Technology and sustainability: ongoing Norwegian projects

Cognizant, together with MindForce Research, surveyed 1,000 C-suite and VP-level business leaders across North America and Europe to learn more about what is behind the green transition. The results are published in the report Green Rush: The Economic Imperative for Sustainability.

What did we find at the core of this green rush? Rampant technology adoption as tech investments are the key to combating climate change. 77% of study respondents list environmental sensors and IoT as important or very important to meet their sustainability goals. The widespread deployment of such sensors could have valuable implications for traffic efficiency, wildfire response, and more. Smart grids and AI round off the top three technologies for green business, at 72% each.

“A core driver of this investment is companies wanting to gather more effective data on where they stand today and on how their existing sustainability initiatives are working,” says Shahid Skar, Country Manager for Cognizant Norway.

Here are two examples of ongoing projects with our Norwegian customers: 

• Sustainable fish farming: As Mowi made a conscious decision to improve its traditional operations, it meant steering away from a labor-intense business to a more knowledge-intense and connected one. The mission was driven by facts: aquatic food plays an important role in feeding the growing number of people (47.5 million additional tons will be required), but 90% of world fisheries are already fully or overfished. To scale up volumes, digitalization of the value chain is key and Mowi set up a vision to run the world’s most automated fish farms. Now, the heart is an operations center where the entire value chain is integrated, farms are remotely controlled in real-time, and decisions are infused by AI.
• Connected factories improve quality: Consumer goods company Orkla offers strong local brands in the Nordics but is also a global player. The company has implemented a business-driven, step-by-step approach for accelerating digital initiatives across its 108 factories. With clearly defined business goals, such as reducing waste, improving the quality of products, and overall equipment efficiency (OEE), the team is creating a common solution portfolio to be reused across the organization.

As sustainability and carbon-cuts will be one of the standard components in decision-making, it will increasingly also become part of the job description. According to Gartner, 75% of the 500 largest tech companies in the world plan to use decarbonization targets to measure product leaders’ job performance. As businesses and its employees set their sustainability agenda for the next ten years, they surely need to take a significantly different approach than they have in the last 50.

Learn more in the report Green Rush: The Economic Imperative for Sustainability.