Is there a link between digital transformation, innovation and a more sustainable business? To explore how prioritizing sustainability also paves the way for new business opportunities, we talked to Google and Wallenius Wilhelmsen, as well as to our own sustainability expert.
As most larger enterprises have realized by now, green business is also good business. This is something we investigated further in our recent Green Rush report as we surveyed 1,000 C-suite and VP-level business leaders. The green ambitions are also essential parts of our partners’ and clients’ businesses and offerings.
For Google, sustainability has always been a core value and Google was the first major company to become carbon neutral in 2007. As a global leader, Google has an immense responsibility to act, according to Andreas Strid, Principal Architect at Google Cloud, as well as to empower other organizations to transition to more carbon-free and sustainable systems.
Since 2017, Google matches 100% of the electricity use with renewable energy purchases. But the company’s ambitions are higher than that: the goal is to run on carbon-free energy, 24/7, at all of its data centers by 2030, as the first company in the world.
Track and reduce your emissions
Already today, there is an environmental advantage when choosing Google Cloud; Google data centers are two times as energy efficient as a typical enterprise data center. Further, Google has built a collection of tools to help you accurately report the carbon emissions associated with your Google Cloud usage and take action to reduce the carbon footprint.
This is also something that we at Cognizant can help out with within the framework of “Project Jörð”, a free sustainability assessment that gives you a qualified view on your IT environment to help you build a sustainability roadmap. To get started, register on Google Cloud’s Sustainability Assessment landing page and select to work with Cognizant.
Green growth at Wallenius Wilhelmsen
Cognizant is already helping a number of Nordic businesses to accelerate innovation and sustainability. One of them is the Norwegian shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen, where Roger Strevens is VP for Global Sustainability. He and his team work towards decarbonization of its business.
With around 140 vessels operating around the world, the company views sustainability and resilience in a competitive market as a “a two-for-one deal”, where the green ambitions also are growth drivers. The company drives progress through, among other things, digital transformation where the implementation of a cloud-based platform to support data-driven processes, intelligence and automation has been a major step. The platform, together with new fuel solutions, are important parts of its decarbonization journey.
Cognizant’s sustainability agenda
What’s Cognizant’s take on innovation and sustainability then? Besides from recently establishing our own net-zero agenda, Cognizant is continuously working to extend our expertise in cloud, IoT and AI to help our clients meet their sustainability goals, reduce their carbon footprints and sharpen their competitiveness.
According to Adam Karnama, Principal Sustainability Advisor Nordics, Cognizant, organizations should ultimately embed sustainability into their digital strategy to ensure sustainable progress and utilization of data to drive results.
Technology can play an important role here. APEX is Cognizant’s platform for operational control and industrial sustainability management. It provides a set of applications, addressing operations, asset performance management, supply chain optimization and sustainability, to enable efficient operations and reduced costs.
You can read more about our view on sustainability as well as about ongoing initiatives in the Nordics in out dedicated section of the web. Also check out our global ESG web.