Why does your business need Sustainability Transformation?
Sustainability Transformation (SX) means transforming your business to bring about positive changes in the environment, society, and economy. Sustainability is no longer seen as a “nice-to-have” social contribution, but as a strategically important management priority. It’s imperative that sustainability goals and environmental initiatives are built-in to every business’ mid- to long-term growth plans.
Leaders should prioritize sustainability in their organizations for several reasons. One is that society expects this of them. Two, there are many government policies, guidelines, and procedures that have been created to reach global sustainability goals. And third, the next generation (Gen X and Millennials), are making their purchasing decisions based on companies’ commitment to a cleaner, healthier planet. To participate in the sustainability movement, businesses need to be proactive in sharing what they are doing now to reduce their carbon footprint, as well as what their plans are for the future, such as a goal to reach carbon neutrality. Investing in sustainability has the added benefits of improving product and service value, which increases brand awareness amongst consumers. As a result, consumers have a higher level of trust and are more willing to purchase from and promote that brand.
Four factors of sustainability transformation
For sustainability transformation to make a lasting impact within an organization, it has to be fully supported by its leaders. Leadership must model the behavior that they want to see within their organization by building it into the company’s culture, purpose, and mission. For example, Fujitsu’s leadership team supports employee engagement in its Green Action Team, an employee inclusion network that hosts webinars and events to promote sustainability within the business and surrounding communities. It also has a defined Responsible Business Committee with an Environmental Pillar dedicated to reporting progress towards its medium- and long-term sustainability plans.
Another key factor is to foster empathy with customers by choosing sustainability initiatives that resonate with them. In 2022, the Fujitsu Green Action Team partnered with Texas Trees Foundation to plant trees at a local school in Dallas. Volunteers worked with the children and staff members to mulch, plant, and name the trees, which created a sense of community. As one of the volunteers at that event, I often think about those trees and how they’re making a positive difference in those children’s lives.
The third factor is integrating a sustainability mindset directly into the fabric of the organization. Everything needs to lead back to a clearly defined goal or Key Performance Indicator (KPI). Businesses can do this in a variety of ways. One idea is to build it into employee performance evaluations, giving them something to work towards throughout the year. An example of an attainable “green” goal might be to reduce the amount of printer paper or ink that’s consumed in the office, or to streamline data sharing and collaboration practices to reduce digital waste. Goal setting also works for departments and business units if individual goals are too narrow or hard to measure. For instance, Fujitsu’s ultimate sustainability goal is to be carbon neutral by 2030.To achieve this, a smaller number of goals need to be met at all levels of the organization.
Finally, Fujitsu believes that Sustainability Transformation is dependent on Digital Transformation (DX). Digital Transformation streamlines the business and creates a technological approach that can be used to improve processes, reduce digital and physical waste, and inspire innovative solutions. For example, the data that we get from Digital Transformation can be used to create more sustainable practices and make our operations more sustainable overall.
How can Fujitsu help with sustainability transformation?
Fujitsu was built with sustainability at its center. Since 1935, we’ve had a sustainable vision and we recently celebrated the publication of our 11th Fujitsu Technology and Service Vision (FT&SV), “Driving Sustainability Transformation through Digital Innovation.” The full report includes technology megatrends like automation, experience, innovation, resilience, and trust, which affect every industry, not just the ones we participate in.
Our products and services are built with sustainable networking in mind, such as our 1FINITY™ Ultra Optical System. The T900 and T950 transponders are liquid cooled, which reduces their overall emissions by 60% (power consumption, noise pollution, etc.). Also, the fans can be switched out while the system is live without dropping traffic, providing ease of use and peace of mind for operators. On the services side, our Fujitsu Network Modernization solutions can help operators replace equipment that is old or aging with new, modern equipment – without dropping traffic. The old equipment is recycled or refurbished for use in other networks, and the new equipment is typically greener than its predecessor.
Finally, there’s Fujitsu’s participation in the O-RAN Alliance and deep commitment to developing Open RAN networking solutions. Giving network operators the ability to choose the most efficient products in each part of their wireless network helps them meet their net-zero targets more quickly. We can also help them move into a cloud-based network, so they use less space and power overall.
All of these featured solutions contribute to a more sustainable ecosystem that can be deployed in a variety of networks.
Five key dimensions of digital-led sustainability
Automation and augmentation are critical to Sustainability Transformation. In order for us to make a real difference in how we are operating, as well as creating services and products that have value for our environment and our customers, we need to make sure that we’re making use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation.
Experience transformation combines physical and digital aspects of reality, which can be used in digital-led sustainability. If you’ve tried Google Lens, you are actually looking at reality through the lens of digital. On our manufacturing floor, we have Virtual Reality (VR) lenses that our manufacturing staff wear to help them find what they need quickly or to show them where certain components are and where they go in the system. This reduces the amount of time needed for them to put complex equipment together.
Another innovation for a more sustainable environment is High Performance Computing (HPC), which also uses AI to solve systemic problems within operations, software, and hardware. One way that we do that is to use our fiber characterization service, which looks at the fiber to tell you whether you have a problem and can pinpoint where that problem is within a certain number of miles. That’s extremely helpful during weather-related events, like wildfires, floods, and heavy snow. Knowing exactly where that problem lies can help us get live traffic back up quicker and that can help first responders get to people faster.
We have climate change events that are happening every single day. They can be very life threatening. And in order for us to create a more resilient system, we need to create processes that will tell us whenever hardware or software is going down, so we can get there quicker, we can get it up and running, and we can make sure that people aren’t losing traffic. That way they can still continue to communicate, even during an emergency.
Finally, trust is a really important topic right now within AI. There are people that don’t trust AI. There are other people that are really excited about AI. And both people are right. AI can be both cool and scary. What we do at Fujitsu is we want to make a trusted society where people can really lean into AI to see it as a benefit and as an augmentation of the great work that we’re doing today. And that means that we need to create a cyber secure way to do that. Thankfully, O-RAN technologies have multiple security advantages.
