Can Digital Transformation Help with Sustainability? Here’s What Businesses Should Do

The increasing emphasis on corporate social responsibility is the reason why many business leaders are willing to ensure sustainability at the core of products, services, and platforms. They are ready to integrate sustainability strategies and the best AI development services into their digital transformation roadmaps to build resilient brands with equal focus on PLANET, PROFIT, and PEOPLE.

According to IBM’s Institute for Business Value (IBV), 50% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable businesses. Also, 82% of CIOs suggest that their organizations have a moral obligation to stand out for societal concerns. Despite all this, there’s an evident gap between what is being SAID and what is being DONE, especially on the business side, where just 35% of brands have acted in this area.

Sustainability with Digital Transformation and the Best AI Development Services

Sustainability and digital transformation have evolved over the past few years, presenting an opportunity for businesses to make sustainability initiatives one of their paramount priorities and accelerate their adoption of digital technologies like AI application development services. These two corporate trends can converge within an organization using clean technologies and green production processes.

Digital transformation can serve as a catalyst for many organizations to integrate sustainability into all areas of their business. They can use technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, machine learning (ML), the internet of things (IoT), and business intelligence services to effectively achieve sustainability goals.

Here are some noteworthy applications of digital technologies:

• AI is being used for disaster response, air pollution reduction, and even renewable energy management.
• Analytics and ML are being applied to automate processes with environmental impact, predictive maintenance, and weather forecasts.
• IoT devices can be used to collect data, analyze production processes, and assist with assessing environmental impacts.

Additionally, there is this study by Dresner Advisory Services, which states that predictive analytics and business intelligence services have seen a prompt boost in growth, due to COVID-19. In fact, 49% of companies are either launching new analytics and business intelligence (BI) projects or moving forward with their already planned projects.

5 Ways Digital Transformation Can Boost Sustainability

To meet sustainability goals, brands need actionable environmental insights. It’s true that the current methods are often cumbersome and require intensive manual labor, digital transformation can help you become sustainable as well as profitable. So, if you want to ingrain sustainability into your digital transformation journey, here’s what you should do.

• Develop a More Robust Infrastructure

The adverse effects of climate change and exploitation of natural resources demand businesses to extend the life of their infrastructure, including buildings, bridges, and water lines. Here, embarking on digital transformation can help them meet sustainability goals and uncover new opportunities to optimize their processes, costs, and waste. Not only that, but sustainable infrastructure also attracts new customers, boosts brand loyalty, and embraces new business models.

With AI-powered remote monitoring and AI application development services, organizations can prevent major issues, such as irregular maintenance. They can make use of operational data and analytics to reduce downtime costs, improve asset management, and reduce spare parts inventory. As a result, they can save on energy costs by pinpointing a small problem before it becomes expensive and energy-draining.

• Build a Transparent Supply Chain

It goes without saying that the supply chain needs visibility and transparency. When businesses can’t track the exact amount and location of their inventory, they may overdo it. Here, the main cause is the lack of transparency and data shared with their deep-tier suppliers. Consequently, this makes it difficult to identify supplier risks.

Meeting supply chain sustainability goals demands an accurate and real-time view of inventory, in addition to sharing data across the supply chain ecosystem in such a way that organizations can trust. Here,

can help them avoid obsolete inventory, reduce carbon emissions, and minimize waste across raw materials, finished goods, and spare parts.

• Derive Business Insights from the Environment

Businesses exposed to external factors should focus on sophisticated predictive tools to predict the environmental impact and make sustainable choices. For instance, insurance companies can better predict disruption to policy holders and help them take action to avoid damage.

Having environmental intelligence capabilities is great when it comes to responding to weather events. Here, AI-driven predictions and the best AI development services derived from third-party geo-spatial, weather, and IoT data could streamline and automate the management of environmental risks and operationalize underlying processes, such as carbon accounting and reduction.

• Focus on Decarbonizing the Economy

Utilities play a key role in the energy transition and accelerating global decarbonization through clean electrification, which is the process of replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources. They need comprehensive asset management for the operations and maintenance of renewable energy plants. And digital transformation and technology can help in decarbonization by helping electricity ecosystems deliver clean energy to connected consumers.

• Digital Transformation in Manufacturing

Today’s businesses should be dedicated to the digital and sustainable transformation of their manufacturing processes. Although digitalization in manufacturing is a never-ending process, the design and energy supply of the production facility can be sustainable. For instance, you can use materials locally to reduce their carbon footprint, power consumption, and the cost of production equipment.

The Bottom Line — Digitize Today!

To build a sustainable and clean digital future, companies need to manage all aspects of the business at once; manufacturing, production, supply chain, and infrastructure. That’s the only way to harness digital transformation to deliver sustainable solutions like the best AI development services and, at the same time, manage the risks the world may pose for the future. Keep in mind that digital transformation is a long-term process and involves cooperation and input from multiple teams of your organization. Above everything, it holds incredible value.

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FAQs:

• What are the examples of digital transformation promoting sustainability?

Creating automation using smart technologies like the best AI development services, electronics in modern vehicles, avoiding animal habitats, and reducing production costs are some common examples of digital transformation promoting sustainability.

• How SoftProdigy can help my business meet sustainability goals?

We have a creative team of experts offering a wide variety of digital services, ranging from AI to ML and BI to IoT application development services. We can help you digitize your business model and mitigate your energy-draining processes using innovative solutions.