Taking a step back after three busy days at Vivatech, I’d like to share with you our perception of the sustainable IT sector, as it emerges from conversations with prospects we’ve had over the past few exhibitions.
2021, CSR x IT at the heart of Verdikt positioning
Two years ago, shortly after launching our greentech startup, we received a BPI i-Nov award for our innovative approach to developing a SaaS platform for Corporate Digital Responsibility at the crossroads of CSR and IT.
We have chosen to be exclusively IT, inclusively CSR (planet, people, profit) and even more so by instantiating the 17 UN SDGs for IT!
Certainly very visionary at a time when the ecosystem was taking shape promoting IT carbon footprint.
2022, carbon-centric IT verticalized offers become available
Last year, at Vivatech, greentech innovators were there and able to showcase their solutions. Overall a patchwork of offers addressing distinct scopes, essentially verticalized per IT domain and covering mostly GHG emissions calculations.
Limited real immediate needs with budget and timing expressed by potential customers but more prospective talks to structure preliminary approaches.
We presented our platform with two ready-to-use pillars (planet & people) and even if the discussions mostly concerned the restricted carbon impacts, some early-adopters understood the global vision behind our value proposal.
2023, WHAT A CHANGE!
A drastic maturity shift in prospects conversations
Moving from technology watch to the early stages of experimentation, realizing that Excel was limited for this exercise and how large and complex is the data to be managed, CIOs acknowledge that a solution is needed to industrialize the whole process across the organization.
Now aware of the obligation to analyze scope 3 GHG emissions from 2023 onwards and of the need to take account of the forthcoming EU CSR directive regulations applying on 2024 data, they wish to comply or to anticipate and carry out preliminary dry runs.
Depending on the corporate business sector, the impact of IT can represent between 5% to 25% of a company’s GHG emissions hence a key role to play in a corporate reduction strategy.
Much more substance discussions are taking place with potential customers
More and more prospects are pointing out that IT sustainability must not be reduced to greenhouse gas emissions and must also encompass social impacts (but not limited to accessibility). Some stakeholders are already able to extrapolate the benefits provided by our profit pillar.
Like any other corporate function, IT is a contributor in its entirety and not just to a few technical elements, some of which are sometimes minimal in terms of overall impact.
It should also be emphasized that questions relating to the ‘how’ are more often at the heart of discussions (reference framework, methodology, etc.).
The carbon-centric IT ecosystem begins to adopt CSR vocabulary blurring the lines
It is interesting to note that the ecosystem, which is mainly focused on carbon in the verticalized areas of IT, is beginning to market its offerings using the language of CSR.
Is this just window-dressing or a genuine conviction? There’s no doubt that it’s partly a question of appropriating market codes! But the adoption of CSR or ESG criteria, as an upward extension of technological domains, will not materialize an IT department, which is much more complex than that, for those who know it from the inside.
Difficult for prospects to decipher marketing offers of various greentech players
All the efforts made by suppliers in the ecosystem on IT decarbonation will definitely help to collectively accelerate the transition to more sustainable computing.
For potential customers, the opportunity to choose from the many offerings that are flourishing on the green IT market is undoubtedly invaluable. But for them also, it’s not always easy to understand the specifics of the different proposals.
It’s crucial that decision-makers take the time and get the right support to decipher commercial opportunism and commercial reality, as well as the scope and content of the solutions on offer in this fast-growing field.
Our offer: sustain your IT & value your CSR
At Verdikt, we adopt a double transparency approach with our prospects to inform their choices.
First, we provide benchmark analysis of the green IT ecosystem public & private solutions during our demo talks.
Second, we describe in details our platform’s differentiating features which are for some of them unique on the market:
- CSR & UN SDG analysis for IT,
- international IT organizations’ management,
- rough unformatted or API automated data collection,
- maturity & performance assessments on a 360° IT scope providing CIO with decisional KPI dashboards, automated reduction actions and communication reports,
- comparison of historical reassessments.
To find out more, visit here.
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