The Situation
New Zealand’s leading solution for greenhouse emissions measurement is taking its expertise to the world. The brains behind carboNZero is a unique internet-based greenhouse gas inventory tool, E-Manage, which enables emissions to be calculated and managed by an organisation. Developed by Landcare Research, E-Manage provides an audit trail for the company to benchmark itself against ongoing performance and progress towards emissions reduction. The tool to date had done its work admirably, but had become outdated. As carboNZero emerged as a world class programme, E-Manage was limited by its isolation from its other calculators and tools and provided limited reporting. Customer self service online was a key part of the strategy. Therefore a new platform had to be capable of delivering a secure and scalable customer-facing extranet site.
The Pain
E-Manage 1 needed to be taken from a single stand-alone tool, to a centralised full service architecture solution, enabling Landcare Research to take its carboNZero programme global, knowing it had an unrivalled technology solution that helps mitigate global pollution and effect real change.
“To take us forward, we engaged Intergen to design the most effective and appropriate solution possible using integrated Microsoft technologies that would allow us to bring carboNZero to a diverse audience worldwide.” Mike Tournier, Business Manager. carboNZero.
Customisation by client, by country.
Unlike carbon calculators, E-Manage can operate across regions with different local factors for a variety of business types. This world-leading service enables clients to calculate, manage and report on their carbon emissions, customising the tool relative to their own area in their own country.
Customer self service online is a key factor, in tandem with a rich calculation engine that enables rapid interaction with data. There is also a dedicated secure portal, personalised to the client, which provides a ‘single source of truth.’
E-Manage helps businesses measure, manage and mitigate.
Microsoft SharePoint was chosen as the platform for the internal and external presentation layer and to deliver the customer-facing portals. SharePoint also provides out-of-the-box document management, which caters for the supporting documents to be stored in readiness for audits. Intergen enhanced the SharePoint platform with a number of other components that would provide even better business process automation, reducing the time requirements of carboNZero staff to perform various procedural tasks.
Two-way authentication and automated account creation between Microsoft CRM and SharePoint enables the customer to manage their own details in a secure manner. Flexibility to adjust referencing criteria was also important. As carbon emission research continually evolves, the platform needed to be able to perform calculations based on the most up to date research.
Intergen’s Mark Ginnever describes why this solution had to be future focused:
“For any software solution, business and technical objectives are closely linked. We needed to ensure the technology solution was flexible for the future, particularly as the international client base expands. Through superb inter-connectivity between Microsoft products, scalability has been delivered. This is a world class, easy to use tool that inspires ‘green’ seeking businesses to take meaningful steps towards mitigating climate change. And the ability to deliver E-Manage as a software as a service model with the ability for customers to take ownership of their site has allowed the exponential growth of carboNZero’s client base.”
The Gain
E-Manage provides an unrivalled technology solution that captures quantifiable and auditable evidence, to assist organisations in taking action against carbon emissions.
A New Zealand bred resource has become a resource for the world.