Enterprise Sustainability Trends 2013

There has not ever been this much aggressive need for sustainability ever before, than it is now. With the natural calamities posting threats ever so often, it has now become the responsibility of each and every one to contribute towards the sustainability. Corporate houses have been rolled in, and their interests no long lie in only profit making and customer relationship. With the advent of C-suite executives, sustainability officers etc, the businesses are witnessing a brand new paradigm shift, towards the sustainability module. We dusted off the old books, skimmed through the present day trends, and here we are, with the 10 noteworthy sustainability trends which the world is already witnessing or is going to witness in the present year, 2013. 

-    Money still has the prime importance – Well, with so much stress being put on sustainability, you cannot just expect the business to turn into non profit organizations over night. It is still very much about the profits, about the bottom lines and also about the pink slips. The difference being the involvement of various metrics, such as risk management, compliance, cost reduction, revenue gains etc. However, getting the appropriate funding for the same could be a challenge. 

-    Sustainability takes center stage – Sustainability has now taken the center stage. Teams responsible for sustainability and preservation, working at different levels of the organization are teaming up to tackle sustainability in a much more organized fashion. The sustainability teams are now taking care of the facts and figures, and are being much more aggressive in the implementation of the sustainability module. With Financial officers becoming the pilots of the sustainability programs, sustainability has gained the chief status in the hierarchy. 

-    Renewed industry qualifications – companies are now asking the suppliers to renew the papers and include their energy efficiency and levels of carbon emissions etc in the documents pertaining to their industrial qualification. The “Green Reporting” is now a factor pivotal enough to make or break ties. 

-    Transformations becoming a part of the new emerging economies – the new and emerging economies are more prompt at accepting and inculcating the sustainability module in to their systems. With all the stress being laid on sustainability, the new and emerging economies are better poised to handle the same.

-    A yearly track of the sustainability reports – companies are taking the entire sustainability concept rather seriously and hence forth are keeping an yearly track of the efforts taken in the same direction. Earlier, the reports needed to be kept on an 18 months or 24 months basis. But, cutting short the time span to once a year, definitely goes to show how much serious the corporate houses are, when it comes to sustainable development. 

-    Social media gets prominence – Facebook’s likes and shares and Twitter’s tweets are getting the prominence as companies are increasingly trying to utilize the popular social media platforms, in order to increase the engagement. 

-    Energy conservation and competitive advantage – alternative sources of energy consumption are getting more precedence and companies are trying to scheme out ways to replace the traditional sources of energy with new, innovative and revolutionary ideas. In fact the new ideas are being encouraged, in order to get competitive advantages. Even issues such as water conservation etc are at the heart of such innovations. 

-    Datacenters are grabbing all the eyeballs – in an attempt to reduce all the energy reservoirs exhausted by the IT requirements of a company, the data centers have been introduced to the world. These datacenters are making smooth in roads in the lives of people, as shown by the online searches on that same, which has increased by the rate of 358% since the year 2008.  

-    Improving the transport system – the transport system is now being overhauled, in order to reduce carbon emissions and smooth track the supply chain initiatives. 

-    Ratings – Lastly, enterprises are continuously using green ratings etc, to showcase their performance on the sustainability sector to their stake holders and customers alike. 

Author Bio:
This post has been contributed by Mr. Ashish Mittal, General Manager - IT at Daffodil Software Ltd., a firm specializes in web development and cloud apps development services.