Enablon Funding Signals Growth in Sustainability Market

By David A. Kelly and Heather Ashton, Upside Research

It is nearly impossible to exist in today’s world without some mention of “green” or “eco” initiatives. Corporate IT has not been immune to this sustainability movement, and in many cases hold the key to transforming a business into one that reflects the new goals for reduced consumption of resources like energy and water.

Unlike Enterprise Resource Planning or Business Process Management, where technology was used to automate existing processes, Sustainability is a brand new discipline for most organizations. Therefore, it can be a significant undertaking for an enterprise to adopt sustainability practices. An emerging category of enterprise software aims to facilitate the implementation of sustainability initiatives across companies and their supply chains. This group of solutions is loosely organized under the category of Environmental Resources Management, and includes an array of vendors that come from such diverse technology areas as Facilities and Network Management, Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), Corporate Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), and ERP.

Emerging from a heritage in EHS, Enablon has experienced a meteoric rise in the Environmental Resources Management market. The French company has become a leader in carbon management, the focal point for many corporate sustainability initiatives. With more than 250 global customers including Del Monte, Office Depot, Pepsico International, Timberland, and Volkswagen, and thousands of SMEs using its solutions, Enablon is making its own footprint in a market that measures and reduces carbon footprints.

The popularity of this market can be seen from recent investments in the technology. Last month, Enablon secured $15 million in funding from the Environmental Technologies Fund. The financing will support the company’s further expansion in Europe, North America and Asia along with increased product research and development, specifically in the area of cloud computing, which is an important delivery method for the sweet spot of carbon management: the supply chain.

Sustainability extends beyond the corporation, and solutions like Enablon are targeting supply chains, where much of the environmental impact of a product is determined. The Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), a group that promotes an industry code of environmental conduct for global electronics supply chains, recently adopted Enablon for its Carbon Reporting System. The web-based system can be used by the hundreds of companies that are part of the electronics supply chains to submit their carbon data to gain compliance.

As sustainability continues to be a focal point, look for continued efforts to engage the supply chain in resource tracking of carbon, energy, water, and chemicals. Enablon faces competition from other emerging players in the field, including Hara Software and ENXSuite, and established enterprise software vendors SAP, Oracle, and CA Technologies. The playing field is currently wide and deep, and there is the expectation that consolidation will continue as these solution providers create comprehensive systems to help enterprises and supply chains measure, track, analyze, and reduce their energy footprints in efforts toward more sustainable operations.