Award-winning Cisco Sustainability Knowledge Basis takes the stage as key to sustainability success

Cisco’s potential to advance formidable environmental sustainability targets comes from management and our subsequent era environmental sustainability technique: the “Plan for Potential” — a method that defines our key priorities to attach a regenerative future. Importantly, making progress towards these targets requires information and expertise — particularly, our Sustainability Knowledge Basis (SDF). Cisco’s give attention to data-driven environmental sustainability contributed to our recognition this week as an Affect Award recipient by SustainableIT.org.

Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Workplace staff had the glory of accepting this award finally evening’s SustainableIT.org Affect Awards & Gala, an occasion that celebrates excellent contributions to sustainability in IT. This occasion introduced collectively leaders from throughout the globe to trade concepts and encourage change. And Cisco’s SDF was acknowledged for its success in enabling a data-driven method to environmental sustainability.

The SustainableIT.org Affect Award is a testomony to the exhausting work and dedication of our staff. It shines a highlight on a essential and driving pressure behind Cisco’s environmental sustainability journey—the SDF.

The Function of Knowledge in Environmental Sustainability

The creation of Cisco’s SDF was pushed by this core thought: to construct an enterprise information platform that may function the primary supply for environmental sustainability-related information inside Cisco. The SDF consolidates, analyzes, and integrates information from totally different sources and permits predictive modeling to assist our environmental sustainability journey, in addition to these of our prospects and companions.

Progressing towards net-zero greenhouse gasoline (GHG) emissions throughout our worth chain by 2040, supporting buyer expectations, and rigorous environmental sustainability reporting requires strong and actionable information and infrastructure to information choices throughout Cisco.

Our SDF does simply that, taking part in an important function throughout use instances comparable to:

• Technique & Efficiency: Offering insights to raised observe progress and develop methods to advance our public environmental sustainability targets.  
• Merchandise & Options: Empowering engineers to make design choices to assist environmental sustainability and develop dashboards that present insights and proposals for purchasers.
• Go To Market: Supporting buyer expectations for environmental sustainability-related information on the Cisco merchandise they purchase and recognizing its significance in buying choices.
• Function & Reporting: Supporting clear and rigorous environmental sustainability reporting.

The SDF handles all kinds and complexity of knowledge and helps the wants of a number of stakeholders — from CSOs to CIOs, product designers to gross sales groups.

From SDF Idea to Enterprise Affect

Think about a use case that spans each product and go-to-market, a product carbon footprints (PCFs), which estimate the worldwide warming potential of our merchandise.

Our prospects request this data from us often. In actual fact, there was a big  enhance in buyer requests for PCF information, with requests doubling during the last 12 months. This displays a rising emphasis on environmental sustainability reporting and transparency in buying choices.

The SDF helps this with a streamlined, automated method that reduces guide efforts. It permits account managers to  add a listing of merchandise and shortly obtain formatted, easy-to-read outcomes.

The dashboards allow customers to discover the estimated PCF throughout the manufacturing, transportation, use, and end-of-life levels of the product lifecycle. Past this, the dashboards within the SDF present graphical representations and deeper insights into the PCF information. Furthermore, new units of dashboards are being developed to trace adjustments in  PCF outcomes over time, highlighting the place enhancements have been made and the place additional motion is required.

SDF– Constructing on Success, Evolving for the Future

After we launched into the journey to create the SDF, I used to be impressed to steer this challenge as a result of I might envision its influence and significance. The give attention to use-case-driven design permits us to assist enterprise wants and tackle essential issues. And, in two years, we’ve made super progress. We’ve been ready to make use of the information and dashboards within the SDF to make suggestions and supply insights to our prospects and companions. We’ve additionally been leveraging the information within the SDF to streamline and automate GHG emissions calculations and construct fashions on Cisco’s emissions trajectory in the direction of our 2040 net-zero purpose.

The SDF is supporting a number of key areas of our enterprise. It at present supplies information to 25 distinct functions and instruments, presents validated insights by means of user-friendly dashboards, and has been acknowledged as a essential new element of environmental sustainability success.

Along with this week’s award from SustainableIT.org, Gartner has cited Cisco’s SDF as a best-practice instance, validating the influence and necessity of a strong information infrastructure within the environmental sustainability panorama. I’m extremely happy with our success and am wanting ahead to advancing our environmental sustainability targets even additional.

Given the rising complexity and demand for environmental sustainability information and its numerous viewers, it’s essential that we consolidate datasets and make the information simply accessible and comprehensible. The SDF aggregates a big selection of knowledge, from product operations and provide chain data to buyer utilization and third-party emission components.

Knowledge is a key to our environmental sustainability efforts. The SDF’s continued improvement is integral to advancing Cisco’s environmental sustainability technique  and supporting others on their sustainability journey. The SDF continues to evolve as we  tackle the wants of our enterprise and our prospects.

For these taken with studying extra about how information and expertise are powering environmental sustainability, go to Cisco’s environmental. social and governance (ESG) Reporting Hub.

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