Why do a Green IT Assessment?

You may be wondering why we encourage organizations to complete a Green IT Assessment before implementing any changes in your organization.  I'll share the rationale here and explain the benefits of completing a Green IT Assessment as the first step after setting out a project charter.

There are five main reasons - an assessment will: (1) identify information sources and gaps, (2) identify performance metrics, (3) set a baseline for reporting results and (4) set expectations and quantify the importance to your business.

1.  Identifying Information Sources and Gaps

You are probably used to getting the "give us a business case" line from management.  And if you're not, you are probably the one asking for the cost-benefit analysis.  One of the first steps before beginning a business case is to identify the information you have and the information you might be missing.  In some cases, you might need to do some research and work with other departments or landlords to get information.  Specifically, you will need the following information.

• Inventory of all IT equipment including workstations, monitors, printers, multi-function devices, photocopiers including the models and age if possible.
• Inventory of server room equipment (if applicable) including servers, backup devices, UPSs, air conditioning units including models if possible.
• Organisational information including number of employees or FTEs, number of sites, and total energy consumption in kWh (or MWh)
• Inventory of paper consumption including total paper purchases, maintenance costs of printers, toner purchases, etc.

If you are missing any of this information, you will need to make educated guesses and build the assumptions into the assessment.

Determining the availability of information will also help to set the scope for your Green IT projects.  For example, if you have out-sourced parts of your business and the information is not available, you may not be able to include those business areas in your assessment.  You may need to call on your partners to do an assessment.

2.  Identifying Metrics

Identifying the data points you have available will also allow you to determine which performance metrics you can calculate and which will be the most meaningful to your organization. For example, you can choose to select IT Energy Consumption per Employee as a key performance to measure the amount IT energy required to support each staff member.  However, if your organization has a lot of field personnel or volunteers who are not counted in the total number of employees, you may choopse IT Energy Consumption per Workstation as the key performance metric.  By identifying the metrics that are meaningful to your business based on the availability of information, you will be able to present the business case in the language that will make sense to management.

3. Setting a Baseline and Reporting Results

As with any project involving change and where the business case is built of costs savings, energy savings or footprint reduction, it is critical to know where you started in order to show improvements.  The baseline generated by the assessment will give you the starting point for measuring the potential impacts of implementing Green IT practises - the key ingredient for you business case.  In addition, the baseline gives you an opportunity to show the results of improvements made both intentionally to reduce environmental impact and those for which it is an unintended consequence.  We recommend completing an assessment once per year as part of an annually reporting cycle.

4.  Setting Expectations and Quantifying Importance

By conducting a Green IT Assessment you can determine how important the overall impact of IT is to your business.  Experts estimate that IT energy consumption can represent between 10% and 30% of the overall energy consumption.  If this is the case for you, you likely have a significant opportunity to reduce energy costs through implementing Green IT practises. 

Understanding the contribution that IT makes to the overall footprint of the organization is important when communicating with management about the relative importance of implementing Green IT practises and setting expectations for achievable results.

Depending on the total energy consumption, you may or may not have a business case on energy savings for implementing Green IT practises and you may need to look at other benefits such as decreased support costs or increased control of assets.

Getting Started

If you are ready to get started with a Green IT Assessment or interested in learning more, check out the Green IT Guide which takes you through the steps of conducting an assessment for your organization.  You may also want to check out the Green IT Guide and Toolkit which provides you with Excel workbooks to capture the data and creates performance metrics for you.  We also offer phone and email assistance with self-studies as well as full service assessments if you don't have the internal resources to complete the assessment.  Contact us for more information.