A study conducted by Intuit Research has highlighted the significance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability scorecard for businesses in Australia and New Zealand to attract more investors.
Commissioned by IT monitoring solutions provider Paessler AG, the study, titled “Keeping Watch: Monitoring Your Path to a Sustainable IT,” sought to assess the current state of sustainability practices among businesses in the ANZ and the South East Asian regions. The findings emphasised the crucial role of IT monitoring in ensuring the success of sustainable IT strategies, which serve as a precursor to digital transformation.
The survey was conducted through in-depth interviews with 200 business leaders representing large enterprises with revenues ranging from USD 50 million to more than USD 1 billion across three sectors: manufacturing, essential services, and tech/telecom/data centres. A fifth of the respondents were from ANZ organisations.
The research found an optimistic business outlook over the next three years in the ANZ region, with 67 per cent of businesses saying they were very optimistic. Meanwhile, Singapore-based businesses expressed a more conservative point of view, with 23 per cent expressing uncertainty or pessimism.
Paessler said the positive outlook bodes well for investments in priority areas to drive future business growth but environmentally conscious investors may steer clear of businesses with poor ESG scorecards.
According to the study, businesses in ANZ are significantly behind their ASEAN peers regarding their sustainable IT strategies, with only 48 per cent already having established one, while the figure goes up to 72 per cent for ASEAN companies.
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The survey also found that digital transformation is a top priority for 66 per cent of businesses across the ASEAN markets, whereas only 38 per cent of ANZ businesses identified it as a prime concern.
“Digital transformation can enable sustainability by making businesses more efficient, reducing their environmental impact, and helping them meet sustainability goals, so it is concerning that there is a disconnect for businesses in Australia and New Zealand with a much lower share seeing digital transformation as a priority,” said Amit Phatak, Director and Partner, Intuit-Research.
Survey respondents representing ANZ organisations said monitoring their IT systems and infrastructures had enabled them to reduce emissions, which is a key sustainability focus for the ANZ firms.
Many have also adopted other sustainable IT strategies, such as optimising power usage, hardware utilisation and improving energy efficiency.
Manufacturing and Essential Services sectors prioritise diversifying and tracking supply chains in real-time across ASEAN (60 per cent), while Tech/Telecom and Data centres emphasise sustainable IT strategies, greener data centres, and on-premise to cloud migration (80 per cent).
“Businesses must overcome siloed approaches and recognise that these areas are part of the same puzzle. By improving awareness and knowledge of sustainable IT strategies, backed by effective IT monitoring provided by solutions like Paessler PRTG, businesses can reduce their carbon footprint, become net neutral, and accelerate progress towards achieving their sustainable development goals,” said Felix Berndt, regional manager for Asia Pacific at Paessler AG.
