Enterprise Sustainability Management Solutions: Reference Architecture & Buyer's Guide

Organizations around the world are elevating resource efficiency and sustainability from a tactical to a strategic concern - and are moving aggressively to improve environmental performance in operating processes and products. For many, this has meant new information management and process control challenges, around energy use, water use, solid waste, toxic materials, carbon emissions and other factors - inside the organization and across the value chain.

These requirements vary dramatically by organization and industry. And despite the wide array of new enterprise sustainability management software and IT-enabled control systems now available, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. Establishing an effective, long-term information architecture means taking a comprehensive view of sustainability, and putting in place integrated capabilities that serve the organization’s highest-value needs.

The report presents a clear, six-level reference architecture classifying essential capabilities for sustainability management at an overall enterprise level down to the device level. We analyze offerings from nineteen top application software providers in the context of capability sets at the top two levels of the reference architecture - enterprise sustainability management and business operations resource management. Lastly, we present a series of recommendations for how organizations can proceed in establishing effective enterprise architectures for sustainability.