On 15 July 2011, Softline IT held a seminar entitled "Information Technology and Planet Earth". It was the first event in Ukraine dedicated to reviewing modern solutions and technologies for the efficient use of natural resources: energy saving, material savings and waste minimization. During the event, Softline IT specialists presented the main innovative IT solutions as part of a holistic approach to building a business that does not harm the environment.
Today, more and more Ukrainian companies are abandoning traditional ways of running their offices in favor of so-called "green" ones. This allows them not only to make a modest contribution to environmental protection but also to cut costs noticeably.
First of all, this means reducing resource consumption, as well as measures that help reduce the negative environmental impact of a company's activities. Practice shows that many of them make it possible not only to achieve a real reduction in the environmental damage caused by a company's activities but also to save a good deal of money.
The first thing an organization can save on is paper. This issue is especially relevant for large enterprises, banks and government bodies, which, owing to the nature of their work, are real factories for producing and processing information. After all, information has to be printed, processed, structured and stored, and the required data must be found quickly when needed. The only way for such organizations not to drown in the flood of paper is to implement an electronic document management system.
Consider the following figures. A medium-sized organization creates about 40,000 documents a year, and printing them requires about 200,000 sheets of paper, or 400 reams, each weighing about 2.5 kg. In other words, such an organization uses 1 tonne of paper a year. Printing it takes 40 cartridges at about $100 each, $4,000 in total. Add the cost of the paper itself, $2,000. That may not seem like much, though it is not little either. But this is only one aspect.
Let us count further. Producing 100 kilograms of paper requires cutting down one tree, which takes 20–40 years to grow. So every year a single organization destroys 10 trees. Nationwide, by various estimates, record keeping consumes at least 2,000 tonnes of paper, or 20,000 trees, which is a small forest. What will happen after ten years or so of such consumption, which, incidentally, keeps growing?
Worst of all, most of this paper is either thrown away or burned. And the information in the part that is kept is hard to access: one has to go to the archive and search for the document, which takes anywhere from half an hour to several days. In effect, time is lost, and time is very expensive nowadays. It has been calculated that, on average, an employee spends 8.8 hours a week (a whole working day!) searching for or gathering data, and the company loses $14,209 a year as a result. Note that these are figures from the consulting company IDC, calculated per employee. If, for example, 200 people work with documents in an organization, the losses amount to about $300,000 a year (including printing costs). Softline IT electronic document management systems make it possible to abandon paper altogether.
No less valuable, both for the atmosphere and for the company's image, would be giving up frequent business trips by making more active use of videoconferencing (which, incidentally, will also save on transport costs and travel allowances). Softline IT videoconferencing systems can reduce a company's transport costs by a factor of 3–4. The next step is to give up the office altogether. Softline IT desktop virtualization technologies make it possible to create a fully virtual office whose employees work fully without leaving home.
Softline IT notes that the "green" idea can also become the basis for shaping corporate culture and employee loyalty to the employer.