Author: Jonna Tötterman

  • Business case: Resource-wise Digital Strategy

    Business case: Resource-wise Digital Strategy

    Digitalization and technology play a crucial role in helping businesses achieve their strategic business and sustainability goals. Chief Digital Officers and IT leaders drive the implementation of digital strategies. While digitalization provides a competitive edge and supports a sustainable transition, it can also increase environmental impact.

    A partnership for sustainable business and digitalization

    Matter Advisory, a strategic advisory within planetary boundaries, and Trail Openers, specializing in sustainable digital solutions, have partnered to advance Resource-wise Digital Strategies.

    Our goal is to help businesses leverage digitalization sustainably, efficiently, and profitably.

    Nearly all new business opportunities and innovations require the activation of corporate strategy, the creation of a digital strategy, and digital development. Our aim is to ensure solutions are sustainable from goal-setting to implementation.

    Challenges and solutions: Finland as a pioneer in climate strategy

    Finland is the first country in the world to create a climate strategy for the IT sector. In addition, the Technology Industry has developed a roadmap for carbon neutrality. These tools help businesses reduce their carbon footprint and enhance positive handprint.

    The ICT sector accounts for up to 4–10% of global energy consumption and 2.1–3.9% of greenhouse gas emissions*.

    As AI and other technologies become more prevalent, the environmental impact of digital solutions continues to grow. However, businesses often overlook these impacts in decision-making. To drive digital business initiatives in the right direction, Matter Advisory and Trail Openers have jointly developed the Resource-wise Digital Strategy.

    How does a Resource-wise Digital Strategy help businesses?

    Companies must at the same time consider customer-centricity, sustainability, AI, data-driven approaches, and digitalization. This presents a challenge for which the Resource-wise Digital Strategy provides a clear approach. IT solutions shift from being a cost to an investment, with clear business rationale and a calculated payback.

    Companies can make informed choices that align with their strategic business, customer experience, impact, and environmental goals while minimizing and acknowledging the environmental footprint of digital solutions. The Resource-wise Digital Strategy also serves as a framework for data and AI development, ensuring that individual experiments align with key development areas.

    As cost pressures increase, resource efficiency helps reduce lifecycle costs. Developing a successful business requires dialogue, co-creation, and capability-building across business, IT, and sustainability functions.

    The development of a Resource-Wise Digital Strategy examines multiple aspects:

    • Customers: How does a successful digital B2B service create value and support the development of a sustainable customer experience?
    • Environmental efficiency: How can digital services be produced with energy efficiency in mind?
    • Business: How do digitalization and data generate strategic business value in the short and long term?
    • Internal operations: How can internal operations be digitalized to create supportive tools and processes while reducing negative environmental impacts?
    • Infrastructure and value networks: How can digital solutions and digitalization create sustainable benefits for partners, value networks, society, and infrastructure?

    Collaboration pays off

    A Resource-wise Digital Strategy often delivers a fast return on investment. According to Trail Openers’ experience and research**, simply optimizing and streamlining digital services can reduce digital service emissions by 20–40% on average. Trail Openers has achieved emission reductions of up to 90%. Software audits can reveal costly yet unnecessary systems that no longer serve business objectives. Increased visibility allows these to be phased out or optimized.

    Together, we assess the impact of different scenarios on business, considering both benefits and savings. A Resource-wise Digital Strategy enables long-term decision-making that supports sustainable business growth and unlocks new business opportunities.

    Get in touch and drive your business forward sustainably!

    Want to learn how we can support your business and environmental goals? Get in touch, and let’s discuss how a Resource-wise Digital Strategy can help guide your business toward a more sustainable future.

    Matter Advisory

    Jonna Tötterman, CEO
    +358 40 967 3338

    Trail Openers

    Ville Nordberg, CEO
     +358 50 506 00170

    Sources

    *Lancet University

    **Server-side: Antonio Vetro, Luca Ardito, Maurizio Morisio, Giuseppe Procaccianti, et al. Monitoring it power consumption in a research center: seven facts. 
    Client-side: Giuseppe Procaccianti, Antonio Vetro, Luca Ardito, and Maurizio Morisio. Profiling power consumption on desktop computer systems.

  • Business within the planetary boundaries

    Business within the planetary boundaries

    The Earth is burning. We are now facing alarming levels of biodiversity loss, global warming, and pollution that are all threatening the life on Earth.

    The brutal fact is that nature’s carrying capacity is weakening. The Ocean has absorbed 90% of human caused warming and has started to warm alarmingly fast up to 2000m deep impacting on the marine ecosystems. Earth’s water cycle is changing, which is creating unknown results, shrinking cloud cover, and increasing droughts and floods. We are also facing globally more extreme storms and wildfires. The biodiversity loss is spreading and soil health is declining, and already today, food and water security is an issue in different locations around the world. On top of this, the chemical and plastic pollution is widespread around the globe, influencing increasing ecosystem and human health issues.

    All these phenomenons are connected.

    Human activity has endangered Earth’s critical and interlinked biophysical processes called the Planetary boundaries that regulate the stability and resilience of the planet. In 2023 six our of nine planetary boundaries had crossed the limit of the safe operating space. But this data has not been visible in the current business metrics or targets.

    Planetary boundaries

    Visualisation by MATTER from The Stockholm Resilience Center’s materials.

    We have looked at nature as an unlimited resource, undervaluing its foundational role for supporting all life.

    However, 100% of all human activity is dependent on nature.

    Finance and insurance sectors have already calculated that inaction to solve the planetary crisis is and will be more expensive than mitigation and transition efforts. For example, an estimated 50% of the global GDP is directly dependent on nature, and the planetary crisis is disrupting industries worldwide.

    Clearly, a transformation is happening in the operating space. Now the question is how much do we try to lead it. While it is important to learn to navigate with the risks, we also need to lead towards opportunities and prosperity.

    To thrive within the planetary boundaries demands a change in the world views, business logic, operations and behaviours.

    At Matter, we think that businesses will be the key actors in driving the change by creating the solutions that the world really needs. We think that the sustainability transition is full of opportunities, for example:

    1. Wise and efficient use of resources with circular economy will generate new business models, innovations, services and value networks.
    2. Bioregion and industry level visions and transformative innovations will form new business ecosystems and value networks.
    3. Smart and sustainable business with data and digitalisation.
    4. Regenerative organisations and operations will increase the ability for fast learning and resilience in change.
    5. Solutions and services that will solve carbon capture, pollution and biochemical flow issues.
    6. Curating sustainable and healthy behaviours and lifestyles.
    7. Innovation, value creation and productisation for what the world needs.
    8. Healthy nutrition from sustainable food systems.
    9. New services that halt loss of nature by scaling regeneration and restoration of ecosystems, such as marine, soils, forests and wetlands.


    Sustainability is becoming an integral element in life and business – transforming us. In the end, this transformation is a lot about humans. How we will organise our strategies, organisations, business operations, collaborate and create value with our networks, and curate life within the planetary boundaries with our products and services.

    When we get it right, the results will increase well-being and safety, create more resilient and thriving businesses with happier employees, and secure the life for the future generations.

    Do you have a complex problem in mind?

    Jonna Tötterman
    Chief Impact Officer
    jonna.totterman@matteradvisory.fi
    LinkedIn

    Jonna Tötterman

    Cover photo by NASA on Unsplash.