Make your business Greener through IT

With the impetus on industries to adopt a ‘greener’ approach to their business techniques, IT companies like ourselves are always on the lookout for new, innovative ways to bring greener solutions and approaches to our client’s locations.

This is even more relevant in the automotive industry with a discerning eye currently on items like fuel consumption and emissions data within collective products.

While we can’t help with those things specifically, we do have a few tricks that some enterprises overlook to help make your business procedures that little bit greener:

Think about Energy Efficient Equipment.

When looking into buying choices, or discussing with a company like ours, think about the total lifecycle cost of your acquisitions. Marginally cheaper items to buy initially, might cost more in the long run due to greater energy costs.

Use ‘Power Management’.

Most computers have power management features that are more than likely turned off as standard. These should be turned on! By using simple actions like these, your business will get immediate savings on energy. No brainer if you ask us. An example is Screensavers. Did you know that they use at least, if not more power than your PC during normal use? In its place, set your monitors to go into standby mode when not in use. There are many more so look into them.

Turn it off where you can.

Many computers are frequently left on overnight for no reason, meaning they are continually using energy for over around 150+ hours a week, on top of your normal working periods. Turn these machines off and you could save roughly £40 to £80 on energy costs per year, per PC!

Upgrade before Replace.

The majority if the energy your computers will ever use is rooted in by their manufacture. When buying, look at options with potential upgrade possibilities such as spare RAM or hard drive slots for use in the future. Using these advancements will prolong your devices life beyond it’s thought-of years.

E-Documents.

Thought of as the first step to ‘going-paperless’ – using E-Documents to reduce staff printing resources is a great cost saver. For example, holiday request forms are printed hundreds of times a year in many offices, only to be discarded by HR once logged. A one-off investment (or even a free online tool) could return large savings on office stationary. The same could also be easily applied to other forms, and even customer facing services.

Think Digital.

When it comes to commercial processes, progressing from ‘physical’ procedures to ‘digital’ where possible is a great option. Investigate the main environmental impacts of your business methods and explore how prospective online approaches could be used to make them leaner and greener.

Tags: E-Documents, Energy Efficient, Green, IT, Power Management