Today, enterprises demand a seamless and sustainable amalgamation of their business and IT functions to create an agile, flexible, and scalable operating model. Although, cloud technology fulfills the current demands, aligning the cloud adoption/transformation process with the sustainability agenda is something that organizations across sectors must take more seriously.
Take the case of the retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry. With customer-centricity at the focal point, Retail and CPG organizations are undergoing a paradigm transition and business sustainability is a priority. The objective to achieve operational excellence while driving sustainable and eco-friendly growth still largely remains unattained for the Retail and CPG industry, worldwide. The burning need for such growth in the backdrop of climate change, waning biodiversity, and depleting resources necessitate urgent action from these companies.
How cloud adoption benefits climate/green initiatives
The key drivers of cloud technology adoption are agility, versatility, low cost, and scalability. Besides, a compact IT function and infrastructure also makes cloud a key requirement for the sustainable and green initiatives of an enterprise.
The significant benefits of cloud adoption for the green initiative are:
- Reduced energy consumption per unit as the operational efficiency of hyper-scale data centers is improved.
- The major cloud data centers are substantially efficient in optimal utilization of hardware than on-premises data centers. It is estimated that on-premises data centers only utilize 5-10% of their total capacity while operating for long period, a complete opposite to cloud data centers.
- The fast and automated pull-based resource allocation system of cloud adds up to the efficiency of the process. This smart process ensures optimal utilization and availability of resources, which benefits businesses and the environment
- The transition of a business from physical to container-based virtual servers lowers under-utilization
- In a server-less application and database ecosystem, the resources are only allocated as a response to queries– ensuring a true “on-demand” capacity model
The other drivers to sustainability
Retail and CPG organizations worldwide, are working toward a unified goal of a sustainable and environmentally friendly business model. Besides cloud transformation, there are other effective ways to drive business sustainability management. This includes moving toward green manufacturing practices, eco-friendly retail, and usage of environment-friendly or fuel-efficient transportation to deliver environment-friendly products and services.
Integrating sustainability with the core principles of the organization
The sustainability-led digital transformation process should be an integral part of the strategic and operations goals of Retail and CPG organizations. For creating business sustainability across the value chain, an enterprise must review its inventory management system in its entirety, from product creation to consumption.
The enterprise adoption of the cloud pay-per-use model entails the transition from a capital-expenditure to an operational-expenditure mode, which lowers cost. Such saving also contributes to a green environment and improves the overall enterprise profile on the eco-friendly and sustainability index. This also makes the organization more attractive for customers and employees.
Today, eco-friendly, and sustainable business models are no longer mere corporate embellishments, but mandates which are interwoven with the mission and vision of an enterprise. Cloud technology is one of the key drivers of this mission, which empowers an enterprise with eco-friendly innovation, sustainability, and reuse of waste at data centers.
The journey has already started
With more and more enterprises embarking on their digital transformation and cloud adoption journey, the industry is unifying and inching closer toward its ultimate goal of eco-friendliness and business sustainability management. Additionally, the transition from the local data center to a forward-looking native cloud platform is also providing companies further impetus to move toward the ultimate goal.
Technology contributes to the efficiency of regular tasks of an organization. It also serves as an active solution enabler that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions toward an eco-friendly and sustainable business.
Enterprises today can deploy high-end digital platforms and sophisticated sensors to manage and monitor machine energy consumption. They can undertake preventive maintenance measures to ensure maximum uptime, and efficiently manage resources. The enterprise can also leverage advanced technologies like augmented reality to offer seamless remote support to all the stakeholders. Furthermore, by engaging a digital visual quality inspection system, an enterprise can address the issues relating to receipts and returns of defective products by customers.
Why HCLTech?
HCLTech envisages its role as an IT partner contributing either directly or indirectly toward the enterprise goal of sustainability and green initiatives during their digital transformation journey. Our direct contribution can be through the deployment of an efficient production process or indirectly through optimization of the supply chain process, engaging advanced and complete processes for CPG, and deployment of energy-efficient process/systems. For the Retail and CPG industry, data can be a key differentiator and can be leveraged to gain insights for optimization of resource and energy. The cloud technology, on the other hand, leverages and delivers the benefit of the modern collaboration it promises.
