Earth Day is upon us once again and business leaders around the word will be reminded of the urgency to introduce more sustainable business and supply chain processes. However, this year feels very different to previous years as continued supply chain disruptions have forced companies to accelerate digital transformation initiatives and restructure physical supply chain infrastructures. In parallel to these activities, business leaders are taking the opportunity to rethink their end-to-end operational procedures to embrace more sustainable methods of working.
Consumer pressure combined with new government green targets and peer pressure from competitors introducing new sustainable products has forced the hand of many supply chain leaders to embrace greener ways of working. From ensuring that goods are being purchased from sustainable sources, removing black plastics from everyday food shopping and exploring electric vehicle based last mile delivery networks in city centers, the business world is finally embracing the need for a more sustainable world.
We know that companies have seen their supply chains disrupted significantly over the past 24 months and the term ‘black swan’ has been used to highlight that companies must change the way they are operating if they are to survive. Developing more sustainable supply chain operations is a requirement in today’s business operation, not an option. You could say that we have been going through a perfect storm over the past couple of years. Companies have been trying to reduce operational costs for years but COVID saw a nexus of evolving market conditions forcing companies to change the way they managed their supply chain operations. ‘Adapt to survive’ certainly seems to be the mandate coming down from the top of many companies around the world today.
One area fuelling this perfect storm is the need for companies to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives and become cloud first organisations. In fact, even the cloud first term has evolved to ‘cloud everywhere’ as companies need to ensure that information can be securely exchanged and managed any time, any place or anywhere.
Here at OpenText we have been helping companies digitize supply chain operations for more than forty years and hence directly helping companies establish greener operations across their extended business ecosystem. Companies should be aiming to digitize 100% of the information flowing across their supply chain operations, but many companies struggle to achieve this.
OpenText operates the world’s largest business network with over 1.1 million companies connected and exchanging over 33 billion transactions across our network every year. This equates to $12 trillion in network commerce being exchanged across these connected companies and this number includes 80% of Gartner’s Top 25 supply chains.
Now in partnership with the Environmental Paper Network we have been able to calculate that by digitizing 33 billion paper-based transactions such as purchase orders and invoices, we are helping to save 6.5 million trees from being cut down. The following graphic highlights other green savings that can be made by digitizing 33 billion business transactions.
In addition to digitizing information flows, OpenText helps companies establish a cloud-based business to anything integration environment that offers even more indirect green benefits, for example:
- Companies can retire power hungry internal hardware infrastructures and leverage a modern, cloud first integration platform
- Internal or external IT staff can remotely implement, manage and support cloud first integration solutions without necessarily travelling to different office locations
- Simple, cloud first applications can be accessed via any low powered mobile device
Collectively, all of the above benefits are helping companies develop more sustainable supply chains, by reducing the overall carbon footprint of supply chain operations and every internal and external stakeholder that needs to leverage this platform on a daily basis.
To find out how OpenText can help digitize your supply chain operations, please click here.
