Microsoft Helps Businesses Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Costs
By: Microsoft /
Tags: carbon emissions, environmental data, innovation, Sustainability
The Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics AX enables midsize businesses to easily track their environmental impact and energy consumption from within their Enterprise Resource Planning solution.
Program Fast Facts
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Situation
Businesses need easy to use and reliable business management tools to track their carbon footprint and identify ways to save energy and costs.
Solution
Microsoft launched the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics AX, a simple but powerful software tool that enables businesses to have a better overview on their energy use and costs.
Benefits
- Easily manage environmental data
- Achieve supply chain transparency to mitigate risks
- Increase efficiency and reduce energy costs
- Pursue socially responsible initiatives
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Today’s emphasis on carbon footprint reporting has evolved from an environmental issue into a full-scale market transition to which organizations must adapt. However, until recently most of them were lacking the appropriate tools to track their CO2 emissions.
To meet this need, in 2009 Microsoft launched the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics AX, the well-known Enterprise Resource Planning solution. The new dashboard tool, available to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 customers at no additional charge, enables midsize businesses to capture the data needed to measure key indicators related to energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions as part of everyday business process management.
This integrated approach enables them to both capture information and use it to pinpoint ways to cut their energy consumption and costs. With the new solution, companies can collect auditable data on four of the core environmental performance indicators identified by the Global Reporting Initiative, which is the de facto standard for corporate sustainability reporting.
Those indicators cover energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, including direct on-premise fuel consumption and the carbon footprint of their power usage with utilities and other vendors. Based on this information, organizations can monitor their carbon footprint and institute business practices that are both environmentally and economically sustainable, such as minimizing their exposure to fluctuating energy costs, for example.
This dashboard delivers on Microsoft’s broad-based commitment to harnessing the power of innovative software to promote environmentally sustainable business practices. And it delivers new functionality that is highly sought after by customers. In a recent survey of 130 Information Technology procurement and operational professionals by Forrester Research Inc., 55 percent expressed interest in reducing energy-related expenses, and 50 percent expressed interest in doing the right thing for the environment.(“Five Steps to Building a Recession-Proof Packaged Applications Strategy,” Forrester Research, December 2008).
The new dashboard harnesses Microsoft Dynamics’groundbreaking RoleTailored design strategy and methods, which equips employees with a personalized Role Center based on the information they need to do their job.
The Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics AX is seen as a very reliable tool, as well as a provider of new solutions in saving energy and costs.
The dashboard itself serves as an environmental manager’s Role Center, delivering the information crucial to performing that job. Furthermore, these reports can be easily accessed in employees’ individual Role Centers within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 or other familiar productivity tools, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
This integrated functionality allows organizations to increase their internal transparency, drive employee engagement with and rapidly raise their awareness of environmental initiatives, and propagate green practices and frugal energy usage on a company-wide basis, embedding them firmly in organizational culture.
“The Microsoft Dynamics Environmental Sustainability Dashboard will allow us to drill down into our energy consumption and overall environmental performance with far greater precision,” says George Bock, Vice President of Information Technology at Sole Technology Inc., based in Lake Forest, California. “This will give us a powerful tool to make a positive impact on both the planet and our bottom line.”
“The Environmental Sustainability Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics AX helps companies address one of the biggest challenges facing business today — the need to gather and track environmental data,” says Rob Bernard, chief environmental strategist at Microsoft.
“Equipped with this information, companies will be able to make decisions that benefit both their bottom line and the environment. The dashboard not only improves business operations, but it also allows organizations to comply with the emerging regulatory environment and satisfy demands from customers and supply chain partners for greater transparency,” Bernard explains. “Customers are increasingly challenged with ways to do good for both their bottom line and the environment and we are thrilled to be able to offer a new set of tools to help them meet both objectives.”
ABOUT MICROSOFT DYNAMICS
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of financial, customer relationship and supply chain management solutions that help businesses work more effectively. Delivered through a network of channel partners providing specialized services, these integrated, adaptable business management solutions work with and in the same ways as familiar Microsoft software to streamline processes across an entire business.