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10 Nov 2009
Software providers are holding back adoption of environmental strategies as they do not have the necessary tools.
The comments came from Jyoti Banerjee, a technology consultant and director of Kite Blue, at the ICAEW's sustainable business and green IT conference .
He said: "It is disappointing vendors are not playing a deep or significant enough role" when it comes to environmental IT. He also pointed out environmental software can be "easy" to create.
He explained technology companies are making it difficult for companies to gather carbon emission data and make it relevant, as there is no software available and what is out there is too costly.
He advised technology companies to use "financial information to generate environmental information which will make it more usable for accountants to help clients
Banerjee used an American newspaper, newsweek, as an example. They calculated the carbon emissions of some of the biggest companies in the US using their financial statements. The data gathered was compared against the US equivalent of the environment agency's carbon measurements, to find out the business' footprint.
At the moment the "finance director has to be prepared to write a very big cheque" if they need any form of environmental management system, which Banerjee describes as a "turnoff."
John Oates, partner of IT advisory services at Baker Tilly and ICAEW IT Faculty president, disagrees. "Technology companies will develop the software when it makes business sense to develop something," he said.
He added there are options out there for the finance director. He conceded the industry "could do better" but stated the technology vendors can only do " what the market is demanding and driven to and that comes from legislation and policy."
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Driving forward by looking at the rear view mirror
Financial data tells you what happened, not how to make a desired result happen. The software on the market is generally not focused on finance and accounting information since decision making on the drivers of carbon emissions occur in other operating areas of the business. Carbon emissions should be treated like any other business material or product. Emissions have value and should be assigned value at the appropriate decison making points. There is a lot of software on the market that does that. If your points are targeted at only the big software vendors, most of them are putting in band aid solutions until carbon management is truly integrated into business processes.
Posted by: Jim Uchneat, 11 Nov 2009 | 00:00