BT used Retail Solutions to showcase the many ways that retailers can use IT to make their operation more sustainable

Technology consumes power itself but the message from suppliers and retailers at Retail Solutions was that, if technology is used effectively, it should help retailers to cut their carbon footprint.

The Sustainable Retailing stand highlighted some of the technologies and tactics in use.

Measuring your carbon footprint is a first step towards managing it. BT Global Services offers a carbon impact assessment service to help companies do this, with experts on hand at the show to talk carbon counting with retailers. The carbon impact assessment service makes recommendations on issues such as data centre consolidation, shared services and hosting, and collaborative and remote working tools.

Not surprisingly, with BT as the stand’s sponsor, IT networks lay at the heart of a lot of the suggestions being demonstrated.

Connecting devices to a network allows them to be controlled and managed centrally.

BT points out that simplified versions of the chips used in PCs are being built into all manner of items from access-control devices and industrial heating systems to switches and light fittings, so they can be networked.

Intelligent building systems can integrate heating, lighting and ventilation to provide better control. BT estimates that the operations and maintenance costs of a building can be reduced by 30 per cent over a building’s life by doing this.

Retailers can take automation and control a step further and use technology to manage systems centrally and implement energy-saving initiatives in stores.

Retailers can deliver training electronically, rather than wasting paper and transportation on delivering paper manuals, training materials and other communications in hard copy to stores.

BT Expedite demonstrated BT Jigsaw, its competency-based training programme for store staff. Bodycare, which runs 130 stores, has already deployed BT’s e-learning system Virtual View and Learn. Now the Jigsaw system is being used to improve the process by which its staff gain NVQ accreditation.

Previously, staff have used paper workbooks to complete NVQ courses, but these are expensive to produce and have a high ongoing administration cost.

With BT Jigsaw, Bodycare expects to triple the number of staff sitting its NVQ programme while reducing admin costs by an estimated 62 per cent. This will be achieved by a reduction in paper costs and the removal of a large amount of travelling by assessors.

Business travel cost in general is another area where BT was able to highlight the benefits of technology.

Microsoft’s RoundTable videoconferencing unit was being used to show how meetings conducted across the internet can be made to feel real without staff having to travel to meet face to face.

The collaboration and conferencing device provides a 360 degree view of a room and tracks the flow of conversation using audio and video. When used in conjunction with Microsoft’s Office Live Meeting product, users can record meeting content for later use.

Web conferencing systems are used already by retailers with multiple offices. BT believes that there could be major benefits from extending this further throughout the supply chain, both by cutting travel and through developing closer relationships with overseas trading partners.

Of course, responsibility isn’t just about carbon footprints. The employment conditions of people working in Western retailers’ supply chains are of growing concern.

BT cites figures saying 92 per cent of customers think British companies should set minimum conditions of employment for those who work for them in the developing world and 41 per cent say that a company’s record on corporate social responsibility influences their purchasing.

So, as well as the core product data that must flow along a retailer’s supply chain, information that proves the source of goods – and maybe even information on working standards and vendor negotiations – may need to be captured.

Within the supply chain itself, data can be collected and analysed to make sure that transportation is optimised. Using mobile phone networks, telematics systems can track journeys and assist in decisions that minimise the carbon footprint of deliveries to both stores and homes.

BT has been at the forefront of a trend among UK businesses to allow staff to work from home as a way of reducing travel and the property it needs to maintain. Retailers obviously still need their store staff to come into work but, as more become multichannel retailers, an increasing number of customer-focused staff are based in call centres.

Again, networked IT and communications can allow call centre staff to work from anywhere with an internet connection. Not only can this reduce carbon footprints but also it can give a retailer a much more flexible call-centre workforce.

All these systems require computing power and data storage but, even here, IT can reduce its impact on the world. Only 20 per cent of the power used by a data centre goes on running the IT – the rest is used for air conditioning, back-up power supplies and power distribution.

By tackling power wastage in these areas, BT says that its new green data centres are much more efficient, using 60 per cent less power than their predecessors.