LONDON – Feb 22, 2012– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability and award-winning charity, Global Action Plan, today announced an innovative service designed to accelerate employee engagement in the sustainability programmes in place today at thousands of companies worldwide.

Under the terms of the new partnership, corporate sustainability managers will benefit from the experience of two organisations both dealing daily with the most intractable issue facing most sustainability professionals; employee engagement. The rapid analysis programme links a fast-start situation review with a three month pilot programme of execution driven by SuMo, the advanced employee engagement application developed by UK start-up CloudApps to bring social business ease-of-use to the frontline of sustainability.

The initial two-day assessment comprises a complete review of current employee engagement, benchmarking against best practices and an action plan for just £2,500. On completion of this no-commitment assessment, customers will be equipped to move to practical implementation of a full-blown SuMo pilot project for up to 100 of their employees. Costing just £13,500, the enterprise-ready solution has been discounted as an incentive for companies, looking to kick-start or re-invigorate, their employee engagement programmes.

Widely regarded as a thought leader around climate change, Global Action Plan was founded 18 years ago. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) endorses it, its leadership team are consulted by the UK Government and leading global environmental campaigner, Al Gore. GAP customers include MTV, Standard Chartered bank, Aviva and British Gas. Adding Global Action Plan’s practical know-how with CloudApps award-winning employee engagement technology provides both a sound academic framework and the ability to measure, monitor and reduce unsustainable business processes and waste.

Trewin Restorick, CEO, of Global Action Plan, said: ”Our employee engagement practices have been created over years of experience across a wide range of sectors. We know how to achieve the benefits of culture change, but recognise that driving such real-world change is hard. An initial assessment, backed by proven CloudApps technology makes change quickly visible at the organisation, department, team and individual level. This level of transparency creates employee engagement in one financial quarter.”

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps, said: “Employee engagement is at the heart of everything Global Action Plan does – as it is forCloudApps. Our partnership with Global Action Plan serves as proof that without deep linkage between the desired outcome and a proven means of measurement, employee engagement will remain a hope, rather than a reality for many businesses. We are already engaged on several joint opportunities and the signs are that This new innovative service offering will bring employee engagement using CloudApps to a much wider audience.”

[ENDS]

About Global Action Plan
The UK’s leading environmental behaviour change organisation with over 18 years’ experience in sustainability communications, staff engagement and training. Global Action Plan uses its practical experience, knowledge and credibility to help thousands of people and organisations make environmental and financial savings using a supportive, structured approach tailors projects to the priorities and cultures of individual communities. Our programmes have social and environmental benefits, are proven to work, and are United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) endorsed.

CloudApps & Global Action Plan employee engagement service offering covered by BusinessGreen. Read the full article here

New service shares environmental indicators to help whole company manage their carbon footprint

ExxonMobil has received a stark reminder of the need to comply with green regulations, after it was fined €3m for failing to report 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from a Scottish chemical plant.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) last week published its 2010-2011 enforcement report, revealing it had slapped a €3,296,600 penalty on Exxon after the company failed to report nearly 33,000 tonnes of carbon emissions from the Fife Ethylene Plant.

SEPA said Exxon had highlighted the error, but was still liable for the fine, which is charged at €100 per tonne of unreported emissions under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

An Exxon spokesman toldBusinessGreen the under-reported emissions accounted for just under five per cent of the site’s total and that the error had been caused by “incorrect mapping of routings”.

He added that the mistake was immediately reported when it was spotted and that the company has now fully reviewed and improved its procedures to avoid a repeat of the mistake.

According to WWF Scotland, the fine is by far the highest financial penalty for any environmental offence in British history, and serves as a warning to businesses of the need to understand and comply with environmental regulations.

“It is very embarrassing for a company as well resourced as ExxonMobil to have to admit that they can’t fill in forms properly, let alone to get fined nearly £3m for their mistake,” said WWF Scotland director Richard Dixon.

“This is the biggest, but there have been other examples of companies under-reporting their contribution to climate change. The whole point of the European trading scheme is to limit the total climate pollution coming from industry, so it is quite right that fines should be high for those who fail to comply,” Dixon added.

read the full BusinessGreen article here

BONUSES have been on and off the news agenda since the economic crash, add to that bankers’ bonuses causing distrust within the financial sector and it is clear a reassessment of how we reward within an organisation is needed. The recent news that Fred Goodwin, former CEO at Royal Bank of Scotland, has had his knighthood stripped takes the concern over bonuses out of the corporate world and onto the national agenda.

At the moment it seems unclear what bonuses are being judged on? It is this lack of transparency which causes such a public backlash. The ‘old school’ bonus method within larger corporations needs an overhaul which appeals to a generation who place job security, sustainability and ability to grow internally above titles and grandiosity.

The government recently praised John Lewis for its performance during a troubled economy. Nick Clegg stated “Britain should develop more of a John Lewis economy” in a recent speech. The retailer is a company without shareholders, its value is vested in a trust that can only be shared between the company’s employees. This corporate structure has resulted in a higher sense of connectivity and led to high street success while other retailers suffered. This achievement proves having an engaged workforce doesn’t justmake them a happy one but, also a profitable one.

By rewarding employees for their environmental actions through bonuses, public recognition, and through starting employee-inspired and supporter initiatives, companies are more in tune with the backbone of their workforce. By having the ability to truly measure an employee’s impact in an organisation bonuses can be fairly benchmarked while generating significant cost savings.

For example by aligning and engaging with its employees one of our customers, an organisation with 6,000 staff managed to reduce its travel costs, expenses and its carbon footprint. It had an annual travel cost of $24m (£15m); saw a 25% reduction in taxi use; 15% reduction in mileage claims; and a 7% reduction in flights. This in turn led to 10% reduction in its annual carbon footprint; a 9% reduction in annual expense costs; and a total of 27,000 hours spent working rather than travelling. This directly created cost savings and could be traced down to individual employees. Each team, or floor, was encouraged to provide information on how much waste they recycled, whether they switched off lights and computers or if they had participated in video conferencing as opposed to hopping on a train.

Employee engagement is all too often a ‘management by poster slogan’ but the financial case for a driven workforce speaks volumes. Rewarding ‘green bonuses’ to high performing staff is already gaining ground as companies turn their back on the traditional approach of linking bonuses to profits. For example, TNT has rolled out a sustainability-linked scheme. While all 600 executives at AkzoNobel, a Dutch company, will only receive bonuses based on how much they have contributed towards reducing injuries among staff and cutting carbon, energy, water and waste. As usual the UK seems to be lagging behind the rest of Europe but with big brand companies such as John Lewis showing that an engaged workforce is key to success, a bottom up approach makes financial sense.

–Peter Grant, CEO, CloudApps

Read the complete article here

LONDON – Feb 9th, 2012– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced its first FTSE 100-listed customer, international engineering and project management company, AMEC (LSE:AMEC).

