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Paper, power and travel are the three main areas where organizations can invest their intelligence and gain savings for them and help reduce pressure on the environment. We delve into some tips that can help your organization go green, save and earn brownie points as well.
1. Reduce paper wastage
Gartner says that active management of office printing can lead to reduction of 10% to 30% in recurring spending on document output. It also reduces the annual paper costs by at least 30% by selecting duplex printing as the default setting across the output fleet. As a common practice, most organizations only utilize the single side of paper for printing. Using the reverse side of paper simultaneously is a easy-to-adopt mechanism. It just requires a small tweak in the print preferences dialogue box while printing. In larger printers, you might have to opt for an auto-duplexing unit. Moreover, paper with single side printing that’s no longer relevant can be re-used for printing on the other side.
Use printer management software
There are plenty of them available, and some of them are even available for free. For instance, a software called Print Censor Professional is one such software that allows easy viewing, controlling and restricting printer usage on a LAN. This can result in getting rid of duplicate, restricted and unauthorized print jobs. For more on this, read this article. http://ld2.in/vv.
2. Automate workflow
Besides using duplex printing and printer management software, organizations can also try and avoid printing unless it’s absolutely necessary. Process automation is the key here. In any business process, there are documents that flow across various departments and hierarchies. Try using digital documents as much as possible. Identify what’s the bulk of your printing happening for, and see if it can be avoided as much as possible.
3. Use combination for print and online for surveys, marketing and promotions
The Internet has opened up a whole new channel to reach out to a much larger customer base, and switch from many paper based activities. Online survey for instance is one such activity. If you’re doing an an internal survey of your employees or market surveys that don’t require a face to face interaction, simply setup an online survey tool, like SeaMonkey or LimeSurvey, and send them a web link to the survey questionnaire by email. Companies could even consider social and other online media to market their products, and reduce the need to print leaflets, brochures, etc.
4. Switch off PCs remotely
As many CIOs would say, it has been observed that most employees do not switch off their PCs at the time of leaving the office. This translates into mounting power costs and CO2 emissions that can be avoided. Since all hardware in an organization is essentially centrally managed, IT managers can use software to switch PCs off remotely at a predefined time. You can use software like the Edison Energy Monitor to choose the level of energy savings you want to achieve. Edison will calculate your estimated savings based on the setting you choose. Scheduling custom settings at any desired time and day of the week is also possible. See how Edison can help you by going onto http://ld2.in/vw.
5. Replace legacy hardware with power efficient ones
Legacy hardware like CRTs and even PCs has essentially been found to be power hungry. If you have a lot of CRT monitors in your organization, it would be a good idea to replace them in phases with LCD/LED monitors, depending upon your budgets. Notebooks and Netbooks have become cheaper, and are more energy efficient than PCs. Evaluate if a larger part of your employee workforce can be given these instead of PCs.
6. Deploy virtualization technology
The question today is not whether to use virtualization or not, but when to shift to it. This technology helps consolidate multiple physical servers into fewer physical servers, resulting in both power and space savings--both of which are prime requirements for going green. Virtualization can also happen for applications, network, and storage, but server virtualization is the most popular, and perhaps the first step to going green. Lesser number of servers not only consumes lesser power, but reduces the amount of air-conditioning required for cooling them.
7. Telecommute
Research shows telecommuting or work-from-home makes employees around 20 percent more productive. Apart from all the personal comfort an employee gathers out of telecommuting, organizations can reap tax benefits out of this as well. The technological innovations in the past decades have made working at home easier and more feasible. Reducing travel for maintenance personnel can be achieved by using remote maintenance. Some basic level software can help you achieve that. Remobo is one such free software that helps you to create a VPN instantly and can help in remote maintenance for your system. Learn how to use Remobo at http://ld2.in/vx.
8. E-training and E-learning
Companies can adopt the option of e-learning or e-training. Presentations or video recordings of the training modules can be made available to the employees and can be viewed from the comforts of their location. If a need for personal interaction arises, video conferencing solutions can be made use of. The idea is to keep travel of employees by road, rail, or air to the minimal to save on the carbon footprint, as well as travel costs.
9. Re-use hardware
Not all parts of a faulty hardware are faulty; and some of it can be reused or recycled with ease. Companies should make sure that the reusable parts are recycled and utilized to the utmost. And when there is an absolute need for e-waste disposal, only then it should be taken up as an option.
10. Earn carbon credits by e-waste recycling
There are organizations coming up which not only buy faulty IT equipment at reasonable prices and help dispose of hardware in an environmental friendly way, they also give the company selling these hardware with carbon credit certificates. Companies earning these certificates can essentially go ahead and label themselves as environmental friendly and ‘green’. Westere.com is one such website that helps you achieve carbon credit certificates while properly disposing off your hardware in an environment friendly format.
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written by James P. Ramirez, March 16, 2011
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