce their risk and drive improvements

Sustainable IT and Operations

According to Gartner, there are 3 areas of businesses where sustainable technology can be embedded to drive ESG outcomes and facilitate new business models and tech-enabled products to better serve customers: internal IT operations, enterprise operations, and customer operations.

Internal IT operations deal with leveraging the right tools and relationships to deliver the best possible outcome with the least amount of negative environmental impacts. An example of this would be a factory adopting eco-friendly packaging or using anomaly detection to identify process with inefficient energy usage.  

When analyzing enterprise operations, it’s key to look at the larger picture of organization-wide sustainability. These efforts are made possible by technologies like artificial intelligence, automation, advanced analytics, and cloud.  

Assessing customer operations involves using data to gather insight on your consumers’ needs, desires, and overall vision. This data is then used to inform sustainability efforts so that all areas of the customer journey are satisfactory.  

Examples of Sustainable Technology Implementation

Some of the world’s biggest brands understand the value of sustainable technology and are already reaping its many benefits. From entertainment and automotive to technology and manufacturing, here are several examples of sustainable technology implementation within many well-known industries:

Disney

Management has invested in AI technology to personalize their guests’ experiences via wristbands that act as identification, hotel keys, movie tickets, FastAccess (for theme parks), and even credit cards. This helps Disney understand where the customer is, what they are doing, and what they need; thereby analyzing the data, detecting patterns, and taking actions about the carbon footprint reductions.

Kiwibot

This automated delivery company uses IoT, digital infrastructure, and robotics to enable sustainable1 smart cities. The robot fleets have a cyber-structure which is cost effective and collects real time data. The robots not only reduce carbon emission by reducing pollution levels but also contribute to the social aspect of sustainability by opening opportunities for the locally small businesses who can offer low-cost food delivery.

Microsoft

The multinational technology corporation has taken great strides in empowering energy efficiency and material waste reduction. The increased accessibility of serverless and open-source software minimizes cooling processes, ventilation, and air conditioning in fewer data centers. The initiatives add power management functions to Microsoft products, enabling smart energy consumption on end devices like monitors and hard drives. Microsoft’s Cloud Computing helps reduce the company’s environmental impact while helping its clients turn green.

Ford

Ford is working on an initiative that holds them and their partners accountable for reducing carbon emissions. The Partnership for a Cleaner Environment (PACE) program involves Ford sharing details of their leading practices for water, energy, and carbon dioxide emission reduction with suppliers. In return, suppliers are asked to provide their environmental data and best practices for lowering carbon emissions. The program also focuses on human rights, conflict minerals, and working conditions.

Bosch

This German multinational engineering and technology company leverages AIoT (AI meets IoT) for a cloud-based energy program that enables the optimization of equipment and processes for their manufacturing operations. The algorithm is used to predict and correct peak loads and energy consumption, thus reducing carbon emissions in factories.

Coca-Cola

According to Marketing Dive 2022, Coca-Cola is celebrating the switch from green to clear plastic bottles for brands Sprite, Fresca, and Seagram’s with a new campaign titled “Recycled Records.” The latest move follows other sustainability driven efforts by the company under its World Without Waste Initiative, which aims to make 100% of its packaging recyclable by 2025.

Another initiative includes leveraging AI to reinvent vending machines. It uses ML to understand consumer buying patterns, response to campaigns and offers, etc. Using the data captured, the company can also interact with their customers to collect their real-time feedback as well.

Responsible Digital Transformation = Sustainable Technology

Today, more and more customers are judging the value of products and services through the lens of their values – from eco-friendly packaging to buying electric cars to sustainably sourced apparels made in factories with ethical labor practices. With shareholders and employees joining in these demands, it is imperative for organizations to define their ESG attainable goals. Organizations should comply with responsible business practices inside their own organization and across their entire value chain to meet the customer expectations.

The Apexon sustainability framework helps speed up transformation of the net zero journey as soon as you have defined your strategy and ambitions for a sustainable future. Our transformational approach across the IT value chain not only focuses on the internal IT but also enterprise and customer operations. Apexon provides you with utmost transparency to sustainability goals by leveraging reliable data. We embrace AI to power sustainable actions. Our 5-step approach helps businesses embed sustainability data and performance into everything they do to effectively measure the business value and sustainable impact for all stakeholders.

To learn more about Apexon’s sustainability analytics framework, get in touch using the form below.

This blog was cowritten by Geetha Iyer and Priyanka Prasad