CloudApps Sustainability Suite and its advanced employee engagement solution, SuMo, will combine to drive some of the most aggressive sustainability targets on the planet. The company is aiming for a 2013 reduction of 15% in carbon emissions against a 2008 baseline, followed by falls of 40% by 2020 and a 60% reduction by 2030.

AMEC is a global employer of some 27,000 and widely acknowledged as a global sustainability champion. Its worldwide operations have seen it recognised every year this decade as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) industry leader for oil equipment and services. Customers such as BP, Shell, the US Navy and EDF rely on AMEC services ranging from environmental and front end engineering design at the start of a project to decommissioning assets at the end.

Reviewing its on-going commitment to Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reporting, AMEC’s senior management team searched for an advanced solution which could engage employees across the business, ran sustainably and was capable of meeting not only carbon and environmental metrics but could cater for social and economic measures also.

The CloudApps solution, built on the world’s most sustainable cloud computing platform, delivered by market leader salesforce.com, adds no additional footprint as AMEC rolls it out to 40 international operations globally. In addition to carbon and energy reporting, CloudApps customers measure water, waste and corporate social and economic metrics, making it ideal for future wide scale projects.

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps said: “AMEC’s management vision on sustainability and its stewardship of precious natural resources has led the oil industry since the turn of the decade. We are incredibly proud to help them deliver world-leading sustainability outcomes. AMEC typifies the sort of environmentally-aware leaders which has fired up the CloudApps team since our inception.”

[ENDS]

We are delighted to announce that Chris Turner at Veolia Environmental Services UK was today drawn out of the hat of survey respondents and is therefore declared the winner of the iPad2 gift prize. Many congratulations Chris, we hope you enjoy your new toy which is on its way to you now!

The feedback from our survey was overwhelmingly positive, thanks to one-and-all for your insight and helpful comments – some great advice received that we shall certainly be acting upon during the coming months.

We are grateful for everyone who took the time and trouble to respond to the survey. It is our intention to keep listening to both our existing and prospective customers, allowing us to better understand how we can put ourselves in the best position to assist. We will re-visit the survey again in a few months time and hope to offer another tempting morsel to persuade you to participate!

Warm regards,

The CloudApps Team

Read the full article here

The 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Durban, South Africa at the end of last year may have been eclipsed by the Euro Crisis, but in the UK the large public and private sector organisations responsible for around 10% of carbon emissions are being held to account for their energy management strategies.

Approximately 5,000 organisations in the UK are required to report their carbon emissions under the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. You may be working for one of them. You may also be working for an organisation that is looking to re-address its image, either because you work in an unpopular sector, or because key figures are embroiled in a scandal over pay-scales or unethical policies or because the organisation is accused of not paying a fair amount of corporate tax. Even if your organisation is not one of these, it is a fair bet that as fuel costs rise, you have been asked to look at ways to cut electricity consumption. So, in many ways 2012 looks like it may be a good year for corporate sustainability initiatives.

If your organisational management team is promoting the use of local produce, sustainable sourcing and ethical pay, how do you go about helping them track and manage all this? We know that many organisations are looking to create their own reporting tools using existing back office applications to collect and disseminate information. That is all well and good but there are SaaS solutions available that can offer more in the way of industry benchmarking and provide services that are fun for staff to use. And it is important to remember that employee engagement is a big part of the battle to become a more sustainable organisation.

For example, Peter Grant is CEO of CloudApps a UK software vendor providing a sustainability management and monitoring solution via the salesforce.com SaaS platform. CloudApps takes data from energy, transport and CSR initiatives to create baselines and can then put a service in place for you that aligns with best practice in your industry, sector and geography. The service helps your organisation set the carbon budget and measure activity against it – the information gathered can then be used to differentiate your organisation in the market.

In terms of data capture, if you can get the data out of your existing systems, CloudApps can get it into its salesforce.com engine using APIs or flat files, or by sending requests via workflow. The information is then sent back via dashboards. The service also has an interesting employee engagement capability, SuMo, based on a gamification engine that sets challenges to reduce carbon footprints, which are linked into rewards systems within the organisation.

Last year (to March 2011) was the first CRC reporting year. Due to effectively moving to a tax, the government decided to waive the process of purchasing and surrendering of carbon allowances in the first year. However for the year (to March 12) carbon allowances will need to be purchased and surrendered. The Environmental Agency (EA) has a prescribed process for this. This process will take some time and effort to initially set up and then execute against.

At a high level, named and certified individuals (Account Representatives) will need to be approved and registered on the CRC Registry. They, and only they, will be empowered to first purchase and then surrender allowances on behalf of the participating organisation. Please do not leave the certification and registration to the last minute. It will take a number of weeks to complete the process, and we suspect the EA and the certifying agencies will be overwhelmed immediately prior to the reporting deadlines.

Key dates are:

• CRC Reporting Year 11/12 ends – 31 March ‘12
• CRC Annual Report submission – 31 July’12
• CRC Registry – will start validating Account Representatives from – 1 April ‘12
• CRC Registry – the window for first purchasing and then surrendering allowances – opens 1 June, closes 31 July ‘12

Please note the deadline for the completion of the allowances process is the same as the Annual Report submission date. Hence you need to either; complete your reporting well in advance so that you know precisely how many allowances to purchase, or you need to purchase based on an estimate. Note that within a CRC phase excess allowances can be carried forward from one year to the next. If excess allowances are purchased re 11/12 they can be surrendered against your 12/13 liabilities.

Factored in these steps when determining timing:

1. Each Account Representative will require a digital certificate in a format acceptable for the CRC Registry. These can take 2 weeks to obtain, assuming all relevant information (name, dob, address etc) is provided right first time. I would suggest that this step starts in March so that it is completed for when the CRC Registry opens for Account Representative registration in April ’12.
2. Your finance team may need a number of weeks to process your purchasing request. An invoice will not be issued prior to the allowance purchase, so your Finance team need to have the necessary approvals to make a payment without an invoice.
3. The EA are likely to require a week between receipt of the funds, and making the allowances available for surrender. (This is an estimate as the process has not been completed yet, but in the first year at least there is likely to be delay, particularly immediately prior to the submission deadline)

Other items to consider:

You can have more than one Account Representative – but each has to go through the same certification process, which results in incremental fees.

Acceptable digital certificates can be obtained from Chamber Simply Sign and cost about £40 per annum. http://www.simplysign.co.uk/. Allow some time to work with your IT department to ensure these certificates work within your internal IT protocols. 

Suggested Timetable:

• March – obtain digital certificates for Account Representative(s)
• April – register Account Representative on CRC Registry
• May – complete data capture for CRC Annual Report. Estimate number of allowances required.
• June – notify internal finance re the estimated number CRC allowances required to be purchased at £12 per tonne Co2e
• July – early – make payment to CRC Registry to purchase allowances
• July – mid – submit Annual Report
• July – late – surrender the necessary number of allowances.

Find out more about how CloudApps is helping companies with their CRC Reporting.

