The future of technology in the corporate world isn’t just about faster systems and more intelligent devices. Businesses must embrace automation that enhances their sustainability efforts to stay competitive. This process begins with intelligent asset management strategies that help to optimize systems and operations throughout the firm.
Automation and optimal asset management practices help companies streamline their business, reduce their environmental footprint, and adopt good sustainability practices. Before they do, they should understand the scope of their environmental impact.
Reducing Carbon Emissions
As the climate crisis looms over the planet, responsible companies are working to lower their organization’s carbon footprint, a calculation of how much carbon your firm emits. Emissions are either:
- Direct, including emissions from operations or warehouses, such as boiler fuel or company vehicles;
- Indirect, meaning it comes from sources not directly owned or controlled by a company, such as raw material manufacturing.
Review all your processes and partnerships, including those of suppliers and vendors, to reduce your footprint. You must consider emissions from product creation and lifecycle, those from your facilities and activities, and operational ones that cover energy use, waste, and transportation. It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s necessary to reap the rewards of corporate sustainability.
The Benefits of Decreasing Your Environmental Footprint
In addition to protecting your company from current and future regulatory challenges, reducing your carbon footprint can improve your reputation in the marketplace. That affects your reputation among employees, prospective candidates, stakeholders, and potential investors. High-quality sustainability ratings can impact assets and finances, too, making your company a more attractive investment and improving your credit rating.
Meeting these goals has more than just fiscal benefits. Businesses that foster a sustainable workplace culture help employees feel more valued and engender a sense of pride in their company. Taking steps to conserve energy, reduce waste, and clean the air is a way to adopt a sustainable culture internally. It’s also important as you seek to hire the best talent for your organization. 75% of millennials claim they would take lower pay to work for a socially responsible company, and raising your ESG rating is one way to achieve that.
Before employing automated systems and leveraging asset management to attain these goals, it’s crucial to understand ESG ratings and how they relate to your carbon emissions.
How to Calculate Your Carbon Emissions
ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance, and it’s relevant to investing. A high ESG rating makes your firm a more desirable investment. It measures how sustainable your company is regarding:
- Environmental matters, for example, if you use eco-friendly practices in your operations;
- Societal issues, like how you handle employees, customers, and prospects;
- Governance, such as matters like shareholder rights or stricter audits.
As you can see, ESG has several moving parts and can be difficult to monitor. Help your company meet sustainability goals with ESG reporting software, which monitors these functions within your organization. Each software offers a variety of options. A system with customizable reporting frameworks lets you tailor reports that align with your company, industry, and objectives. Other options include:
- Collaboration tools for your teams;
- Real-time data visualization;
- Tools that help you track your progress.
ESG rating software helps you set sustainability objectives, but automation software enables you to achieve them.
How Automation Helps Companies Optimize for Sustainability
When addressing practical sustainability goals, automation helps your organization reduce its impact on the environment by making your company more efficient. Automation systems help guarantee efficient asset management. They are a crucial component of improving systems and reducing waste. For example, smart thermostats and automated lighting systems adjust the climate in offices and other buildings for current weather conditions, the number of people in the space, and energy demand.
Externally, solar panels are a great way to improve the energy efficiency of different areas of operations and boost ESG ratings. Solar tracking equipment helps optimize solar panel installation, and solar plant software allows for efficient factory design that reduces your carbon footprint.
You can also install automated systems that help calculate, monitor, and control water usage, energy consumption, and your carbon footprint. These help you discover areas that need improvement to plan for efficient systems before investing in redesign or upgrades.
Automation also helps you reduce your carbon footprint in many other business functions, including:
- Fleet management software helps optimize shipping routes for more efficiency.
- Digitizing document software allows you to go paperless.
- Smart manufacturing systems help improve production efficiency.
- Automated waste sorting systems efficiently clean your manufacturing environment.
In addition to lowering your company’s environmental footprint, automation provides faster, more reliable deliveries to customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. That increases the value of your business, making them well worth the investment.
Automation is necessary to improve the efficiency of your operation. However, asset management provides the oversight for investing in the systems.
Sustainable Asset Management
All of your business assets have a lifecycle that requires updates and repairs. Making sustainable choices is crucial, but your budget determines what you can or cannot do. Sustainable asset management lies directly in the middle of these two objectives.
How can you decide when to repair or replace business assets? With your budget in hand, assess your systems to see if they are outdated, inefficient, or non-functioning. For each, estimate the cost of repair versus the cost of replacement. You’re not just considering your bottom line here but also system performance for an accurate cost-benefit analysis. If systems are outdated or difficult to automate, investing in a new system may be the best decision for your company, especially with ESG goals in mind.
Data analytics are also crucial in asset management. Helpful tools include:
- Enterprise asset management software;
- Computerized maintenance management systems;
- Internet of Things, or IoT, sensors.
If the asset is relatively new, repair costs are reasonable, and parts are accessible, repair is probably your best choice. However, if a system is obsolete, inefficient, difficult to automate, or hinders your sustainability goals, it’s time for a replacement. You should involve key stakeholders in these decisions, especially if it’s unclear whether repair or replacement is the best choice.
Reducing your environmental footprint benefits your company in many ways, including its ESG rating, value, and reputation. It’s crucial to understand the impact of your carbon footprint and take steps to reduce it, including embracing green tech, automating systems for efficiency, and optimizing asset management. Improving your corporate responsibility will establish your brand as a leader in your industry.
⸻ Author Bio ⸻
Sam Bowman enjoys writing about people, tech, business, and how they merge. He enjoys getting to utilize the internet for the community without actually having to leave his house. In his spare time, he likes running, reading, and combining the two in a run to his local bookstore.
