In an interview by BBC, Dan Matthews, Chief Technology Officer of IFS, a sweden-based company with $336m net revenue in the full year, answered to three questions. Bellow is the part he talks about the growing need for companies to be environmentally conscious. You can also click here to read the full article.
What's the next big tech thing in your industry?
The big challenge for us, and our colleagues in the industry, is to look at how we can help businesses account for the environmental impact of their business, just as they account for the financial impact.
This is really quite serious, because it's driven not just by consumer pressure, but we're seeing a lot of pressure now coming from investors.
You have schemes like the PRI, the Principles for Responsible Investment, which is used by a lot of investment organisations, and the big pension funds and those sorts of things. And as if this wasn't enough, then you have the regulatory stuff coming in, the cap and trade regulations.
And this really is a challenge, because all of a sudden it's no longer just the cost that matters when you do something.
When you design a product it's not just what it's going to cost to build it, it's how much CO2, how much by way of emissions, how many toxins. When you source something, it's not just which supplier is cheapest, it's which has the least imprint.
Where we're used to measuring cost all of a sudden you need to track environmental impact as well. It's a huge challenge for businesses and something that's critical is that we make software to help them address this.