Simon Corley – CloudApps CFO 

An annual supporter of the Corporate Leaders Network for Climate Action, CloudApps once again lent our support to the 2C Challenge Communiqué.  As such we are encouraged by the late-breaking news from the Durban Summit. There is however, clearly a long way to go and a need to flesh out the precise details in order to deliver against this “commitment to sign a legally binding treaty”, but significant progress has without doubt been made.

BusinessGreen covered the breaking events, stating:

Businesses hail ‘great result’ at Durban Summit

Business leaders have broadly welcomed the last-gasp international deal agreed in the early hours of the Durban Summit yesterday morning, which for the first time commits all countries to signing on to a new legally binding climate change treaty.

In dramatic scenes, ministers reached an agreement on a new text almost 36 hours after the scheduled close of the two-week summit.

The text, known as the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, will see the EU and a handful of other countries extend the Kyoto Protocol into a second commitment period, allowing for the continuation of emission reduction initiatives enabled by the treaty such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

In return all countries agreed to deliver a new protocol, another legal instrument, or an “agreed outcome with legal force” by 2015 that will then be enacted by 2020. The wording paves the way for large economies such as the US, China, India and Brazil to be subjected to legally binding climate change obligations for the first time.

The summit also agreed the structure for a new international Green Climate Fund with talks set to start next year on how to funnel $100bn a year of finance to the fund each year from 2020.

Click here to read the full article from BusinessGreen:

UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) also covered the news with this press release:

Road open to new global legal climate treaty

11 December 2011

• Global agreement achieved on a roadmap to a legally binding deal
• Second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol to be agreed next year
• Green Climate Fund to be set up

Negotiators in the early hours of Sunday morning. European Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard (centre) with the UK’s Head of International Climate Change, Pete Betts (to the left, seated)The UN climate talks in South Africa have been heralded a success after a climate change deal was struck in the early hours of Sunday morning.194 parties have spent the past two weeks in Durban discussing how to cut emissions to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees to avoid dangerous climate change.

In a major realignment of support, well over 120 countries formed a coalition behind the EU’s high ambition proposal of a roadmap to a global legally binding deal to curb emissions. African states together with the least developed countries such as Bangladesh and Gambia, and small island states vulnerable to rising sea levels, like the Maldives, joined with the EU to put forward a timetable which would see the world negotiate a new agreement by 2015 at the latest.

The talks resulted in a decision to adopt the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol next year in return for a roadmap to a global legal agreement covering all parties for the first time. Negotiations will begin on the agreement early next year.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said:

“This is a significant step forward in curbing emissions to tackle global climate change. For the first time we’ve seen major economies, normally cautious, commit to take the action demanded by the science.

“The EU’s proposal for the roadmap was at the core of the negotiations and the UK played a central role in galvanising support. This outcome shows the UNFCCC system really works and can produce results. It also shows how a united EU can achieve results on the world stage and deliver in the UK’s best interests.

“There are still many details to be hammered out, but we now need to start negotiating the new legal agreement as soon as possible and there are still many details to be hammered out.”

Also the conference agreed to get the Green Climate Fund up and running, this will help deliver financial support to developing countries to reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Click here to read the full DECC release 

On the 7th December, the CloudApps team participated with the salesforce.com Foundation at the Heathrow Special Needs Farm, helping to setup and run an Xmas Party for their many guests. Marquees were erected to house face painting, lucky dip, duck fishing, a puppet coconut shy, a very welcome hot drinks stall and a stunning catering tent. A visit from Santa and a local dancing / choral group made the day memorable for all participants.

Mark Mathias, the worthy winner of the recent CloudApps & Global Action Plan eco-driving simulator competition, kindly donated his winnings to the Farm. Simon Wheeldon, from CloudApps, presented the cheque during the event on Mark’s behalf (many thanks for your kind gesture Mark!).

Two Simon’s and an Elf Helper

Directing Proceedings!

The party in full swing!

Mark Mathias donation (by Simon Wheeldon!)

Enjoy !

The CloudApps Team

LONDON – December 1st, 2011– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced the latest version of its award-winning Sustainability Suite and a new not-for-profit online educational resource to share best practices from the sustainability community.

The new version of CloudApps Sustainability Suite unites economic, social and environmental measures of sustainability sources in a single easy-to-use enterprise application. For the first time, executives responsible for managing spiralling energy costs and meeting overall corporate sustainability goals can share ownership of those goals with the wider workforce. They can also project the impact of sustainability measures forwards so that they can accurately and in real-time see their overall ‘sustainability-performance’.

In addition, CloudApps announced its role as founder and funder of Sustainability-Space, an online collaborative ideas exchange which launches with over 100 free sustainability ideas – which will be reviewed, added-to and voted for by its community of users. Sustainability-Space, designed specifically to foster a dialogue within the sustainability community, is free-to-use and built on the salesforce.com Ideas platform.

The combination of the latest ideas from experts in sustainability and world-leading technology, brings three clear benefits:

Stop [resource wastage] – Account for every source of sustainability information right across the organisation, for the first time bringing environmental, social and economic data together in one place.

Collaborate – Manage achievement against your corporate sustainability goals in real-time. Bring employees from different work groups, geographies, departments and job roles together on one platform. Engage and collaborate using social media techniques such as Force.com Chatter.

Listen – Use the power of ‘crowd-sourcing’ to encourage sustainability ideas from employees and business partners or even from competing organisations. Bring these ideas together with suggestions from sustainability-space to accelerate cost savings.

Jon Elikington, founder of leading think tank and consultancy, Sustainability, commented: “’CloudApps, which produces my favourite sustainability dashboard, now brings us the sustainability-space website — a place to meet, greet, learn and share.’

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps said: “Our customers are innovators and they expect their suppliers to be leaders. The new CloudApps Winter ’12 release is a massive step forward in sustainability, covering more sources, more accurately than ever. Combined with access to the very latest in sustainability thinking available for free via Sustainability-Space, it provides the ‘How?’ to Sustainability’s ‘What?’. With these advantages there simply is no excuse for organisations to miss out on the cost and brand advantages early adopters are clearly experiencing from sustainability.”

[ENDS]

Sustainability Suite Winter ‘12 – NEW FEATURES INCLUDE:

Manage any source of sustainability data (Environmental, Social & Economic)
For example
• Any carbon-emitting source (fuels, electricity, fugitive emissions etc.)
• Water supply & treatment
• Waste disposal
• CSR sources (such as volunteering hours, charity donations etc.)
• EHS sources (such as workplace incidents, human rights violations etc.)

