Eighty percent of digital workplace (DW) leaders will integrate DW tools with environmental, social and governance (ESG) management and reporting tools by 2027 – up from less than 5% today, says Gartner.
“Environmental sustainability is a growing priority for CEOs and senior business executives, despite tightening economic conditions,” says Stuart Downes, VP analyst at Gartner. “Today, few DW tools offer data on sustainability and those that do usually focus on device power consumption which in the DW is only about 15% of emissions.”
Over the course of the next several years, regulatory requirements for ESG reporting will take effect for enterprises in the EU and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
“ESG leaders will expect IT to provide digital solutions that improve business sustainability as well as enhanced reporting from IT to meet regulatory requirements, which must be normalised and centralised into ESG management and reporting software,” says Downes.
Decision support and analytics capabilities help to identify opportunities for improvements that advance ESG capabilities including environmental considerations such as carbon emissions.
“The number of devices and peripherals per employee will come into focus as organisations seek to optimise carbon emissions,” says Downes. “Organisations should work with tool vendors by prioritising new capabilities to measure and report the sustainability data that ESG leaders require.”
To optimise carbon emissions, DW infrastructure tool vendors should add new environmental sustainability reporting capabilities to their offerings including unified endpoint management (UEM) tools, desktop as a service (DaaS) tools and digital employee experience (DEX) management tools, and digital platform conductors.
Focusing on environmental sustainability capabilities will help meet energy regulation requirements and reduce costs as device life spans are extended.