Firms can cut costs and help the planet without sacking people

BT IRELAND's Chris Clark has put sustainability firmly at the top of his agenda.

When the chief executive of a major telecoms firm speaks you expect to hear about minutes sold, network traffic, bandwidth and so on - what you don't expect is a thoughtful discussion on sustainability and its relevance to modern businesses and economies. But that's what you get from BT Ireland chief executive, Chris Clark.

"I'm a great believer that sustainable growth is key for the future and that if organisations want to grow sustainably they have to innovate," he explains. "People tend to think of innovation as research and development, but it's much wider than that - it's about revisiting business models and looking at the way we run our businesses and our lives. Ireland and Irish companies need to innovate for sustainable growth if we are going to prosper in the future."

Clark believes there are three strands to what he calls the BT innovation and sustainability agenda.

"The first of these is how BT can become a more sustainable organisation," he says. "BT is one of the world's largest consumers of energy, so any savings we can make in this area not only have a huge impact on the environment but also on our profitability. As a consequence, we put a huge amount of effort into managing our consumption of energy. We also work with our suppliers to help them become more energy efficient. We have a policy of only dealing with suppliers that meet certain standards in relation to the environment and sustainability."

The second strand covers what individual BT employees like himself do in relation to the environment. "BT is a significant employer both globally and locally," he points out. "We are working on how we can do things more efficiently as individuals in order to be more sustainable. The third area of the agenda is the wider economy. It is important that economies have good sustainable growth and that investment is balanced to benefit the wider community as well as business and so on."

Clark believes that this sustainable philosophy should guide companies and organisations as they seek to reduce costs in response to the current economic downturn. "When companies look at slashing costs, they tend to look at the supposedly easy areas like marketing, their people and the corporate social responsibility budgets," says Clark.

"But these are the most dangerous areas to cut in the long term. What companies need is sustainable cost transformation, not short-term solutions. Cutting back on these areas might well cut costs for a while but may also reduce resources in unforeseen, unsustainable and damaging ways in the long term."

Turning to specifics, he suggests firms should look to their own efficiencies before taking out costs in such areas.

"Information and communications technology can enable businesses to radically improve their operational efficiencies," he contends. "This is most understandable at the level of using the internet as a sales channel. This cannot simply be an additional sales channel but must be accompanied by a transformation that involves using the technology to fundamentally reengineer the business."

He gives an interesting recent example of this. "I'd like to take credit for this but it was actually a Bank of Ireland business adviser who came up with it. During the bank's recent Enterprise Week, he was talking to a client with a shoe shop in the west of Ireland. The shop had a stock problem - too many shoes tying up working capital and taking up space. The Bank of Ireland adviser suggested putting them up for sale on the internet through eBay. The shop cleared the stock in 48 hours and got a welcome financial boost as well. This is a simple view of how simple technology can work to transform a business."

Another area he points to is travel. "In today's environment, just about every company, including BT, is looking to cut back and control business travel. This has benefits both in terms of reducing the organisation's carbon footprint and in reducing costs. We have seen a 40 per cent increase in video- and audio-conferencing services in the past year alone as a result of this. And these services have become a lot better in terms of quality, and a lot cheaper and easier to use over the past few years."

Technological advances such as these bring him to his next example of how IT can be used to help achieve business transformation - this is the relatively new phenomenon of homesourcing. This is more than simply people working from home, it is using the technology to create a virtual workplace environment across dozens or even hundreds of staff members' homes at a relatively low cost.

"Homesourcing is a particularly exciting phenomenon," says Clark. "Previously, this would have been thought of as being quite futuristic. You can now have virtual call centres with the agents working from the comfort of their homes. This suits lots of industries who have been moving to shared services model for their back end services.

"It really is a classic win-win-win situation. The staff get to work from home with flexible hours that suit their home and family circumstances; the employer gets improved efficiencies and lower costs, and there is a huge benefit as a result of staff not travelling to and from work and so on."

The efficiencies for the employer arise from the flexibilities offered and the enhanced working environment. "If you look at most call centres, the peaks tend to be in the immediately before and after normal working hours," he notes. "Accommodating these peaks using traditional rosters would be nearly impossible. Also, staff working from home without the hassle of commuting and in a comfortable environment can definitely be more efficient and productive than those who have to travel in and out to work and so on."

He sees homesourcing as offering benefits not just to individual companies but to the economy as a whole. "Ireland is home to a lot of call centre operations and this trend could allow the country to take a leadership role for future international call centre investments here. It addresses costs in a truly sustainable way."

Looking to the future he believes that more and more companies are going to start buying into the innovation and sustainability agenda.

"Over the past 12 months, the two key issues for business have been costs and cash," he says. "But they have now come through the cost-cutting phase and, if you'll forgive me for using that horrible phrase, they have identified all the areas of low hanging fruit and cut them. They are now looking towards sustainable cost transformation for the future.

"We are actively working with our customers to help them use modern information and communications technology to do this. That might mean us taking on whole aspects of their business for them on an outsourced or hosted basis or it may involve us in helping to develop and implement solutions tailored to their needs. Whatever it entails it will mean us working on sustainable and innovative solutions for the future."