Sustainability Goal Management
Including
• Goal base-line calculations
• Allocation of budget to goals & targets across the organization
• Goal tracking & performance projection

Source Inventory Management
Including
• Comprehensive posting agreements & inventory rules
• Inventories for any measure for any type of Sustainability information
• Tracking of costs for all inventories, cumulative, monthly & annual

Performance Centre Management
Including
• Assignment & alignment of inventories to an organizations performance centres
• Allocation of goals and inventories into performance indicators
• Projection of achievement for any performance indicator
• Roll up of performance indicators within organizational hierarchies

Certified by Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and GHG Management Institute
• Includes support for DEFRA, US EPA, IEA, IPCC, DCCEE, Environment Canada Source Conversion keys.
• Delivered on the worlds’ most energy efficient and secure (SAS70 Type II certified) Cloud Platform

LONDON – November 25th, 2011– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced it has won the Greenbang 2011 Efficiency Award in the Cloud Computing category.

The Greenbang awards celebrate the most forward thinking, innovative businesses whose projects are designed to create a sustainable business future. It wanted to find the superstars in delivering energy efficiency who are the true innovators in driving sustainable values into business. The awards recognize the top efficiency-building technologies, projects, people and companies. Previous winners read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of advanced thinkers in sustainability and include SAP, TelecityGroup, L’Oreal and Sony Ericsson.

Accepting the award, CloudApps CEO, Peter Grant, said: “To be recognised by the leading global publication and authority in our space is an amazing accomplishment for the team just three years after start-up. We believe the true value of sustainability is felt by those organisations who go beyond talking to really engaging their people in the business benefits of sustainability. It is a matter of great pride to have that recognised just one week before we announce yet more innovation within our product suite.”

CloudApps delivers its sustainability software on the Cloud which means it is able to roll out across an organisation, no matter where they are based and can scale up or down taking in as many varied data points as its customer needs across data sources as diverse as HR, travel, expense systems, waste disposal service providers, or even smart meters. This allows its customer the ability to realise the impact of sustainability on their business and put in place effective, cost saving, carbon cutting schemes and create positive change.

This year’s judging Greenbang panel saw the business and environmental impact that CloudApps was able to achieve for customers such as Ashridge Business School, LA Fitness, Veolia Environmental Services UK and salesforce,com.

“CloudApps proves that it’s possible to achieve impressive gains in efficiency today, rather than at some distant point in the future,” said Shirley Siluk, Managing Editor, Greenbang. “Achieving that is more important than ever as organisations try to deal with both rising energy expenses and constrained finances.”

“CloudApps offers a solution that not only reports on all sources of complex sustainability data but also drives business success across departments, geographical teams and even individual employees. It is this level of collaboration and innovation that will drive the behavioural change required for sustainable success.”

One of our fantastic partners – Global Action Plan was kind enough to bring their eco-driving simulator to the party, which served to introduce a fun competitive element to the evening (all in a good cause to raise money for christmas presents for a childrens charity!)

We really hope our guests enjoyed it as much as we did !!

– The CloudApps Team

Making the financial case for green initiatives

Hosted in association with BusinessGreen, this latest webinar demonstrates practical steps to secure support for green projects from the finance department.

For many green executives the biggest barrier to the adoption of sustainability initiatives remains the reluctance of financial directors to approve green investments where they remain uncertain about the level of returns on offer.

And yet growing numbers of executives are now overcoming this barrier and working in partnership with their finance departments to push forward green initiatives that reduce costs and drive commercial success.

This exclusive free webinar, hosted in association with sustainability software provider CloudApps, will explore the lessons learned by those green executives who have managed to secure financial backing for their projects, and provide a practical guide to talking the finance director’s language and delivering the positive results the finance department demands.

The webinar will take place at 3pm on Tuesday 29 November. To register simply fill in our short online form.

The interactive online seminar will feature three presentations from leading industry experts on how green executives can secure the support of the finance department, and will also include a question and answer session where you can put your queries to our expert panel.

Translating sustainability into the finance director’s language - Emma Farthing, WSP Environment and Energy

This first presentation will explore why the relationship between sustainability executives and finance departments is so crucial to the success of green initiatives. It will also offer detailed tips on how to ensure this relationship proves fruitful, including advice on how to present green project proposals for finance directors.

Translating good intentions into measured results - Peter Grant, CloudApps

Gaining financial approval for a green project is just the first part of the process – you also need to be able to update the finance department frequently on progress and demonstrate that you are delivering the promised results. This presentation will offer practical steps on how to initiate change and get started on green projects at the same time as accurately tracking their performance and providing regular updates to senior execs.

Delivering ROI from sustainability projects – Paul Hinds, Natural England

This detailed case study will look at how one business took positive steps to secure financial support for green initiatives, with a particular focus on what the financial director is looking for from sustainability projects.

The 2°C Challenge Communiqué calls on governments to break the deadlock in the international negotiations and take the necessary action at a national level to ensure a successful transition to green growth and a climate resilient economy.

Starting with the negotiations in Bali in 2007, previous Communiqués quickly gained wide business and NGO support, with 950 companies endorsing its message of support for an “ambitious, robust and equitable global deal on climate change” before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009. This year, business leaders emphasise that the window of opportunity to stabilise warming to 2°C “has almost closed”.

The Communiqué notes that, if they fail to act, governments “risk permanent damage to their credibility”, but the right action would “secure a low carbon-emission economy that is more resilient, more efficient and less vulnerable to global shock”. Without an international deal, “business will have insufficient clarity or certainty of action to invest to its full potential”.

Who produced The Communiqué?

The Communiqué has been written and delivered by business leaders from a range of sectors including energy, finance, mining, retail, and manufacturing, via the newly established Corporate Leaders Network for Climate Action (CLN). The CLN includes groups from Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the US.

Value driven individuals are like gold. Get them motivated and they will deliver.

One approach is to use technology as an enabler or driver of ideas’ sharing and behaviour change. CloudApps has developed an interesting solution for HRDs in organisations which are targeting CO2 reductions. Called SuMo (it stands for Sustainability Momentum), it is a desktop dashboard that provides each employee with all the tools to record, track and share their personal contributions to the company’s carbon footprint, and the means to propose new ideas for sustainability initiatives.

HRDs can set SuMo to compare individuals’ CO2 information to colleagues in their workgroup, in other departments and regions, or any other classification they wish in order to create some healthy competition within the organisation. The SuMo ideas tab is a key feature. Once an idea is posted, employees can vote on it and it will be ranked on a leaderboard. This allows HRDs and others to understand staff motivations, chart ideas and potentially fast-track these into development.

Already SuMo has attracted the interest of some large companies. It is being actively trialled by a major US retailer, a global construction company, one of the leading global waste management operators and a top two UK retailer. Ashridge Business School has introduced SuMo into the classroom as a teaching tool.

“Employee engagement is all too often ‘management by poster slogan’,” says Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps. “What SuMo does is link every worker’s daily efforts to the strategic sustainability of the business in a very measurable way,” “With SuMo, each employee has personalised and verifiable targets to achieve and its effect is to increase employee engagement naturally over time as work habits change. HRDs and employees alike can now share increased visibility directly from the frontline of the business by using SuMo’s real-time feedback.

He adds, “We now have the ability to collaboratively change actual working habits, not just ‘hearts and minds’ and deliver on the corporate sustainability which many have promised, but few to date have achieved.”

