It is happening! Big tech is reaching out to all the organizations struggling to report on sustainability. As a tech lover and a digitalization evangelist, Devoteam is happy to see big tech support sustainability reporting. The new kid on the block in ESG reporting support is the American software-as-a-service provider ServiceNow. The ServiceNow vision has – since its conception in a California basement – been to help people work smarter and better. Or in their own words; Workflow a better world.
How is big tech helping organizations meet sustainability demands?
Over the last year, maybe more, new sustainability-related features from the big tech players have multiplied. And this time the war between tech houses is not to be compared with the USSR and the USA during the Cold War. It is ‘weapons of global positive impact’. Not destruction. The great news for businesses and organizations is, that in a couple of years, our favorite cloud provider, business administration provider, or IT service management provider will automatically help us become more sustainable. They have ambitious goals to become ‘net zero’ and shut down Co2e emissions related to their total operations. Google Cloud released an ambitious project – named Jörd – to help data center owners to use their knowledge and experience on becoming as close to zero CO2e emissions in their data centers as possible. Microsoft has a similar service available if you are an Azure user.
How will ServiceNow help you in your journey to become more sustainable?
ServiceNow is turning their best practice knowledge on ESG reporting into a product you can use. The ambition is to make ESG reporting a less time-consuming and less confusing business. Following international reporting standards like GRI and SASB, ServiceNow has designed an add-on service in their universe, where you can get an overview to understand what needs to be done to be compliant towards sustainability demands and meeting targets like Science-Based Targets Initiative, The Climate Pledge, Sustainable Development Goals or whatever obligation your organization has chosen to meet.
You help the world. Why is that good business for ServiceNow?
Besides the obvious, ServiceNow has set up ambitious targets to become CO2e neutral and this means knowing and understanding the complete value-chain around your products and services. Under the greenhouse gas protocol, the international standard on calculating CO2e emissions, emissions are divided into 3 so-called scopes. The first 2 scopes relate to emissions an organization has under some or full control to start reducing. The last one is the hard one. It relates to all the emissions the organizations don’t have under control. Could be the production of a product or a service. Or it could be transport of goods. Or even the waste handling of goods that don’t have strict EU regulations to follow. It is also the emissions that happen when you use the products and services. So when ServiceNow sees good sense in helping you steer towards a more sustainable future for your organization, this will be a positive factor for them in scope 3. It will also help them make an even greater impact, to support you and help you succeed in your ESG reporting to free time for doing more and make sure doing better for the environment and human rights is not stopped by the simple factor, that it is too hard to do or too expensive to understand.
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This article is a part of a greater series centred around the technologies and themes found within the first edition of the Devoteam TechRadar. To see what our community of tech leaders said about the current position of Knative in the market, take a look at the most recent edition of the Devoteam TechRadar.