“The green wave is here, and companies that are prepared will profit the most. Just as the Internet changed the way people work and communicate, environmental sustainability will become a core strategy affecting the daily operations of most businesses. (Jones Lang LaSalle)
As a result IWMS vendors quickly (or not) adapt their marketing strategy to ride this green wave by addressing their sustainable attributions to the workplace management domain.
In the IWMS trends of May 2009 I mentioned that: “IWMS vendors who haven’t yet created their own marketing perspective on sustainability will do so this year. Planon (Green Workplace Economics http://www.planonsoftware.com/gwe ) and Tririga (TREES, http://trees.tririga.com) have already done this, the rest will definitively follow. “
As of last week Business Integration Group, Inc. lived up to my prediction as they launched their creative green marketing strategy referred to as: GreenCenter (http://bigcenter.com/green).
According to their website:
The Green Center dynamic functionality enables clients to proactively manage the sustainability performance of their real estate portfolios. Organizations that desire to reduce their carbon footprint and optimize energy efficiency will benefit from our easy to use solution that provides strategic insight for informed sustainable decisions. Clients can choose to leverage the full power of our IWMS offering to realize measurable reductions in cost and positively contribute to the environment.
So why all this effort?
Sustainability is potentially big business for every IWMS vendor whether they have already launched their marketing strategy or not. TREES, Green Workplace Economics and GreenCenter are used to stand out of competition while demonstrating Thought Leadership. However at the end of the day IWMS vendors need to live up to their promise.
Tririga has done a great job converting marketing promise to product realization and was therefore named Sustainability Leader by AMR Research. Other vendors might need to transform their entire market approach to the new reality that sustainability in IWMS is not a hype.
Customers have embraced sustainability and increasingly realize that those companies who are proactively addressing sustainability on a strategic, portfolio level will not only reduce their organization’s environmental footprint, but also will gain competitive advantage through reduced operating costs and an enhanced corporate image”. (Jones Lang LaSalle)
The next couple of months will prove to be critical for our industry regarding sustainability. Vendors will try to demonstrate their adaptation capabilities to ensure their piece of the IWMS cake.
I am already looking forward to the next sustainable marketing strategy launch.
Who do you think is next?
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Steven, interesting subject!
Buildings produce more than 35% of ww CO2 emission and commuting between buildings almost 22%. So the opportunity is clear. At a recent CRE/FM congres it was predicted that in 5 years CRE/FM managers might become Corporate Sustainability Managers.
Adapting Sustainability into IWMS is much more than ‘just’ energy consumption analyses and caculation of CO2 emissions or the implementation of LEED classifications to allow cross portfolio analyses.
It’s also about sustainable maintenance, smart workplace concepts, green suppliers, sustainable services (like catering and cleaning), employees awareness, waste disposal, travel policys and much more…
From that perspective we consider Sustainability as a ‘horizontal’ on top of all IWMS functional domains. Not a separate silo, but supporting sustainability AND cost reduction from an integral perspective.
This will definitely make the difference between marketing messages and delivery of usable, value adding best-practices and KPI’s.
Jos Knops, Planon