There is scope too for the SuMo dashboard to play a role in rewarding green bonuses to high performing staff, structure that is gaining ground as companies turn their back on the traditional approach of linking bonuses to profits. For example, TNT has rolled out a sustainability-linked scheme, so too has DSM in The Netherlands. While all 600 executives at AzkoNobel, another Dutch company, will only receive bonuses based on how much they have contributed towards reducing injuries among staff and cutting carbon, energy, water and waste. Indeed, deployed in setting green bonuses, SuMo gives HRDs some extra muscle that its acronym implies.

Annual environmental reporting, especially the Global Reporting Initiative, has been a main driver for electronic environmental systems. However, the real need is for day-to-day analytical systems designed to produce improved environmental performance from a seemingly unmanageable mass of data.

Most organisations have data warehouse and business intelligence systems that can manage the underlying data. But they need costly customisation to take account of the specific needs of environmental modelling and analysis, such as conversions of meter readings into carbon dioxide equivalent.

They also need to include external data, such as the carbon efficiency of different sources of energy and transportation or carbon footprints of other companies in the supply chain. For this reason, most organisations use specialist software or cloud computing.

… [article continues]

A big issue is choosing the right data to gather. Salesforce.com collects 1,300 types of data from 100 sites around the world. It uses the CloudApps service, one of several sustainability services on its Force.com cloud platform.

“Much of the sustainability conversation measures the wrong thing with great precision,” warns Peter Coffee, Salesforce.com’s head of platform research. “Don’t try to do the wrong thing better, do the better thing, by picking metrics that don’t obscure the most important opportunities.”

… [article continues]

Similarly, Salesforce.com uses CloudApps’ Sustainability Momentum (SuMo) app to report to managers. “It turns what would otherwise be an eye-glazing business process into something with a little bit of spice and competition,” says Mr Coffee. “It is proving to be tremendously effective.”

Peter Grant, chief executive of CloudApps, says the idea is to make environmental performance im­provement easy and fun by engaging some of the natural impulses of humans to experiment, compare results and compete.

… [article continues]

The biggest difficulty, concludes Mr Coffee, is “getting a corporate culture of looking at the numbers and sharing them in a way that prompts action”.

The complete article can be found here

Rising input prices are damaging the bottom line of more companies – and the biggest culprit is usually energy costs.

A decade or more ago, energy prices would, generally, have been a top line concern only for CFOs in high-use manufacturing industries such as glass making or aluminium smelting. Now even CFOs of service companies are becoming concerned.

A major retail and financial services company with 13,000 employees recently called in consultants to review its electricity use. The study revealed the company had 75,000 pieces of computer and telecoms equipment at 250 locations. By carrying out an energy saving programme, the company was able to lop £970,000 a year off its electricity bill. And that was with electricity costing 7.5 pence per kilowatt hour. Prices have since risen steeply.

Richard Lanyon-Hogg, IBM’s chief technology officer for energy efficiency, says that an office-based company that is on the cusp of the Carbon Reduction Commitment – using 6,000 megawatt hours a year – could cut around £92,000 a year from the electricity used by its computer and telecoms equipment, if it is paying 12 pence per kilowatt hour.

“It’s an inter-departmental challenge,” he says. “The IT uses the electricity, the estate team negotiates the electricity contract but the finance team pays the bill.”

In a climate of ever-rising prices more companies are looking for energy bill savings. British Airways cut annual costs in its offices by £850,000 through tougher negotiations with suppliers.

But the problem in many companies is that there is no joined-up management when it comes to buying and paying for energy. “The person buying the contracts needs to understand what the future demand patterns might be,” says Martin Fry, a council member of the Energy Institute.

Fry, who is a visiting professor on the energy, technology and economics master course at London’s City University, says: “In a lot of organisations, energy buyers don’t understand future demand. The energy manager can’t get access to the costs because they’re covered by the CFO and all financial information is confidential.”

Fry was one of the experts behind the International Organisation for Standardisation’s ISO 50001 standard on best practice energy management, which was issued in June. He says: “Taking a broader holistic approach is actually important in energy. Look at the energy use implications of what you’re purchasing and make your supplier aware that it’s one of the criteria that will be used – and not just the lowest price.”

The key problem for CFOs is that not only is energy becoming more expensive – and likely to remain so – energy use is becoming much more complicated with a range of new rules and regulations designed to reduce carbon use.

For example, from April 2012 the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will come into force. Simon Corley, CFO at CloudApps, a sustainability software supplier, believes it will add a further 6 percent to the energy costs of the 4,000 organisations affected by it.

“It’s another cost our larger overseas competitors don’t have to worry about,” he says. However, Corley believes the CRC could deliver benefits for British business in the medium term.

He says: “The CRC is a consistent, clear objective and public benchmark. Thanks to the CRC, UK finance executives will have a very clear idea of the cost of sustainability reporting and will begin to benefit by benchmarking on a consistent basis their energy consumption against their peers. Such regulation will eventually be the norm and we will have first mover advantage.”

You can find the whole article on CFO World here.

Posted by: Peter Grant
Thursday, September 29th, 2011

The business case for employee engagement is extremely compelling. Just taking the business travel component alone, CloudApps customers have achieved significant savings; with a typical return on investment of less than 4 months.

By aligning and engaging their employees, the results from one of CloudApps’ customers in the hi-tech industry with over 5,000 employees, who spend $22m on T&E, of which $17m is on flights and the balance on taxis and car mileage, saw the following savings:

• 7% reduction in air travel costs
• 27% reduction in taxi usage
• 15% reduction in mileage claims
• The recovery of over 27,000 hours (3,375 man days) per year that would otherwise have been lost traveling; hence increasing employee productivity

On average the results saw a reduction in annual travel expense costs of 9%.

During the same period of time a study was performed on a control group of non-participating employees, which saw anincrease to their travel expense costs by 2.1%

Find out more here: http://www.2degreesnetwork.com/working-groups/employee-customer-engagement-and-communications/resources/building-employee-engagement-business-case/

Thursday, 29 September 2011

180,000 Scottish SMEs to benefit from new Low Carbon service

LONDON – September 29th, 2011– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced its technology platform for sustainable development is now available to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Scotland, as a service offered by the Crichton Carbon Centre.

The move comes in the week the Scottish Government announced a review of its Economic Strategy, introducing the “Transition to a Low Carbon Economy” as a “Strategic Priority” for the first-time. The updated economic strategy outlines: “The requirement for industries, firms and consumers to move to low carbon processes, products and services, is both an economic and environmental imperative” adding “Scotland has a tremendous opportunity to lead the way”.

The new CloudApps and Crichton Carbon Centre Low Carbon service delivers a full-lifecycle baseline report of current resource utilisation; including energy, water and waste and the resulting carbon impact. The reports, covering goods and services, will help differentiate Scottish SMEs, giving firms North of the Border an edge when tendering for public and private contracts, which increasingly require sustainability audits as part of the bidding process.

