Is your global enterprise ready to improve your sustainability measures?:
Reevaluate your impact on the climate.
Environmental sustainability has become a mainstream concern for enterprise CEOs and is now a key business initiative for every global organization. When confronted with the immediate threat of losing competitive power if they do not address the impact of their business on the climate, it’s an easy call.
More importantly, working towards a healthier planet for the benefit of everybody is a goal we should all share.
The sustainability initiative
Business and IT leaders within global organizations are under increasing pressure from customers, employees, investors, and government regulators to promote environmental sustainability. A recent Gartner® study identified that: “Business leaders are now under pressure from customers, investors, regulators, and employees to do more on environmental sustainability, and sustainable business is seen as an opportunity to drive business efficiency and revenue growth.” This topic was ranked by Gartner in the top 10 CEO strategic business priority areas for 2022-23 for the first time. Organizations are in direct competition with their market peers to maintain sustainability measures.
It is not only consumers who expect their brands to operate in a sustainable fashion. It is now commonplace for customer organizations purchasing products or services at an enterprise level to request the environmental sustainability credentials of their suppliers during the RFP process. SHI expects that organizations are likely to begin routinely excluding suppliers as soon as 2024 or 2025 when there is noncompliance against the sustainability targets of the purchasing organization.
Companies are also facing an increasing struggle to recruit and retain top talent – sustainability has become an increasingly important factor as new generations enter the workforce. Employees are now much more likely to value working for a company that is viewed as sustainable.
Sustainability has had a growing impact on digital workplace device selection and service evaluation processes. End-user computing generates one percent of all greenhouse gas emissions*. IT and wider technology processes have a huge impact on an organization’s internal sustainability, as well as the wider impact of their supply chain.
Keeping the supply chain green
OEM IT suppliers are now very aware of how their products are being shipped, what packaging materials are being used, and the carbon footprint associated with their business practices. These processes are being analyzed and reworked to reduce carbon emissions. Many SHI OEM partners are dedicated to decarbonization and sustainability, with strict targets and business initiatives to meet climate goals.
Organizations in industries such as pharmaceuticals or finance are now approaching carbon neutral as companies. Their next, even larger challenges are measuring and improving the sustainability of their supply chains. Organizations who partner with SHI describe the effort of measuring their own sustainability as only three percent of the task, compared to the remaining 97 percent of effort required to measure sustainability metrics within their supply chain. This is driving pressure to select suppliers who prove their own sustainability credentials.
Don’t cost the Earth
SHI works with organizations who are making strides towards responsible and sustainable business practices while simultaneously adapting to managing hybrid workforces and enabling employees with a greater choice of end-user devices.
Managing the lifecycle of end-user devices can have a huge impact on sustainability metrics for an enterprise organization. Many organizations are now investing in sustainable electronic waste recycling initiatives and aspiring to accreditation such as the e-Stewards certification to ensure that electronic waste is not only recycled, but that it is not sent to developing countries to be dismantled, often by underage workers.
For device provisioning and break/fix programs, organizations like SHI have continued to innovate and improve box programs to reduce the total emissions attributed to supplying workers with the IT they need, providing break/fix services, and replacing technology during device refreshes. Box kits are distributed to the remote workforce at a global scale, including a prepaid return label so the worker does not have to leave their home and the miles the devices are traveling are consolidated through an economy of scale.
Selecting the right IT for end users
SHI customers are increasingly considering sustainability as a driving factor towards the devices they procure at scale for their global organizations. Carbon credit programs are now commonly used in customer RFP processes to offset carbon emissions and buyback schemes are now put in place during the procurement cycle.
In fact, device buyback schemes are now a major part of end user device programs. Traditionally, at the end of a refresh cycle the customer organization is quoted a market price to buy back the equipment. The newer buyback model is equivalent to a fair-market value lease where the supplier assigns a market value at the front end, so the buyback price is known at the end of the three- or four-year lifespan of the device.
Traditionally, features, functionality, cost, and availability would drive IT decision making. SHI now works with global organizations who are analyzing devices from a sustainability viewpoint where power consumption will be a key metric.
SHI’s modern workplace solutions
Global organizations work with SHI to drive IT transformation and innovation in their workplaces. We provide a compelling mix of OEM partners, technology experts, value-add services, and integration facilities to enable you to:
- Achieve your business outcomes with confidence.
- Select the right sustainable technology.
- Reduce costs, increase efficiency, and provide scale.
Ready to go green? Arrange a call with SHI to discuss your organization’s modern workplace sustainability goals and understand how global organizations are using technology to enable their business transformations.
* Can analytics software measure end user computing electricity consumption? Sutton-Parker, Justin (2022)
Gartner, CEOs Turn a Sharp Eye to Workforce Issues and Sustainability in 2022-23, April 27, 2022. GARTNER is the registered trademark and service mark of Gartner Inc., and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and/or internationally and has been used herein with permission. All rights reserved.