Environment Friendly Business Process

Abstract

Global warming has now become common knowledge. The longer the impact of global warming is increasingly felt. Recent years, many companies began to implement environmentally friendly business. This paper will discuss the business processes that are environmentally friendly. How does it work? and what should companies do to implement business processes that are environmentally friendly?

Introduction

There exists a global consensus on the need to reduce our collective environmental impact. Fundamental to any solution to the problem is optimization – in particular, the ability to optimize energy use – yet this has been largely ignored in the current discourse. It is well-known that our global industrial/technological infrastructure, including transportation systems, manufacturing plants, human habitat and so on, is typically operated in an ad-hoc and significantly sub-optimal fashion. A key unit of analysis for operations optimization is the business process.

Environment Friendly (Green) Business Process

In managing their operations, organisations have traditionally focused on economic imperatives in terms of time, cost, efficiency, and quality. In doing so, they have been a major contributor to environmental degradation caused by resource consumption, greenhouse emissions, and wastage. As a consequence, organisations are increasingly encouraged to improve their operations also from an ecological perspective, and thus to consider environmental sustainability as an additional management imperative. In order to lessen their impact on the natural environment, organisations must design and implement environmentally sustainable processes, which we call the challenge of Green Business Process Management (Green BPM).

Environmental friendly policies are those policies which are concerned with the environmental protection processes and further ensure that there is a logical determination of the costs of environmental degradation due to industrial activities, and internalize them in corporate accounts to the extent possible. Therefore recommended that firms should formulate and implement environmental friendly policies to enhance their competitiveness, acceptability and stability, which would subsequently result in high performance.

Accounting has an instrumental role in disclosing environmental responsibility for different entities whether industrial or commercial services, and at all levels whether micro, meso and macro. Thus, accounting became concerned with achieving new goals such as measuring and evaluating potential or actual environmental impacts of projects and organizations. These new goals are of great importance as they enable many users to take different development decisions that are economically and environmentally sound (Bala and Yusuf, 2003). The awareness of the environmental and man’s ability to cause damage started from the fifties of the 19th century. This concern had been repeatedly expressed in series of international summits and consensus right from the sixties. The starting point that comprised an organized thought proves on a large scale the celebrated public action of the club of Rome entitled “Limits to Growth” that initiated a worldwide debate of economic growth at the expense of natural environment (Shil and Iqbal, 2005). The world conference held in Stockholm on global environment in 1972 (June), where the heads of the states all over the world came together for the first time, was the pivotal event in the growth of the global environment movement. It was the first occasion on which the political, social and economic problems of the global environment were discussed at an inter-governmental forum with a view to take corrective action. It aimed to create a basis for comprehensive consideration with the United Nations of the problems of the human environment and to focus the attention of the governments and public opinion to various countries on the importance of the problem. It ultimately gave birth to special UN Agency titled “UN Environmental Programme (UNEP).

Business processes that are environmentally friendly business processes that do not damage the habitat and the environment, either directly or indirectly. To implement environmentally friendly business processes there are several things to consider, some of which are as follows:

1. Build a team that is committed to the initiative. Senior executives should be a part of this team, and need to be committed to making sure that the staff under their employ know and understand the rationale and benefits of the environmental drive. Included in the team should also be members of the compliance or corporate governance unit, legal, IT and affected user departments. If an environmental champion has been appointed, they need to be a key figure in this team.
2. Make sure that a robust framework of policies and procedures is in place which supports the drive. These corporate instruments should send a clear message of commitment, so that "green" becomes embedded in the ethos or culture of the organization. The policy framework is essential if staff members, clients and suppliers are to be comfortable about conducting business electronically.
3. Start with reducing the amount of paper printed. There are many ways to achieve this, but it all starts with the right attitude. Documents should be printed on both sides of the page, and without the "banner" pages that sometimes print, showing who printed the document. The wasted paper which is often left in bins next to the printers should be reused for draft printing. It may be useful to have separate printers for drafts and for final versions, so that users won't print onto the back of someone else's draft.
4. If documents start their lives in digital format, they should stay that way. A classic example of this is the all-pervasive e-mail. Employees should be penalised for printing and storing e-mails in hard copy. They originate in electronic format, are best suited for distribution in that format, and should be stored in the systems that created them, not in a physical file cabinet.
5. Implement scanning into processes which will deliver clear benefits. Chose processes carefully so that quick wins are derived, and which improve productivity, lower cost and improve service delivery at the same time. It must be highlighted that scanning alone does not improve the environment, as the source documents are still in paper format. The source documents need to be formally destroyed and recycled for benefits to accrue. Before destroying originals, ensure that rigidly developed and applied policies and procedures are approved by the legal team. Other than recycling, scanning does play an important role in that it gets staff used to conducting business digitally, and may allow staff to telecommute.
6. Find a relatively risk-free internal process, and go digital from start to finish. Once staff members (and the organisation) are comfortable with handling digital documents instead of trusty old paper, find a process which can be completely digital. This will normally be an internal process such as applying for leave, or claiming expenses. Implement e-forms processes, and make it impossible for staff to revert to printing and signing the forms. Many organisations already have e-forms technology as part of their corporate platforms, so the cost of implementation could be slight.
7. Implement digital signatures. Many complex processes, or those which involve multiple parties, may require signatures of some kind. Note that the regulatory environment surrounding digital signatures needs to be thoroughly understood first. The legal team and all participants involved in the process must agree to the use of digital signatures. Involve major suppliers and customers, and identify where digital signatures can be used. Signing of contracts, and agendas or minutes of meetings may prove to be ideal opportunities to use this technology.
8. Implement e-forms technology where possible. Steps 6 and 7 above should have provided a clear indication of how a process can be implemented digitally without ever producing a paper document. Take a process approach, and find a process that will benefit all concerned by making it easier to populate forms via the internet. It is unlikely that all customers or suppliers will be willing to move to a purely digital world, but a large percentage is likely to embrace the new processes.
9. Start distributing output documents electronically. Reduce the volume of paper printouts by offering customers the option of receiving electronic invoices and statements. Once again, involve the legal team to ensure that this meets any regulatory requirements, and then encourage recipients of the output to receive electronic information. Look for opportunities to reduce any internal printouts, by saving the output directly to the document management systems.
10. Monitor, track, evaluate and market the benefits. If the organisation is deriving benefits, and no-one knows about it, it will have little value. Look for methods of monitoring the effectiveness of the changed processes, and report these benefits to the compliance and environmental officers. Apply the principles and technology to new processes, and roll out across the organization.

After knowing the business processes that are environmentally friendly, and how to apply, the company is expected to implement it properly, so that the effects of global warming can be reduced or even avoided.

References:

• Ghose, Aditya, 2009, Green Business Process Management: A Research Agenda, Published by Australasian Journal of Information Systems
• Seidel, Stefan, Recker, Jan C., & vom Brocke, 2012, Green Business Process Management, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, ISBN 9783642274879
• Ita Asuquo, Akabom, 2012, Environmental Friendly Policies, Published by American International Journal of Contemporary Research 
• Mullon, Paul, 2009, 10 Steps To More Environmentally Friendly Business Processes, Published by EzineArticels