INTHEBLACK June 2022 - Magazine - Page 65
Left: Philips Hue
systems use motion
sensors to change
lighting depending
on human activity.
Right: With Tado’s
Smart AC Control, you
can optimise comfort
and energy usage via
a mobile app.
Above: Schneider Electric’s BMS solutions
offer increasingly sophisticated ways to
manage buildings and their energy usage.
Left: Novisto tracks
and scores your ESG
performance.
Below: The Microsoft
Lens app scans
paper documents
and turns them into
PDF or Office files.
environmental, waste, employee diversity,
health and safety, and other ESG data.
Supply chains pose significant ESG risks for
businesses, a problem IntegrityNext aims to
help solve with a platform that can monitor
suppliers’ environmental, human rights,
anti-corruption and other ESG credentials.
Involving the workforce can add another
dimension to ESG initiatives and improve
employee engagement. For example,
WeSpire’s platform helps organisations design
and inspire employees to participate in
environmental and social programs.
CONSIDER TECH ESG CREDENTIALS,
TOO
REDUCE WASTAGE
Reducing waste is not only good for the
environment, but it can also cut wastedisposal costs. In production facilities, and
even in offices, it can be achieved by using
resources more efficiently.
For example, digital solutions are making
it increasingly feasible to go paperless,
allowing you to cut printing consumables,
paper, distribution and storage costs. That
can start with simple mobile apps, such as
Hubdoc and Microsoft Lens for Android or
iOS, which scan paper documents and
digitise them for use in Office and Xero,
respectively. For a comprehensive, businesswide solution, document management
systems such as M-Files can capture, digitise,
organise, secure and use documents in
sophisticated ways. A process automation
platform such as Kissflow Workflow can
remove the need for paper forms altogether
and improve productivity.
IMPROVE ESG PERFORMANCE
For a more strategic approach to ESG,
sustainability platforms allow you to identify
potential areas of improvement. For example,
Salesforce’s Net Zero Cloud integrates data
from multiple sources to provide insights into
an organisation’s emissions and carbon
footprint. Novisto takes a similar but
potentially broader approach, tracking
While these tools can help, it’s worth
investigating tech providers’ ESG credentials,
too. For example, the hyperscale data centres
running popular cloud services use an
enormous amount of energy. With demand
for these services on the rise, the global
energy usage of hyperscale data centres has
more than doubled in the past five years,
according to the International Energy Agency.
Cloud service providers have taken
measures to reduce their energy usage and
carbon footprints. For example, the three
largest cloud infrastructure providers –
Amazon, Google and Microsoft – all claim
to use 100 per cent renewable energy in their
data centres. However, to make this claim, they
use renewable energy certificates, in varying
degrees, to mitigate their use of fossil fuels.
Still, the net environmental benefit of
technology was illustrated in 2020, when the
pandemic triggered the biggest annual drop
in carbon dioxide emissions since World War II.
That has since increased again as commuting
and travel have resumed, but organisations
can help minimise the environmental impact by
continuing to support remote working and client
meetings – especially as videoconferencing
and collaboration apps are now so widely
accepted.
intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au June 2022 65