In early 2025, a large IT services organisation faced challenges balancing sustainability with providing cutting-edge IT solutions.
Their existing infrastructure was energy-intensive, contributing to carbon emissions. The demand for innovation and AI leadership added urgency to address sustainability ethically and economically.
Innovative Energy Consultants was engaged to develop a strategy to embed sustainability and to support implementation.
Our three phase approach ensured stakeholder buy-in.
Consultation: In this phase, we built on the top-down legitimacy created by the senior leadership team through a comprehensive stakeholder engagement process. Through surveys and semi-structured interviews, we constructed a rich evidence base that gave us a comprehensive understanding of the organisation’s sustainability capabilities and priorities. We also identified barriers and enablers to promoting sustainable behaviour and the extent to which sustainability aligned with the operational culture.
Co-creation: In this second phase, we shared the findings from the consultation and IT industry best practices with the leadership team in a workshop setting. We then facilitated discussions to help the team draw out five key themes, or sustainability pillars, and set twenty three ambitious, realistic goals.
Documentation: Thematic analysis was used to develop the first draft of the Sustainability Strategy. This was carefully calibrated to ensure ambition, realism, evidence-based facts, sequencing, economic affordability, and a positive return on investment. Review sessions were held with key stakeholders and, after making minor alterations, the Sustainability Strategy was professionally art-worked into a format suitable for web hosting.
The final Sustainability Strategy document was presented to the senior leadership team and socialised across the organisation.
“I am really happy with this, it's as near to perfect as I can imagine. The strategy will be a critical driver and support for taking our organisation on its sustainability improvement journey.” ~ IT Environmental Sustainability Manager
Having a clear Sustainability Strategy in place is a crucial first step in moving the needle on sustainability. Effective delivery is crucial for a Sustainability Strategy to make meaningful change. We activated delivery for this customer by developing an Implementation Plan to accompany their Sustainability Strategy.
We emphasise the importance of careful planning at this stage. Implementation Plans require careful assessment to set realistic goals that identify necessary resources and consider affordability and payback when creating project sequencing.
We initiated deeper stakeholder engagement and an accountability identification process within the IT organisation. We used interviews and workshops to create detailed delivery plans for each goal and a strategic roadmap showing recommended sequencing. The Implementation Plan empowered the organisation’s Sustainability Manager to assess their workload, engage with the senior leadership team, and seek resources from the wider organisation.
The encouraging results are ongoing, and the short, medium and long-term benefits are clear:
Many organisations struggle to understand where to start with Sustainability, especially decarbonisation. It’s complex with many trade-offs and ambiguities. We help by distilling the essentials and providing a clear, realistic Sustainability Strategy tailored to your organisation’s needs that is commercially and operationally practical. For help developing your organisation’s Sustainability Strategy, talk to us.
Find out how we used our three step process to help a large IT organisation create and activate a sustainability strategy that balanced providing cutting edge innovation with meeting their parent organisation's decarbonisation goals.
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