Can a better User Experience also be a Greener Experience?

Since 2002 Catalyst Resources has evolved and enhanced its secure online collaboration, project management and document sharing solution for use by remote employees and select clients. Recently, Catalyst began to track how this collaboration tool impacted the company's greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the need for air travel and local commuting.

"When we ran the analysis, we were pleased with by the significant reduction in our own carbon footprint." said Paul Giurata, Managing Partner of Catalyst Resources. "The question then became - how we could broaden the green impact, by expanding the solution from an internal resource, into a customizable team space to be used by our entire client base?"

While a "green strategy" to reduce carbon emissions is becoming a must for businesses in both the public and private sectors, changing individual behavior is challenging. Catalyst recognized that to get clients to adopt the web collaboration solution, it would need to provide a better user experience and enhanced productivity, compared to the traditional process of email, face-to-face meetings and hard copy documents. The implementation would also need to be scalable so that additional clients could be added to the system without additional support staff.

Catalyst redesigned its collaboration solution into a ‘software-as-a-service’ (SaaS) platform with a rich internet application (RIA) interface. It now scales to any size and handles business needs both internally and beyond the firewall. Workspaces can be configured by each client to incorporate their own branding, as well as specific industry-related terms and language. The RIA interface minimizes the training requirements, provides fast performance, and is intuitive to use.

After implementing the new SaaS RIA web collaboration solution internally, Catalyst was able to reduce business travel and commuting across seven clients to achieve an average CO2 reduction of 21,000+ lbs per month (roughly the amount produced by 3 US households in one year).

"The Catalyst web collaboration solution is a great example of using RIAs and SaaS to solve a common business problem " said Giurata. "As governments move to cap carbon-based emissions, businesses will need to track their emissions and adopt environmentally friendly business practices. As demonstrated by the Catalyst Resources green audit, a SaaS web collaboration solution can meet these requirements and save costs at the same time."

Associated Link: A greener user experience

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