Sustainability is becoming a key competitive advantage for businesses, allowing them to drive down operating costs through more efficient use of natural resources and improved waste management. The Low Carbon service, available only in Scotland, is the first time CloudApps’ world-class software has been offered to a sector other than large enterprises.

In a future project stage the Crichton Carbon Centre will expand the service to the full CloudApps offering, providing detailed analytics and benchmarks for smaller companies wishing to see how their performance compares with best practice.

Mike Bonaventura, CEO of Crichton Carbon Centre, said: ”It is imperative that people engage with the sustainability agenda for the promise of the low carbon economy to be realised. CloudApps uniquely supports this goal by engaging employees in the workplace, continuously improving their daily working practices. This new service provides a golden opportunity for Scottish SMEs to lead the world in sustainable business practice”.

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps, said: “The work of the Crichton Carbon Centre in mentoring sustainable business North of the Border is impressive. With world-class experts, proven best-practices and now with our market-leading CloudApps technology, there is no reason why Scotland’s SME sector could not become the most sustainable in the world.”

[ENDS]

About Crichton Carbon Centre

The Crichton Carbon Centre, founded in 2007 in response to growing concern about climate change, is a not-for-profit post-graduate teaching and research organisation based at the Crichton University Campus in Dumfries, Scotland.

The Centre provides active leadership in carbon management as the foundation for protecting the environment and supporting sustainable development, contributing to the transition to a low carbon economy. Its strong scholarship base keeps it at the forefront of current knowledge, enabling it to provide advice that is built on the most up to date information and understanding.

In partnership with Glasgow University, the Crichton Carbon Centre offers the UK’s first MSc in Applied Carbon Management, emphasizing the practical application of knowledge in its taught courses and work placements with thought leading organisations seeking to balance the economic, societal and environmental needs of the present without compromising the human rights of future generations.

Building on its academic excellence, the Crichton Carbon Centre is working on projects to tackle the challenge of climate change by encouraging and supporting behavioral changes at individual, community and business levels.

For more information, please visit http://www.carboncentre.org

Salesforce and Google: rising stars in S&P 500 Carbon Survey

The Carbon Disclosure Project on Tuesday releases the results of it’s annual survey of carbon emissions of S&P 500 companies carried out on behalf of 551 institutional investors carrying $71 trillion in assets. The survey ranks companies according to the quality of the disclosure and performance towards reducing emissions.

Cisco takes the top spot but the real story is the arrival of Google and Salesforce on to the scene. Google improved its disclosure score from 44% last year to 89% this year while Salesforce participated for the first time this year and scored an impressive 85% on disclosure quality. However, while Google scored an A- for performance against strategy Salesforce scored a middle ranking C. But both companies were amongst only seven companies out of the seventy five analysed who took the trouble to have their carbon data independently assured and this alone signals serious intent to manage sustainability in a serious way going forward.

The other company worthy of a mention in the despatches is HP who improved their disclosure score eighteen points over last year & ranked a B for performance - proof enough that sustainability management systems are alive and well. Dell, in comparison, scored 72% for disclosure and a C for performance.

At the other end of the spectrum Yahoo! scored just 36% in disclosure quality meaning that the data quality was considered too poor to rank performance. Apple again declined to disclose its carbon emissions.

For more analysis and background as well as the global IT & telco industry perspective see also:

• G-500 Survey: climate pays but tech lags. Cisco leads but Apple and Amazon won’t play ball.
• Telefonica, BT & Vodafone lead carbon survey but RIM stays back of the pack.

Following is a list of responders ranked by disclosure quality and performance. (click for better viewing)

See the full article in ZDNet here

September 21, 2011

Anthony Day & Peter Grant are two of the founders of CloudApps, a sustainability software company that allows companies to make efficiency savings and meet sustainability targets by integrating sustainability goals throughout the organisation. CloudApps aims to connect efforts by staff to be more eco-friendly with sustainability targets from the management.

Q: Can you give us some information on your early background?Peter:When I came out of the military I went into a publishing house, but quickly realised I didn’t like corporate environments and wanted to work for a smaller organisation – I wanted to be my own boss.At 24 I had my own company, which I started from scratch, and I branched out into other businesses. But I wasn’t making any money, and I had a young family, so I got into the technology sector and joined a company called Siebel as one of their early employees. The company was eventually acquired by Oracle. At the beginning I was managing director of my own territory, with a good brand behind me, but then the company got bigger, new processes were developed, and it was no longer an environment that I excel in.

I then joined salesforce.com as managing director of the UK business. I was the 10th employee, and impressed by the branding, marketing and disruptive business model. That company also became large, and I realised I still wanted to do something on my own. That’s when I became CEO of a training company, which was like doing a paid MBA – I learnt a lot.

After that I reconnected with some old colleagues, the timing was right and we decided to start up CloudApps.

Anthony: I learnt my craft in big business at Oracle, then decided some time ago – 20 years ago – that I wanted to start my own business. I started researching the possibility of finding US business software, bringing it to the UK, and becoming an official distributor. I then found out about salesforce.com and Siebel, joined Siebel six months after it launched and abandoned my hopes of being an entrepreneur. I helped build Siebel into a large organisation and learnt a huge amount about start-ups in the process.

Following Oracle’s acquisition of Siebel I joined Oracle in the acquisitions team but wasn’t happy, so went back to the idea of building a company – I met up with old colleagues, who had all gained valuable experience in the technology sector, and we all said ‘well, let’s do it for ourselves now’ and CloudApps was born.

Q: The infrastructure you provide to clients is totally hosted in the cloud. What benefits does this bring?

Peter: The cost advantage is obvious – it means that any money raised can be used for customer acquisition, hiring the best talent etc. It doesn’t need to be used to buy IT infrastructure, now or in the future, because cloud computing scales with the company as it grows. Our main competitors – who are far larger than us – have raised around US$50m in venture capitalist funding. We are funded by high net worth individuals, but we can compete with these companies in the marketplace because of the advantages the salesforce.com platform gives us.

It’s a very new model, using a cloud computing platform to drive your business. To give a comparison, take ARM, who don’t actually manufacture chips – that’s a common misconception. They design them, outsource the manufacture to China, then take royalties on every chip that’s used. Apple takes US$80 for each iPhone produced, while the manufacturer takes US$5.

Our model is not too dissimilar. Anthony saw the problem companies were facing with sustainability and instead of us building a solution, we outsource it to salesforce.com, and then we repackage it and remarket it back to our client base.

Anthony: One of the biggest advantages is the agility provided by the cloud computing platform. We are less than two years old and we’ve already done five product releases, and are about to do a sixth. In a very short space of time we’ve been able to deliver a huge amount of functionality, meaning we can compete with larger companies. We’ve never had to focus on infrastructure, and so have been able to put all our investment in individuals and building a great product.

