Organizations are now leveraging IT capabilities to facilitate sustainability initiatives across the enterprise in new areas such as fleet management, paperless billing, and construction and facility management. Executives must lead by example while also welcoming bottom-up ideas and efforts for sustainability initiatives to be successful. Strategists should assess how IT systems can support business goals, from a reduction in electricity usage to carbon neutrality, and how technology will play a key role in the firm's long-term strategy to minimize its carbon footprint.

Obviously, without IT technology, it is difficult to reach an organization’s sustainability goals and targets. IT is a significant component of a more extensive system that incorporates strong administration and clear communication of corporate objectives.

IT has already assisted organizations to take their first steps towards energy conservation. Simple measures, such as having lights or computers shut off automatically at set times, or setting room temperatures on an automated schedule, and bring significant savings. More complex undertakings include the consolidation of data centers and moving up to more energy-efficient hardware and supporting teleworking initiatives.

IT plays a major sustainability role in data management, in terms of the monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and other environmental parameters. Also, several key areas can be identified where IT can play a major role in an organization. One clear area where IT can help organizations to become more energy-efficient is in the design, construction, and ongoing maintenance of a building.

Apart from that, reducing paper usage is an obvious way to cut costs and ease the strain on the environment. The financial, telecommunications, public utility, insurance, healthcare, and retail industries have driven this trend, which eliminates logging, paper processing, and the fuel consumption associated with transporting bills and payments.

Over the next few years, companies will focus on maintaining their sustainability with IT by deploying more IT resources and establishing positions of accountability within their organizations to ensure that they reach significant achievements.

Reference:

https://www.fm-house.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/IT_AND_SUSTANTIBILITY_ORACLE.pdf