Net Zero in Every Process
We wrote earlier this week about ‘Why we are going all in on Net Zero’ discussing the power of the wider Salesforce Platform, and the potential this has to transform ESG management and provide sustainability teams with the power to bring about real change.
With Dreamforce ’23 in full swing, it is a perfect time to take a deep-dive into some of the real-life case studies of how Net Zero Cloud can embed itself alongside every imaginable part of your Salesforce Platform.
From Sales to Marketing, Field Service to Digital Experiences, from using AI for efficiency and insight, to leveraging Net Zero Cloud to create meaningful commercial propositions – we’ve got it covered.
Net Zero in Field Service
The potential of aligning Net Zero Cloud and Field Service is absolutely massive, and one that we’re hugely excited by.
We wrote here about the relationship between Net Zero and Energy & Utilities, and a key piece of the puzzle was the work being carried out by Energy & Utilities businesses in the field: metering changes, battery and solar installations, energy efficiency upgrades, attending faults in the network – the list is endless.
Field Service provides the means with which to manage Service Appointments; Work Orders; intelligent dispatch of your field teams; offline access to knowledge articles; and, with Net Zero Cloud, the ability to directly source the carbon impacts of your field operations.
A typical approach in Net Zero Cloud to manage your fleet emissions would be to record your vehicle assets, their related emissions factors, and their associated energy usages over a reportable period of time. To source the data may require drivers to report their monthly mileage, or to chase finance teams for records of purchased fuel for different vehicles in the fleet. There is scope for missed or inaccurate data, as well as potential inefficient use of time tracking down and entering the information.
With Field Service in place businesses are able to automatically record the distance taken per Service Appointment, and relate this back to the vehicle type used for the journey. This seamlessly provides data which can be fed into Net Zero Cloud to calculate emissions, giving you quick insight into the emission impacts of different vehicles.
You even have the option to understand emissions split by different work order types, want to see the difference between emissions for Meter Installations vs Solar Panel Installations? Combine Field Service and Net Zero Cloud and this can be done without a problem.
Net Zero for your Sales Teams
For years sales teams have been provided budgets for travel and business expenses, and alongside have worked towards their sales targets set by the business.
We’re entering a world where the bottom line of performance now goes beyond pure financial numbers with companies such as Apple, McDonald’s, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch Shell, and Unilever are already linking ESG to executive pay.
We also know that Scope 3 emissions can be a significant proportion of business total footprint. The typical approach to calculating Scope 3 emissions for business travel may be to aggregate the recorded business travel data that a company holds and calculate a footprint for a month, or year for the businesses entire set of business travel.
Using Net Zero Cloud in combination with Sales Cloud provides the means to go one step further and gather business travel emission data for specific sales users – and even specific deals.
Net Zero Cloud is part of the same architecture as Sales Cloud, meaning data objects can be seamlessly linked between the two, with security applied to who can access what information however may be required.
Taking the example of a specific sales deal managed via an Opportunity in Salesforce, the potential is there to give sales users the option to log all related business travel information, whether this be hotel stays, rental cars, flights or taxis and have this automatically translate into a source of carbon accounting information. The data could even be sourced directly via any 3rd party business expensing software your business may use, to remove the manual data entry onus from your sales team.
With the business travel data collected, a Scope 3 Carbon Footprint calculation is performed automatically, but with the capacity to link the source back to the Opportunity.
This provides you with a granular level of detail to report on the emissions related to both the sales user, his team, and specific deals.
In turn you can identify the most and least efficient sales activities, relate them back to the value of earned sales and take action quickly if there are areas where carbon savings can be made in the sales cycle.
Net Zero in your Marketing Campaigns
And how about marketing activity?
Managed via the Campaign object in Salesforce, as standard marketing teams will be used to be able to access Return-on-Investment for different marketing initiatives they’re running.
Creating a relationship between Campaigns and Leads or Opportunities, marketing teams have been able to understand the relationship between the cost of different marketing activities and the revenue they have been bringing into the business.
Return-on-Investment has historically been a calculation based primarily on financial cost vs financial reward.
However, as customers and businesses alike place greater emphasis on the importance of sustainability, the emission costs of marketing activity becomes ever more important as a consideration: a Return-on-Carbon Investment is a metric which becomes possible with Net Zero Cloud.
As it’s Dreamforce week we’ll take an in-person conference as just one example of marketing activity where a measurement of emissions is possible.
Take the various buildings, stages, vehicles and modes of transportation required just to get the event set-up. Then add on the flights, hotel stays, and rented cars used by the tens of thousands of attendees.
All of a sudden this event has a hefty and complex web of emissions data to contend with. While some carbon accounting tools may allow for the aggregation of all this data and the calculation of the emissions into their various scopes, with Net Zero Cloud you can take this insight to the next level.
Collect surveys directly from Campaign Attendees, relate emission data directly back to the event, and begin to understand how emissions relating to the event compare to revenue or engagement gained off the back of it.
