Reaching four months into the new year, it’s already inarguable looking back that 2020 was a year of massive upheaval. The Great Pause. The Interminable Isolation. It was a long, stressful, often unbelievable year, most of which for many of us was lived out on Zoom. But in all that seemingly chaotic time, what can we find as possibly positive takeaways?
I think one big word that last year gave to this year is reduced: reduced staff, reduced resources, reduced capacity, reduced spread at Thanksgiving. But in that, just maybe, lies the proverbial silver lining. We’re learning that in many cases we can get by, and in some cases truly excel, without as much as we thought we needed.
Our massive reduction in transportation is one example of an unfortunate circumstance presenting us better, more sustainable possibilities. A recent article in Bloomberg mentions that by the end of 2020 our greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) came in 9.2% lower than in 2019 – in fact, the lowest they’ve been since 1983 and the biggest drop ever recorded.
That emissions reduction isn’t tied to a shrinking economy: Our economy was about 40% its current size in 1983, and we’re expecting to see GDP shrink by about 4% in 2020. In other words, we’ve learned we can produce roughly on par without commuting nearly as much. (I’ll grant that we haven’t seen GDP drop since ’09, so it’s not all rosy.) Maybe that’s a lesson we needed to learn, just not the hard way.
The question, then: Can we extrapolate that waste reduction to other facets of, say, business? Think technology: It might seem counterintuitive that we can reduce technology spend in light of our increased dependence on software this year. But it’s not so much reducing new technology additions as it is increasing the value derived from existing tech – making it work better to drive more profit.
[bctt tweet=”it’s not so much reducing new technology additions as it is increasing the value derived from existing tech” username=”gointerject”]
Something we come across often with our waste industry clients: route management software carries fleet and routing stats that business teams need to do route profitability reports, and ERP software carries the other pieces of data. To spin up a report, analysts export data from each software individually and do the manual work in Excel. But first, they have to deal with a reporting app built into the ERP or routing software, which is never as good as Excel. So it’s a multi-step process. And a pain.
What we hear from waste companies suffering this pain is frustration with their software packages, whether the routing software or the ERP or both. And often they’re looking for new apps.
Certainly replacements are a must sometimes, but those times should be few and far between. Replacing apps increases time, effort, and spend all across the board – definitely not a less is more mentality.
Really, most waste companies’ apps are working well, doing pretty much what they were supposed to. But as organizational complexity increases, new needs arise that call for more control and flexibility from the software. In many cases, it’s just that the different apps don’t talk to each other well. The point is, very few instances actually call for software replacement. Almost all the time, less is more. We’ve learned this by taking close looks at processes and where they break down. Spoiler alert: it’s in the steps between the software.
There’s a power play here made abundantly clear by the lessons of Covid: You don’t have to buy more to achieve more. Instead, we can look at software like we do our homes or vehicles: driving more ROI by improving what we’ve got already. That’s sustainability. That’s getting more with less.
If your company has new software projects on the horizon, or even old ones put on hold thanks to Covid, it’s worth having outside eyes on the processes your software involves. It’s likely we can do a lot with what you have already.
Bill Erickson is Interject’s communications manager
For more info on Interject’s solutions, email communications@gointerject.com