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CloudApps releases their employee engagement app Sumo

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CloudApps SuMo

CloudApps recently released SuMo, their sustainability employee engagement app. The name SuMo comes from the words Sustainability Momentum we’re told, and this is because SuMo was designed to maintain the momentum of an organisation’s sustainability initiative. GreenMonk was given a demo account on SuMo so we could take it for a test drive, and it is a cool little app.

CloudApps sell a suite of sustainability software products for organisations. Their applications sit on top of Salesforce’s Force.com cloud platform, which allows CloudApps to focus on writing the software, and not have to be concerned with maintaining the server infrastructure which runs their programs.

CloudApps solutions already have quite comprehensive capabilities, so it was interesting to see them come out with this employee engagement module.

Pledging a challenge in CloudApps SuMo

The SuMo application works well on mobile devices and it is designed to foster interest and ongoing enthusiasm for sustainability initiatives amongst an organisation’s workforce. It does this by allowing employees to pledge to participate in a number of challenges supplied by the organisation. These challenges are categorised, ranked for difficulty and assigned points.

As employees carry out these challenges (anything from switching from short haul flights, to teleconferencing for their next meeting, to volunteering at a local charity event), they are assigned points and badges, which determines their position on the Leader Board.

Because SuMo sits on Force.com, it can take in data from an organisation’s ERP applications, as well as reporting them back. So initiatives undertaken by employees in SuMo can be reported directly into its back-end systems and the savings accounted for.

CloudApps SuMo adding an idea screen

Also, a nice touch in SuMo is the ability for employees to add new ideas to the site. These ideas can be voted on by colleagues, commented on and favourited. It’s nice to see a bit of social working its way into these kinds of enterprise apps. This will certainly help the app be more engaging and sticky for users. This is something whose importance shouldn’t be underestimated for industries with issues around recruitment and retention.

The user interface has a few little quirks (it is not always as intuitive as it could be), and the app needs to become more social (include Share on Twitter, Share on Facebook, etc. buttons) buttons, but presumably that will all come with time. For a version 1.0 app though this is a creditable effort.

Full disclosure – CloudApps is not a GreenMonk client but CloudApps did give GreenMonk a free 30-day trial SuMo account so we could kick the tires of the app.

Image credits Tom Raftery

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Employee engagement helps SAP’s carpooling initiative

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I spoke with SAP’s Chief Sustainability Officer Peter Graf recently about some of SAP’s internal initiatives around reducing their carbon footprint. One of their biggest sources of emissions is company cars (22% of emissions in Q2 2012 – the only higher was business flights at 42%).

So SAP started a program to encourage car sharing called TwoGo. The program has an app which matches people who are driving to work, with those looking for a lift. It matches people based on common interests (and allows you to block people you don’t like!).

It allows you to track who’s the Greenest of your friends and it incentivises people by having allotted parking spots for car-poolers. Another nice incentive was that the money you saved from your carpooling could be donated to a charity of your choice – as Peter put it – “You could car pool for a cause”.

The slogan used within the company to promote carpooling wasn’t about saving the company money, or about saving the planet, it was “Make New Friends – Know the Gossip.” Even the CEO joined in.

At the time of the video above, SAP had created 20,000 car pools. It will be interesting to see how getting the employees engaged in this project will affect the 22% of emissions in Q2 that SAP had from company cars.

Full disclosure – SAP is an occasional client of GreenMonk’s video services.

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Curt Johnson, Chair of Diversey, talks RoI of Sustainability, “CO2 is Waste” and energy savings

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Diversey invited me to attend their Climate Change Summit in Amsterdam earlier this week. I went along and was very pleasantly surprised by Diversey’s commitment to corporate sustainability.

Towards the end of the day I had a chat with Curt Johnson, the Chair of Diversey, about their sustainability initiatives. Some of the highlights of the conversation:

  • Sustainability goes back to Curt’s grandfather leading an expedition into the Amazon in the 1930’s! – 1:00
  • Curt’s father (Sam Johnson) banned CFC’s as propellants from all SC Johnson products before there was any legislative requirement – 1:20
  • A cost/benefit analysis shows that being sustainable produces ROI – 2:40
  • Diversey are tripling their target and now aim to reduce CO2 emissions 25% by 2013 over their 2003 baseline – 3:56
  • Diversey’s experience is that for every $1 invested in emissions reductions, they get $2 back – 4:30
  • Diversey are tripling their target and now aim to reduce CO2 emissions 25% by 2013 over their 2003 baseline – 3:56
  • CO2 is a waste by-product of our operations… if you can reduce CO2 it is inevitable that you will create a more efficient system that is more cost effective – 4:40
  • CO2 is waste, so if you minimise CO2, you minimise waste and you maximise efficiency and increase profits – 6:00
  • Diversey’s sustainability initiatives have a huge influence on employee morale, engagement and retention – 6:31

Some other great tidbits which were left on the cutting room floor were:

  • Diversey participate in the EPA’s SmartWay program to reduce the impact of shipping
  • Diversey intend to be the first company to publish the carbon footprint of all of their products on the products
  • Diversey have converted to a daylight office cleaning regime for a one-off cost of $100,000. This move is now saving Diversey 8% on their annual energy bill and
  • Diversey actively works with their customers to help them to reduce their chemical usage!
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Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 02/19/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

Here is this Friday’s Green Numbers round-up:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.