One third of A/NZ companies have no sustainability strategy: Datacom

One third of organisations across A/NZ had no sustainability strategy, revealing that it was adhoc in nature or that the IT department is not involved in ESG efforts. 

This is according to Datacom’s fourth annual cloud report, which revealed that only a third of A/NZ organisations have a strategy focused on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG).

However, their efforts are often unplanned and with only 39 per cent saying the IT department was proactively involved in sustainability decisions or activities. 

The report also found only 16 per cent of organisations had a widespread measure of ESG efforts with SMART goals or require suppliers to adhere to the same ESG standards.

This underscores a plethora of untapped opportunities for the channel ecosystem to use data, insights and the right structure to move the needle on A/NZ’s sustainability scales. 

Datacom has been invested in driving its circularity services in the market and is currently one of 100 HP partners globally to achieve the Amplify Impact Catalyst five-star status. This is the highest level of recognition bestowed on a partner by HP. 

On the road achieving this status, Datacom had 38 per cent of employees certified on sustainability basics training and fundamentals; 10 per cent of employees completed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) training; implemented and completed the Business Carbon Footprint and Action Plan; proven successful customer case studies and volunteer events centered on HP’s sustainability initiatives. 

Datacom Australia director of the product solutions group Ross Salisbury said pointed out the alignment between the HP Amplify program and Datacom’s sustainability goals in managing utilisation, customer hardware fleets and achieving the best return for the customer’s hardware investments.

“It became a natural progression for us to bring HP onto that journey with us,” Salisbury said. 

“Trash is only one component of sustainability, there’s a lot of other parts to it and we’re looking at where we can do this in partnership with HP.”

Salisbury said there are strong measures in place to improve the sustainable footprint for clients covering stages such as: discover; acquire; provision; manage and retire — the complete circular picture.

“HP has a promise to market and clients on the outcome of an improved sustainable utilisation footprint and we need to achieve certain deliverables in each of those stages,” Salisbury said. 

“The process is ethical with management around waste, utilisation, deployment and provisioning. As a team, the drive is focused on how we do this pragmatically to improve a business’ environmental impact. 

“There’s a strong desire to achieve net zero, sustainable goals and to meet objectives in the business.”

Datacom’s research indicated that 28 percent of businesses had over-provisioned in Australia post-covid, marking this as an opportunity to work through the best scenario to extend the life of those devices and use data insights to help track where those devices are located, whether in an office or an employee’s home.

Developing this type of asset tracking and providing these data insights, presented a strong area of investment for Datacom, Salisbury said. 

“We’re using the data insights to help clients make some pragmatic decisions around what to do and see where changes can be made. We’re heavily investing around that and that’s where we’re on the front foot in partnering with HP.”

Evolving the HP Amplify program

HP head of channels for the Greater Asia region Gary Hang added the vendor intentionally designed its Amplify program to help partners drive opportunities and additional growth in the era of the hybrid workforce. 

In November, HP released Amplify for All, integrating all HP solutions and services including Poly, Teradici and HyperX into the program. It also extended the program to include a distribution track.

As an example, if a partner is a traditional personal systems partner, with Amplify for all, they can branch into new growth areas like hybrid, Poly, HyperX and services, Hang explained. 

“The channel ecosystem is constantly evolving. We need to have the flexibility to operate with different types of partners in different markets, it is no longer one size fits all,” Hang said.

“With Amplify for All, we’re helping our partners build new capabilities.” 

In creating the program, Hang acknowledged one of the biggest challenges in the past was its very performance-based focus.

“When we developed the Amplify program, we actually took into account what partners and customers are looking for,” he said. 

“They want a vendor that is able to drive business outcomes to solve a problem. When we design specialisations, we look at the macro trends: what is happening around security, hybrid environment and the need to have as-a-service offerings.”

In the past two years Hang said it had evolved its Amplify Impact program, turning it into a core pillar of the overall program, which was previously separated. 

“We will continue to make sure that sustainability is a key pillar of our Amplify program,” he said. 

“We also included a sustainability initiative as part of a joint business plan with our partners. Account managers plan out the initiative with the partner and they’ll get allocated MDF.

“We don’t just throw a program out there, we actually sit down with a partner, identify and align the initiative and co-invest.”