While businesses on both sides of the Atlantic state that measuring and reporting environmental impact is becoming much more impottant, they may lack the tools for effective tracking–creating a market opportunity.
Software vendor IFS (OMX STO: IFS) commissioned a study, of industrial executives in Europe and the
U.S., and discovered that over three quarters of companies consider it
important to track their environmental profile—including 83% in the
U.S., 82% in Scandinavia and 79% in Benelux. However, nearly three
quarters of European respondents (74% in Scandinavia, 75% in Benelux)
admitted to not having sufficient enterprise resources planning (ERP)
software in place to track their environmental footprint. The U.S. fared
slightly better, with 47% saying they lacked the enterprise software
for environmental tracking, with an additional 42% claiming limited
capabilities for tracking environmental impacts.
As environmental regulation advances in both Europe and the U.S., businesses are facing increasing pressure from regulators, customers and investors to document and reduce their environmental impact. As a result, the market for environmental management software is growing.
IFS’s offers an Eco-footprint Management tool as an integrated component
of its ERP applications suite. The company faces competition from
companies like Hara, which has signed big name companies like
Intuit (Nasdaq: INTU) and The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) as customers;
as well as CA (Nasdaq: CA), which counts Tesco (TSCO.LO) among
its clients; and SAP (NYSE: SAP), which last year acquired carbon
management firm Clear Standards to broaden its reach into environmental
and carbon reporting.
Respondents in different geographies answered differently when asked what the most important reasons are for green IT initiatives. In Scandinavia, 35% of respondents said the marketing value of green initiatives was the most pressing reason to implement enterprise software capable of managing environmental impacts, outstripping regulatory compliance (22%) and cost cutting (19%). In contrast, respondents in Benelux and U.S. said that environmental compliance was a more important benefit (36% in the U.S., 34% in Benelux) than marketing and cost reduction benefits.
For the study, IDC surveyed 300 executives in Scandinavia, RBInteractive Research surveyed 260 manufacturing executives in the U.S., Heliview Research surveyed 144 executives in Benelux
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