KUALA LUMPUR--Business intelligence vendor SAS has launched a product that it says will help organizations reduce their carbon footprint, by accurately measuring and managing the environmental impact of their business operations.
According to SAS, its Sustainability Management Scorecard offering is the "first ever" decision-support software that enables organizations to proactively identify innovative strategies that address complex environmental, social and economic situations, while achieving stakeholder objectives.
"In the emerging landscape of sustainability, it is not enough just to talk green," Jimmy Cheah, managing director of SAS Malaysia, said Tuesday during the launch here. "Organizations need to identify green-related metrics that apply to the business, as well as find the right data to describe and measure those metrics."
"SAS's business intelligence and analytics solutions have long been used to take costs out of business, so it's not much different to take carbon out. With the Sustainability Management Scorecard, organizations can optimize business strategies for minimizing risks and costs, developing new lines of business, and improving resource use--environmental or otherwise" he said.
The SAS solution was launched in conjunction with the 2008 SAS Forum Malaysia, themed Intelligently Green, which featured speakers from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Malaysia and local actress Maya Karin, who is also Ambassador of Environment for the country's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
According to a McKinsey survey published in September 2007, environmental issues such as climate change top the agenda in executive suites worldwide. But, measuring and managing environmental impact is difficult as it involves massive, intricate work that spans across an organization's entire operations.
Causal relationships connecting issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, use of scarce resources, ethical sourcing and regulatory compliance, make it complex to invest in green technology and expand sales of products and services with measurably better environmental performance, the survey stated.
According to SAS, its Sustainability Management Scorecard helps establish an integrated, consistent source of quality information that can tie initiatives to a common sustainability framework, while allowing companies to predict valid sustainability strategies, identify causal relationships and forecast improvement scenarios.
Based on the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, the new tool also uses the Global Reporting Initiative framework to report on the "triple bottom line indicators" relating to the three spheres of sustainability: environmental, social and economic.
Thomas Spiller, SAS's senior director of international programs, noted that while most executives support green IT business strategies, few actually know how to prioritize and incorporate the strategies into their business operations.
"Many organizations are struggling to understand the complex business-social situation that requires them to balance good environmental practices, whilst concurrently pursuing profitable economic situations," Spiller said.
"At the same time, they lack tools that can enable them to properly measure the actual benefit and impact of their business strategies on the environment, in a manner that is accountable and reportable."
He added that SAS's new offering can help organizations manage strategies that are sustainable and take into account the interrelationship between social and environmental programs.
Lee Min Keong is a freelance IT writer based in Malaysia.
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