Sustainable IT will become a winning argument for resellers as a new generation of environmentally and socially conscious millennials begin to exercise mastery over IT decision making.
That's the message from HP's UK executive director, George Brasher, who spoke with CRN following the supplier's recent Sustainability Summit.
At the event, held in London last week, HP promised during the years prior to 2025 to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions related to the supply chain by 10 percent and to involve at least 500,000 of its workers in the development of job skills.
Brasher said that HP is responding not only to global "mega-trends", such as the growth of the global middle class and the increase of the shared economy, but also the increase in customer attraction.
Born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, millennials are often more socially and environmentally aware than those who came before them and - crucially - will soon make up the majority of IT managers, Brasher said.
"I've been at HP for three years and questions [about sustainability] have been amplified during that time, we're hearing more and more about it every day," he added.
"Not only does it appear as part of the bids, whether public or private, but also, we have specific customers who call it." In 10 years millennials will be more than 50 percent of IT decision makers, They value it, so I think it's just going to see their prevalence grow. Secondly, we're seeing employees calling it. They really value it as part of being proud of the place they work, and, again, this is especially true. Of the millennia ".
Everything as a service
Brasher highlighted the device as a service (DaaS) as an easy victory for sustainability for resellers.
"Getting on board with 'all-as-a-service' is the biggest and most shocking thing you can do," he said.
"It's already the de facto standard printed, and I think that's where the computing goes, and as in print what we're seeing is that big companies do it first, but I think it will spread across the whole system, from The SMBs up to the larger global ".
A second Brasher area (photo) said partners can focus on is ensuring they are offering products that are easy to repair.
"Without naming names, one of our competitors has a detachable device and is not repairable, the screen does not come out," he said.
"You have to take a blow dryer and blow it for 30 minutes until you can pull out the screen and repair the device underneath, and actually break the screen when you do. With ours, make eight screws and four suction cups To remove it, And you can repair it in two minutes. You need to think about what the impact is, as it will have a significant impact on your service costs.
Head to head
HP is not alone in raising noise levels around sustainability, with rival rival Dell presenting new sustainability targets in its 2017 Corporate Social Responsibility report. This includes the promise that by 2020, Dell accounting for 95% of direct material costs and key logistics providers will set specific targets for greenhouse gas emissions.
In the report, Dell manager Trisa Thompson also named millennia as part of the motivation, citing research suggesting that 62 percent of this demographic would have a pay cut to work for a socially responsible company.
HP and Dell, along with Lenovo, have recently certified their PCs with the development of TCO for sustainable development. HP announced last week the launch of plastic ink cartridges from recycled bottles in Haiti, while Dell is building a supply chain for ocean plastic.
However, Brasher said HP is among the leaders in the sustainability front.
"We always have to look for third party sources, whether the FTSE4Good, or the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, or be part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Economy 100. We have been recognized as leaders," he said. "Look at any of those and you see that - outside the main channel makers in the UK - you will see that we are the top of the list."
Although HP said its carbon footprint declined by 1 percent in 2016, it admitted a shift toward more energy-intensive and consumer-intensive products, and its greenhouse gas emissions rose last year in the printing area.
But Brasher defended HP's record.
"I think you have to focus on the whole," he said.
"The direction of travel is that we continue to lower it. If you look at some of our computer lines, they are designed for reparability and sustainability. If you compare it with our next largest competitor, it is much more difficult to repair your, while we will get 10 for 10 on iFixit. You have to look at the whole portfolio and we are collectively making the right decisions to reduce our impact. "
HP's inkjet program, an HP ink replacement scheme claims to reduce material consumption per printed page by 57 percent, reached one million subscribers before Spotify or Netflix, he added.
Big hardware makers have been accused in the past of overstating how quickly their technology needs to be revamped in order to sell more kit, but Brasher denied that such a mentality cuts HP's sustainability efforts.
"Companies that want to thrive need to focus on the needs of their customers, and I think we have a great push from the customer's perspective on everything as a service, whether it's managed printing, instant ink or DaaS," he said.
"Second, if you look at what HP says, whether in global partner conferences, investor days or in the press, we're 100% behind this." Instant Ink is a great test of a program designed to handle great things. Working for customers, partners and us, MPS is one of our key growth initiatives and it's the same with DaaS. These are the things we are building the organizations behind I can understand your point, but look at what customers are demanding, and look at what we are doing from a programmatic perspective.
