CIO's Roadmap To A Green Enterprise

Green IT is the practice of using IT resources effectively and impacts ‘People, Planet and Profit’ aspects of the triple bottomline directly. In simple words, Green IT is working out means of how IT can help save our planet from environmental issues. As I see it, the aim of Green IT interventions is to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in the organisation in particular, and ecosystem of organisation and society in general.

Roadmap To A Greener Enterprise

Green IT, like any other strategic initiative, needs a planned approach in order to get maximum benefits and has to be driven from top. For instance, our motivation came from our chairman’s philosophy that we need to give something back to our community. Our MD ensured that we modified our IT policy to include Green as a focus area, and eventually, I could take the cause further.

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Once a decision has been made to employ greener IT practices in an enterprise, the first step is to nominate a champion who will have overall accountability to drive and sustain it. Then one needs to assess where one stands. This would mean knowing what are the key areas that need focus – e.g. datacentre, travel, user side equipment, paper consumption, cheques being printed, customer relationship forms or other forms for collecting data, paper based approval documents, etc. A plan needs be then drawn on what will be taken up when and duly prioritised. This should include the concrete steps to be taken with timelines / milestones, responsibilities, metrics for determining whether we are on the right course and a review mechanism.

Green IT is not an effort by either the champion or his / her team alone. One needs to involve the entire organisation (and may be eco-system). A key step in all this is an organisation-wide awareness plan - where mailers can be sent or other measures adopted to increase awareness and participation (like organising quiz contests, poster contests, recognitions, inter / intra departmental competitions etc) , and establish why it is so essential in the organisation to save electricity and paper, which is important not just for the organisation but for society, and is the responsibility not just of one department but the entire organisation.

In such initiatives, it is very important to sustain the momentum. For that one can maintain regular communication with employees and also regularly measure progress, take and give feedback and ensure corrective actions wherever required.

Target Key Areas For Maximum Impact

Though according to some estimates today IT contributes to around 4-5% of Global Carbon Emissions and we need to control that, IT has the potential and power to impact the remaining 95% as well. The critical element in this entire journey is the Green IT intervention strategy where the decision makers agree on areas where IT could influence the environment. These areas can be primarily classified as follows:

A. Environmental impact of IT used by an organisation: This includes consumption of energy in the datacentre or for PCs / laptops, printing and networking equipment; electronic waste and asset disposal, etc.

B. Environmental impact of an organisation’s business operations: This includes the environmental effects of material and energy consumption; emissions or waste from manufacturing and other operational processes. From an IT perspective, it includes areas like paper consumption for administrative purposes; workforce commuting and mobility, etc. Product development is a big area here, especially for automobile companies, where IT can help making more fuel efficient bikes and scooters. Similarly, process re-engineering to make processes ‘greener’ falls in this category

C. Environmental impact in the “in use” phase of the enterprise’s products: This is after the product has been sold to customer and is in use. It is a direct result of category B in terms of product design and also usage of product where companies can train users as to how to use the product properly. IT, through usage of things like simulators and e-learning tools can help here.

Let me take the example of a 2-wheeler manufacturer. The energy that goes into manufacturing components in-house or by supply chain partners and having them shipped, assembling bikes, shipping to dealers is part of the category B. The fuel consumption for bikes and the carbon dioxide emissions are part of the third category C. Finally, IT that runs the factory, as well as all other processes, constitutes the category A.

Actions Speak Louder Than Plans

Here are some Green IT Initiatives that we have taken or are underway:

• Green IT as a focus area in the IT policy

• New, energy efficient datacentre with power management features

• Virtualisation and server consolidation

• TFTs in place of CRTs

• Reduction of printers

• Video conferencing / Collaboration tools – to reduce travel

• Buying of energy certified equipment– replacing old inefficient equipment

• Increasing usage of Video Conferencing / Collaboration Tools – to reduce travel

• Creating Awareness in organisation

• Usage of e-learning to reduce trainee or trainer travel

• New IT initiatives to cut paper consumption, including converting our paper based customer loyalty program to an online card based program, cutting down on printing of cheques in a big way and going for electronic fund transfer, digitisation of workflows needing approvals, e-fax to get fax on email and many others.

Reaping Benefits

• Implementing Green IT initiatives benefits not only the environment but the enterprise as well. Here are some positive outcomes that we saw after embarking on our Green IT mission:

• Focus on Green IT provided an excellent means for an opportunity to care for the society and environment.

• For the employees, it gave a sense of satisfaction and ownership as they feel that they are also trying to contribute at their level in saving the environment.

• Many initiatives also helped to improve productivity in the organisation- e.g. video conferencing, workflow automation, customer loyalty program automation, electronic transfer of funds, collaboration, etc.

• Green IT helped the IT team in day to day management - e.g. number of servers to be managed reduced as we used virtualisation, or number of printers to be managed reduced.

• There were direct savings in power consumption and cost thereof - whether at datacentre or at user end it was not just considering power consumption by equipment but also considering lower heat generation as the room requires reduced air-conditioning.

• Other savings include space, power and administrative cost savings at the datacentre, reduced paper consumption costs, etc.

An enterprise is bound to face challenges while trying to put a Green IT plan into action. For instance, we faced some challenges with disposal and recycling of existing equipment - as to how to dispose off CRTs to replace them with TFTs with least possible damage to the environment. We had to look for a vendor who would take back the existing CRTs and recycle them. But the pros of practicing Green IT clearly outnumber the cons.

All benefits and challenges aside, saving the environment is something that touches every heart today. Each and every employee can contribute to this initiative with the CIO leading the way to a cleaner, greener planet.