Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Green ERP: SaaS to reduce your carbon footprint

When I was first looking at the Allbase Suite, one aspect that I kept coming back to was the potential paperlessness of it.  I maintain that reducing paper usage is a great way for a business to be both greener and more productive.

It wasn't until I was introduced to Allbase Suite To-Go (a solution for using the system offline, which synchronizes with the Allbase Suite) that I started thinking about the potential energy savings of working remotely.  Not every company can offer telecommuting, but those who can will see major savings in time, money, and impact on the environment.

Allowing employees to work from home can be a great incentive for employees.  It won't hurt your business either!  Studies have shown that employees working from home tend to put in longer, more productive hours than they would in the office.  This can probably be attributed to the significantly reduced commute time as well as the need to justify the reward of comfort.

Now comes the green aspect – no drive time means no gasoline used and no CO2 emissions.  Perfect!  I hate to be all buzz-words about it, but it's seriously a win-win-win situation. The environment gets a little less polluted, the employee gets to save gas money and work from the comfort of their home, and the employer gets all of the productivity of an office-bound employee.  That last point only really comes to the full fruition if the company uses a SaaS program to manage their business.

With SaaS, all you need is an internet connection and you have the entire company at your fingertips.  Just add a VOIP phone to the mix and the employee can even answer business calls as if they were in the office.

Have green business ideas that you'd like to share?  Please let us know!

Del.icio.us   Digg   Facebook   Reddit   StumbleUpon   Email this

---