Introducing an SRM Consultant to terms like Sustainability and Carbon Footprint – part 1

I thought until now that buzz words like Sustainability and Green IT are as placid as Compliance, SOX and Auditing to the world of consultants and more important, “The Common Man”

I could never imagine of being moved to the extent with the latter that I would actually go about and blogging it and also draw parallels to my side of the SAP world to step out and contribute.

This blog would be just a curtain raiser and more of redirects than actual metadata…doesn’t matter…the message is more important…

….The time has come for all, not just SAP consultants, to worry about terms like Go-Green, Green IT, Save the planet, Carbon footprint, sustainability.

…More words “Shipping Carbon neutral, Brown Trucks, Green house gases…the list can go on and I can vest that interest in your “at the present uninterested soul”

…whenever you have the time just visit the website on SAP carbon impact on SAP Sustainability , check some of the cool videos there…as an SAP consultant the redirects from there will get you crazy in an hour…not that you never knew about Sustainability…just that you’d get frustrated looking at the Sustainability dashboards and where “Mother earth is heading to” 

I was just reading an article posted by Kishore Kumar Reddy R who works for the Product Management Team for SAP Sustainability Solutions at SAP Labs India. His article gave me a jump start to the Sustainability bit from the Procurement side of SAP solutions, I just saw a very shocking image from one of the SAP Sustainability reports, see the image ref thats below. This would give you the shivers

We’ll as a worried soul and a diligent SAP consultant, there i went crazy doing all the hits on sustainability.In a matter of just couple hours, I realized that its not new and people have contributed from various industries and from all folds towards it. 

Just touching some of the initiatives of the fortune 500’s (or say people that are actually CO2 contributors)…so that you know 

I’m a Steve Jobs disciple, so I’d start with A for Apple

Like everything about their products, their Sustainability initiative footprints are very simple to understand…check the story behind Apple’s environmental footprint directly on the environment section of their website.

PS: For 2009, estimated that Apple was responsible for 9.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. All of Apple’s products are Arsenic free, trust me, other companies must benchmark the way Apple has contributed to the sustainability initiative.

 Lets touch all the ones that actually carry our stuff FedEx, DHL, UPS, USPS and more carriers

UPS And FedEx Go Green, Zero Emission Fuel Cell Trucks

http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=694

http://laist.com/2007/12/12/brown_goes_green.php

http://mediacenter.fedex.designcdt.com/node/93

 USPS Carbon Neutral shipping

http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/carbonneutral/shipping.html

 DHL

http://www.dhlgogreen.ca/

 1) Where does SAP & Sustainability play a vital role for the society

Under the Sustainability solutions Solutions, check for SAP Carbon Impact

 2) Some of the articles on SAP insider that you must immediately read-upon

http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Article/SAP-Special-Report–Sustainability/4862

Realizing the Environmental and Financial Value of Green IT

http://sapinsider.wispubs.com/Article/Realizing-the-Environmental-and-Financial-Value-of-Green-IT–3-Strategies-to-Generate-Genuine-Results/5444

 3) What are the outliers for the SAP SRM or the SAP Procurement Consultant

 – Visit all the SRM processes that you have worked so far as an MM or an SRM or any procurement consultant of any form and identify at-least 5 areas that you think we contribute towards carbon footprint.

 – Buzz words are great to hear, but how much of it are KPI’s and are realizable and implementable. Implementable obviously by the companies that make those products and services, but as IT enables processes, most of it can be driven from the application too.

 – Get prepared for my sequel to this blog on some of the metrics from the SRM side that cuts across SRM business processes contributing to Carbon footprint, directly and indirectly

 – we will start with basic stuff like B2B order collaboration, EDI etc so that we understand the basics at first and then go to the complicated side of things.

 – Search for 2 articles posted in SDN by Kishore Kumar Reddy and get a feel of what he’s trying to communicate in simple language, those articles cut across various other references that gives you and overall picture of initiatives around the planet.

Article Name: Sustainable Sourcing and Procurement: More than Green (Part I and 2)

What Next?

….Do read my next blog on “Very simple…but outrageous thoughts on how Procurement is already contributing and how can we extend beyond what SRM is doing today towards sustainability”

B2B Order Collaboration, Paperless procurement, emission free ordering, bundled FTL orders, De-centralized processes etc.. we will touch each aspect as we arrive at a Sustainability suggestion ourselves

 More important than anything else becomes adopting the simple few steps.

Dont print this article, shut the system off incase you are not running any Payroll job 🙂 and lastly when you are signing off and leaving for the day..just think about planting a sapling, this weekend….and dont forget to turn off the lights 🙂