Peter: Another advantage is authority. Getting that first customer is hard as they are scared you won’t be around in six months’ time. We’ve got a strong brand behind us, a company that has sunk hundreds of millions of pounds into their data centres, have industry-leading security credentials etc. That gives OUR customers the comfort that comes from being backed by such a large brand.

Q: How does a cloud computing platform help SMEs solve some of the common challenges of starting a business?

Anthony: Being able to get the product to a point where it’s capable enough is tough. Normally you’d need to start the company, and your first release wouldn’t be particularly capable, but that is fully addressed using a cloud computing platform – it allows you to get products to market early, which is traditionally extremely hard.

The second benefit is cost savings, and obviously money is tight when first starting a business. Not having to invest in infrastructure can help immensely as the money that has been raised can be poured into more important areas.

Thirdly, gaining credibility is a headache for all companies. You’ve got no track record. But using a platform that has a very impressive track record can mitigate some of the concerns customers have when dealing with a new company.

Peter: The commercial challenge is people, market, product – in that order. You have to find the best people because any weak link in a small company with four or five people is a huge problem.

With regard to market, it must be moving with you. In our case, the sustainability market is worth US$30bn, with US$380m spent on applications. By 2015 the sustainability market is expected to reach US$30bn, and by 2017 US$4.5bn will be spent on applications. Companies must be ahead of the market, and the scalability of cloud computing platforms can help businesses do this.

The product is very important – it must match your vision and what the market is doing and must take into account cash raised, the burn rate, etc. Managing all that is a challenge for any business. The company must be very flexible, and sell what customers want to buy, not what they think the customer wants to buy. Customers don’t want big deals during tough times because they are risk-adverse, they may want bite-size products and services – cloud computing allows products to be more efficiently targeted.

Q: Is the inherent scalability of cloud computing platforms attractive when trying to raise finance from investors?

Peter: We found it relatively straightforward to raise capital, and I think this comes back to our focus on people/market/product. Venture capitalists always look at the people running the business. As the saying goes, there are lots of good jockeys, and lots of good horses, but not enough good jockeys on good horses. The right people have to come together with the right business idea.

A growing market is very important to investors. Our market – sustainability – is very diverse. Look at what Tesco and Sainsburys do with their vouchers for schools. There’s investment in local communities, environmental compliance, Government legislation that requires businesses to report on carbon output, and then follow up with a reduction programme. Investors see a growing market.

With regard to the technology market, cloud computing is very attractive to investors because it helps protect against one of the biggest disadvantages in the market – late delivery. Investors are scared of late delivery. Cloud computing platforms allow companies to deliver products far more quickly.

Anthony: Salesforce.com has a drumbeat of releases that allows us to work quickly – you have to be agile and quick to change and to stay ahead, and these regular updates allow us to focus on our product rather than our infrastructure.

Q: It’s interesting you chose the sustainability market. We read an article recently that said consumers in the future will choose companies based on their environmental credentials rather than their product and price.

Peter: Absolutely, and companies are starting to realise this. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, which is why most of UK PLC and global businesses are working out their environmental impact – which is a momentous task.

There has definitely been a shift whereby environmental credentials are becoming more important. In the 1970s a company’s valuation was taken predominantly from profitability and revenue, which made up 90 percent of its value.

This has now flipped, and 90 percent of a company’s value is today based on its brand strength. Just consider the BP oil spill, which wiped billions off the company’s stock price. It’s about protection of brand and differentiation nowadays. People want to do the right thing, and they – particularly the younger generation – care about where their money is going and the types of businesses they deal with.

Companies have in the past been accused of making wild environmental claims in annual reports, and CSR reports, but now they are being held to account, and are being forced to measure their carbon output and take action to reduce their footprint.

Anthony: Agreed. Wild claims must be backed up and – this is new – companies are expected to make progress on these claims, to take action on carbon. There is a gap between what companies say they will do and what they are actually doing. If companies want to take successful action, they must embed it in company culture.

Peter: It’s like the old customer relationship management (CRM) market in the early 1990s. It wasn’t a global system, everything was on spreadsheets – you had a rolodex which you flipped open, and called a prospect. If they weren’t interested, you’d move onto the next one. Now it’s all automated with a 360 degree view of the customer.

The carbon market has been historically disjointed, but Cloudapps is bring it all together so you get this 360 degree view of the marketplace.

Q: Are sustainability and ‘green’ different things? When we think of sustainability we think of not only carbon reduction but business travel, reducing paper usage and an emphasis on ‘not just for profit’ practices.

Peter: When we talk about sustainability we mean a company’s environmental, social and economic impact. The environmental impact is its carbon output, greenhouse gases, reduction programmes, etc. The social impact is any charitable work, volunteer hours, gender equality, where the products are made. Economic impact refers to opportunities around sustainability i.e. using green fuels, stocking organic and Fairtrade ranges, and the diversification of the existing business to be more sustainable.

Q: So do companies see sustainability as an avenue for new opportunities?

Enjoy !

The CloudApps Team

Sep 14th & 15th, 2011 | Royal Festival Hall | London, UK

Come and join CloudApps @ Cloudforce London, the largest Cloud Computing event ever in the UK.  We will be demoing “The Sustainable Enterprise” on the Westbrook International stand in the Platinum sponsors area (stand P1) of the Cloudforce campground.  Let us show you how we are helping to create sustainable enterprises that engage with every employee.

Find out more about Cloudforce London here: https://www.salesforce.com/uk/events/details/a1x300000004DaMAAU.jsp?d=70130000000G844&internal=true&fromSearch=true

Look forward to seeing you there!

The CloudApps Team

One of the main issues driving the escalating costs is the increasing dependency of the UK economy on imported energy sources. To address this issue, the forthcoming Energy Reform Act will stimulate more UK energy being produced from local renewable sources, including nuclear energy.

However, it will be a long time before such renewable energy sources come online, which will leave UK businesses facing unpredictable energy costs for the foreseeable future. UK finance professionals will need to factor the unpredictability into their cost projections or, better still, establish processes to mitigate the impact of this unpredictability.

Finance directors need a strategy to help their organisations cope with four major energy issues that are rapidly approaching: a lack of mid-term pricing certainty, rapidly increasing energy costs, higher costs from more stringent compliance reporting, and – on the upside – renewable investment cost-saving opportunities.

1: Lack of mid-term pricing certainty

The UK’s mix of energy sources leaves UK business increasingly dependent on non-UK providers and therefore very susceptible to the whims of the global energy market. Not only is there a diminishing supply of fossil fuels, there are also increasing demands on what is left, due to the high growth in energy consumption in the BRIC countries.

This is amplified by recent political events, such as the so-called Arab Spring, and economic events, such as fluctuations in the US dollar exchange rate. Purchasing forward energy contracts when prices are volatile is risky. Such unpredictability can make FDs over-cautious and funds that might have been used for investment are set aside to insure against further rises in energy prices.

