EMS and the Environment: The Green You Don't See

In recent years, environmental awareness has become an important topic in business, as it should be. Everywhere you turn these days you see "green products"... "green initiatives"... "green solutions". Sometimes, however, it’s the green you don’t see that is having a significant impact on the environment.

For more than 20 years we’ve been producing software solutions that increase facility scheduling efficiency and reduce energy and material waste. For most of those two decades that effort has gone unlabeled. We’ve never thought of it as being "green" or "environmentally aware" – it’s just one of those rare win-win situations where something that makes sense for the environment makes dollars and cents for businesses.

But, if your organization considers it a priority to treat the earth gently and you want to know about some of the very tangible ways in which using well-designed facility scheduling software and an interactive online calendar can make a significant difference, there are many:

Smaller, More Efficient Scheduling Staff

When activity volume increases from year to year, one option for handling the additional events is to increase the headcount in your scheduling office and on your setup crew. However, more employees mean more office space, additional commuters on the highways, etc. A better, eco-friendly option is to help your existing staff work more effectively. EMS gives you the tools you need to significantly increase your organization’s scheduling efficiency.

Meeting and Event Space Optimization

Having the means to quickly and easily reserve the right rooms with the right amount of setup and teardown time between sessions can make a world of difference in how space is utilized and ultimately allow you to do more with less. Organizations that are spending a great deal of money to reserve offsite meeting space or are considering moving to a larger facility because of the perceived lack of space internally often, after implementing a facility scheduling system, realize that they have all the room they need.

The (Nearly) Paperless Office

While few scheduling operations can claim to be 100% paperless, there are a number of functions within EMS that can help you achieve near-zero paper consumption. The ability to email reports directly from the system, the availability of online space request forms and integrated event task reminders are just a few.

Shared Workspace Management

Hoteling, hot-desking... there are many names for the practice of having workers who are frequently offsite (telecommuting or with clients) "book" a workspace when they arrive at the office. But whatever you call it, minimizing the physical space that you must heat, cool and maintain is good for the environment and good for your company’s bottom line.

Resource Optimization

As with space optimization, the accurate scheduling and tracking of resources (A/V equipment, catering supplies, etc.) allows organizations to do more with less. Instead of purchasing additional data projectors, for example, an organization might find that their existing inventory can readily meet the demand when scheduled more carefully. This practice gets to the heart of the so called "Three R’s" of waste prevention: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

HVAC Integration

The heating and cooling of unoccupied meeting and event space can be a major source of energy waste and a major drain on your budget. EMS integrates with heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to provide room occupancy information that can be used to automatically adjust room temperatures between an energy efficient set point for empty rooms and a comfortable setting for events. For example, the University of Kansas saves more than $20,000 per year in energy and associated costs through their EMS Enterprise/HVAC integration. Read the case study.

Data "Recycling"

The "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" concept can be applied to data, too. Through its seamless interface with a number of other systems (digital signage, interactive calendaring, room diagramming, HR databases, accounting packages, and many more), EMS eliminates the person-hours spent rekeying event-related data, as well as the associated overhead.

In short, EMS has been, and continues to be, quietly green.