Sustainability is one of Catalyst Resources primary areas of practice (along with Financial Services and Biotech/Healthcare.) We design rich internet interfaces, SaaS applications, mobile apps and instrument control UI for environmental and energy optimization solutions - a.k.a. sustainability.
Organizations increasingly recognize that sustainability will be critical to the future success of their business. But moving to sustainability can be disruptive and managers are likely to confront organizational rigidities as they try to implement initiatives. It is therefore essential to identify and expose the core values that sustainability offers to the user and to the organization.
"Doing the right thing for the planet" is laudable, but from a business perspective there needs to be other monetary, social and legal drivers to motivate action. Addressing these drivers is what will make sustainability initiatives succeed over the long term.
What are the some of the drivers behind organizational sustainability initiatives?
Each organization will have a unique set of business factors that drive their sustainability initiatives. When we design applications and application UI, much of our early work is to understand and design to expose these key drivers. We then anchor functionality reflecting these drivers, right in the primary RIA workspace. This makes the sustainability application (typically SaaS) inherently engaging and tuned for the real work.
Listed here are several of the common drivers we have identified with our clients that are undertaking sustainability initiatives:
- Financial ROI
- Decreasing expenditures by improving energy efficiency and recycling materials
- Increasing supply chain efficiency & connectedness (e.g. fewer sources, integration and collaboration with suppliers, shippers, partners)
- Using location intelligence (GIS) for things like vehicle re-routing to reduce gas consumption, or optimizing locations for warehouse/distribution centers
- Using more efficient transport modes/vehicles, use video/tele-conferencing when appropriate
- Reducing packaging
- Green procurement and near sourcing
- Government compliance / impending tighter regulation
- Decreasing risk
- Improving investor relations and pricing sustainability into long-term valuations
- Increase brand value as a market leader and innovator
- Attract customers/consumers who care about going green
- Achieving corporate responsibility agenda
- Environmental stewardship (people really do care!)
Most organizations identify and respond to multiple drivers. Our job at Catalyst to make it efficient and engaging for managers or teams to assess the risks/costs of resource consumption related to these drivers, identify sustainability initiatives and allocate capital, collect and manage data, manage the execution and track the progress of sustainability capital projects, run ROI/cost-benefit analyses and provide the required internal and external reporting.
Categories: Sustainability