2: Increasing costs and cashflow

According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the new energy bill “has three principal objectives: tackling barriers to investment in energy efficiency; enhancing energy security; and enabling investment in low carbon energy supplies.” This is all good, but at a cost our foreign competitors do not have to suffer. There is no consideration about keeping UK industry competitive globally.

An export-led strategy could bring us out of our current economic stagnation. However, an increasingly larger chunk of operational expense will be siphoned off and so reduce our profitability as energy costs rise 9-10% per annum (well ahead of both our competitors and UK inflation at 5%). This gives a huge advantage to our overseas competitors whose governments are not forcing the cost of increased energy diversification onto their local businesses.

3: Compliance and reporting costs

In April 2012, the financial impacts of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will hit home for the first time. The purchase of CRC allowances is likely to add a further 6% to the average energy-related costs to 4,000 of the larger UK organisations, another cost our overseas competitors need not worry about.

However, there is some good news. The CRC is a consistent, clear, objective and public benchmark. Globally, there are few consistently applied sustainability reporting standards, and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a notable exception. This means that foreign companies’ green credentials often lack credibility, despite the commendable efforts of some organisations, such as Puma’s recently announced environmental profit and loss account. But UK finance executives will have a very clear idea of the cost of sustainability reporting thanks to the CRC. They will begin to benefit by benchmarking their energy consumption against their peers based on a consistent methodology.

4: Renewable energy investment

One area in which government could give more clarity to FDs is how UK companies will be supported with their long-term renewable investment strategy. While UK consumers are enjoying both government encouragement and reduced energy bills thanks to feed-in tariffs, and are busy installing photovoltaic cells on their roofs, transforming them from consumers to small-scale energy suppliers, UK businesses find themselves in limbo.

The details of the Green Deal will not be released until the second half of 2012, effectively putting many UK companies’ investment decisions on hold. But rather than sitting back and bracing yourself for the inevitable impact of rocketing energy prices on your business, there is another way: proactivity.

Our enterprise sustainability software uses social media techniques, familiar from Facebook and Twitter, to highlight areas of saving and encourage employees to become involved with the energy-saving initiatives UK business must adopt in the light of energy cost increases.

We have offered our thoughts to the government’s Green Investment Bank in an open letter to its chairman, calling for a focus on the demand side of energy sustainability. We also advocate the so-called nudge strategy of frontline persuasion, which is taking root in government policy and elsewhere. This ensures your sustainability strategies are both practical and relevant to your employees.

Forward-thinking FDs must deliver a strategy to prevent energy costs consuming increasing amounts of cashflow. Saving energy and changing employee behaviour delivers benefits in the short and, even more valuably, the longer term. The good news is that managing rising energy costs could give us an opportunity to out-compete our gas-guzzling competitors if we have the right processes and software to drive change.

By Simon Corley, CloudApps CFO (full article as published in Financial Director can be found here)

LONDON – Aug 12th, 2011– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced the latest addition to its growing foundation client list; UK and Africa-based charity Send a Cow. The charity, whose patrons include the Prince of Wales, will monitor and report its own carbon emissions and that of its African operations using CloudApps Sustainability Suite.

Send a Cow’s goals are to improve the livelihoods of African families, from Ethiopia to Lesotho, with practical farming training and support whilst educating UK schoolchildren on the issues of sustainable development, climate change and future food security. As well as donating livestock, its work involves training local farmers in animal wellbeing and sustainable organic farming practices. The organisation champions gender equality, conflict resolution, health, hygiene and HIV/Aids awareness, a balance that produces remarkable results.

Under the foundation programme, Send a Cow receives CloudApps Sustainability Suite licences and consulting time to allow it to benchmark key sustainability metrics in the same way as a corporate CloudApps customer. The management team has already started to track monthly operational sustainability metrics around energy efficiency, total CO2 emissions, the number and environmental impact of flights taken and even the quantity of paper printed.

CloudApps is helping Send a Cow to extend beyond these measures, to track their emissions intensity by the number of African households they work with. Tracking this key metric will enable Send a Cow to grow their operations responsibly, helping more stricken families whilst remaining as sustainable as possible themselves. The CloudApps foundation follows the 1-1-1 model. This integrated philanthropy approach will see CloudApps employees volunteer 1% of their working time, the company donate 1% of its equity into the foundation and deliver 1% of its product to not-for-profit institutions aligned to its corporate sustainability mission.

Richie Alford, Research and Development Manager at Send a Cow, said: “Recent events have shown how important it is to support African farmers who are working in harmony with the environment. Send a Cow’s work, based on the principle of communities working together with the resources they have, has made us very aware of the resources we consume in that work. Our tie-up with CloudApps provides a valuable way for us to monitor closely and easily report on our resource usage, allowing us to reassure our benefactors that we are living by our founding principles.”

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps, said: “CloudApps is dedicated to improving the sustainability of UK enterprises with world-leading technology. This mission extends to social as well as commercial enterprises. The work being undertaken by Send a Cow in pioneering practical sustainable development is ground-breaking and so really appealed to the whole team. We are honoured to be able to offer our time and knowledge for such a worthwhile effort.”

The charity Send a Cow, which provides livestock, seeds and training to poor African families, has become a new foundation client of CloudApps and will use the company’s emissions-tracking software to track the sustainability of its operations. Send a Cow, whose patrons include the Prince of Wales, is currently working near famine-stricken parts of Ethiopia and is helping farmers dig new wells and learn sustainable farming methods to protect soil and crops from drought and flash flooding.

The charity also champions gender equality, conflict resolution, health, hygiene and HIV/AIDS awareness.

Under the foundation program, Send a Cow receives CloudApps Sustainability Suite licences and consulting time to allow it to benchmark key sustainability metrics in the same way as a corporate CloudApps customer. The management team has already started to track monthly operational sustainability metrics around energy efficiency, total CO2 emissions, the number and environmental impact of flights taken and even the quantity of paper printed.

The charity will also use the software to track its emissions intensity by the number of African households it works with. The goal is to enable Send a Cow to grow operations responsibly, helping more stricken families while remaining as sustainable as possible itself.

CloudApps bases its foundation on the 1-1-1 model: employees volunteer 1 percent of their working time, the company donates 1 percent of its equity into the foundation and it delivers 1 percent of its product to not-for-profit institutions aligned to its corporate sustainability mission.

“Recent events have shown how important it is to support African farmers who are working in harmony with the environment,” said Richie Alford, research and development manager at Send a Cow. “Send a Cow’s work, based on the principle of communities working together with the resources they have, has made us very aware of the resources we consume in that work. Our tie-up with CloudApps provides a valuable way for us to monitor closely and easily report on our resource usage, allowing us to reassure our benefactors that we are living by our founding principles.”

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps, said his company’s mission of improving sustainability through technology extends to social as well as commercial enterprises.

“The work being undertaken by Send a Cow in pioneering practical sustainable development is ground-breaking and so really appealed to the whole team,” Grant said.

The complete Greenbang article can be found here