Achieving Corporate Environmental Sustainability Goals through Efficient Digital Asset Management

The digital transformation of businesses has brought about numerous benefits, such as increased productivity, streamlined workflows, and improved customer experiences. Yet, as companies continue to grow and evolve, does digitalization have an impact on the environment?

The fantastic ease that our digital world offers at the touch of a button leaves behind a carbon footprint on the planet. But the good news is that it is possible to transform and be green with mindful and conscious digitalization.

What is Corporate Environmental Sustainability and Why it Matters?

Corporate Environmental Sustainability (CES) refers to the practice of conducting business in a manner that minimizes negative impacts on the environment and promotes long-term ecological balance. With increasing emphasis on sustainability in the business world, business leaders are compelled to consider more than just profits - but also the organization’s impact on society and the environment.

Why, then, should we care?

Simply put, the health of the planet where we live is at stake. Climate change, pollution, and resource depletion are major global issues impacting the environment and human health and well-being. Organizations need to act more sustainably to ensure that the majority of many species survive and exist for future generations.

A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) study in the United States reports that 63% of its respondents want corporations to ignite social and environmental change when governmental action is absent. And 71% of the world’s emissions are contributed by just 100 companies.

Think that’s bad? The good news is that businesses can make a difference and reduce 60% of emissions by 2030, according to the Paris Climate Accord.

Furthermore, corporate environmental sustainability is not only great for the planet, but it can also lead to the following:

• increased efficiency and cost-savings: Though "greening" your business might mean having to set aside some budget, over time, you will save more money by prioritizing sustainability. Sustainability studies have shown that 33% of businesses integrated sustainable practices and increased operational efficiency.
• positive brand reputation and customer loyalty: Customers increasingly seek products and services that align with their values, and sustainability is often a top priority. Businesses can attract and retain customers looking for eco-friendly options by demonstrating a commitment to sustainability.
• new business opportunities: When businesses look for ways to reduce their environmental impact, they can open up new markets and even create new products and services that meet the growing demand for sustainability.

How should businesses focus their sustainability efforts?

An area where businesses can focus their sustainability efforts is digital asset management (DAM). DAM is storing, organizing, and distributing all types of digital assets - such as images, videos, documents, and more - efficiently and effectively. Businesses can improve their environmental sustainability by implementing a robust and sustainable DAM system.

Digitization

First and foremost, DAMs can help reduce paper usage and waste. With a DAM solution, businesses can store and access their digital assets electronically, eliminating the need for physical copies. This can not only save trees and reduce carbon emissions from the production and transportation of paper, but it can also save money on printing and storage costs.

Reduce energy consumption

Your asset organization needs to be well-structured if you want to make the most of your resources while minimizing the environmental impact. Collating all your different tools into one central efficient Digital Asset Management solution not only improves efficiency but also does good for the environment.

A central hub helps you clean out your digital assets, eliminating the ones you no longer use, and creates more efficient ways to search and find assets via relevant metadata, which will help you get the full potential of your digital assets.

Since many DAM solutions are cloud-based, they use servers and data centers designed to be energy-efficient and use renewable energy sources. By storing and accessing digital assets in the cloud, businesses can decrease their energy usage and carbon emissions compared to maintaining on-premises servers.

Lower digital carbon footprint

Through more efficient distribution and access to digital assets, a sustainable DAM can help businesses reduce their digital carbon footprint by optimizing the size of large media assets. Large, high-resolution media files take up much more space and require more energy to store and access than smaller, lower-resolution files.

With a DAM that can resize and optimize digital assets, businesses can reduce their carbon emissions from storage and access.

Read how Michelin significantly reduces its digital carbon footprint by up to 4x just by optimizing their web performance.

Improve communication and collaboration

Furthermore, with a DAM, organizations can easily share and collaborate on digital assets with team members and stakeholders in a centralized system, eliminating the need for meetings, lengthy Whatsapp or Telegram correspondences, and sending v1, v2, v3 over emails.

This also translates into teams seeing the exact same digital assets. With all your correspondences and assets in a centralized place with a streamlined workflow your teams can be more productive no matter where they are located.

Improve communication and collaboration

Furthermore, with a DAM, organizations can easily share and collaborate on digital assets with team members and stakeholders in a centralized system, eliminating the need for meetings, lengthy Whatsapp or Telegram correspondences, and sending v1, v2, v3 over emails.

This also translates into teams seeing the exact same digital assets. With all your correspondences and assets in a centralized place with a streamlined workflow your teams can be more productive no matter where they are located.

Avoid duplication in multiple channels

When an asset is present in more than one location, marketing teams will have to continually update the new version in these different places, and other teams will find it increasingly difficult to retrieve the latest copies. The frequent inquiry by team members can then mean sending to and fro emails which can add up to increasing the overall carbon footprint. For example, large email attachments can account for about 50 grams of carbon footprint. With a DAM, marketing teams no longer have to update files in various locations and will have a standardized location for different teams to retrieve files.

Moreover, duplicate files mean more files stored on the cloud, emitting more carbon dioxide. Thanks to an all-in-one DAM solution that can help create variants automatically without increasing storage space and allowing multiple teams to reuse and repurpose digital assets, translating into a more sustainable way of working.

What are the best practices for an efficient Digital Asset Management adoption

All in all, investing in a sustainable DAM can truly help achieve corporate environmental sustainability easily and quickly. Not only will doing so be good for the environment, but it also reflects well on your brand and, in the long run, even helps achieve more profits for the company.

Imagine a system of economics that is accountable to both the society and the environment. What a beautiful world!

If so, then how should a company start adopting a DAM solution? Start by assessing your DAM requirements to find out what features your company needs before you look at providers.

We invite you to discover more about Scaleflex’s FIlerobot Digital Asset Management. Request a demo to find out how it can help empower your company’s corporate environmental sustainability strategies.