A new day has dawned for Africa’s energy community with a major milestone in the use of information and communications technology to assist companies understand and reduce their carbon footprint – whilst tapping into innovative solutions to create long-term saving opportunities. This will go a long way in ensuring enhanced sustainability performance and growth.
…..partnership between systems giants takes sustainable energy use to ‘cloud-nine’ by helping entities identify performance gaps and seize emerging growth opportunities.
This giant-step forward comes through a ground-breaking partnership between Business Connexion, the continent’s leading system integrator of innovative business solutions and PE International’s SoFi software. The global leader in integrated product and enterprise sustainability performance.
Announced on the sidelines of the 2013 Africa Energy Indaba, in Sandton South Africa, this collaboration will enable businesses to identify sustainability performance lapses and help them realise and take full advantage of new opportunities for improvement.
Industry experts say the partnership, once it reaches full capacity; utilisation could generate up to 30% of the entities’ total turnover in terms of job creation, business growth concepts and opportunities. In monetary terms, that’s an estimated value of R2bn, annually pumped into economic growth.
It also resonated well with the calls of the Minister of Energy of South Africa Ms Dipuo Peters during the Indaba, for the private sector to partner with government and other social partners for sustainability in its efforts to address energy poverty and access in Africa.
The partnership, could also not have come at a better time than when the world was crying out for effective and efficient solutions to unleash the, as yet, largely untapped great potential of Africa which hold the key to addressing the various energy concerns of the continent and beyond.
This is rendered even more urgent by the fact that though Africa has immense resources to drive the continent’s efforts to ensure secure, affordable, cleaner and sustainable energy access to its people and industry, many organisations and key role players in this space were still grappling with capacity issues which hinder progress.
The partnership therefore will help businesses with innovative solutions; contribute significantly to resolving this imbalance. It will also contribute to the global quest to promote an affordable, stable and environmentally sensitive energy system for the greatest benefit of all.
With a strong belief in innovation and a holistic client offering, Business Connexion creates energy efficient solutions for clients that optimise their energy assets, reduce their carbon footprints and create long-term saving opportunities.
“We offer fully integrated energy and consulting solutions but we’re also a very progressive business, and we’re constantly looking for new ways to improve the way we do business. SoFi software is a tool to aggregate enterprise sustainability data and performance for energy, carbon water and other environmental, social and financial indicators across company operations,” said Vanessa Olver, Deputy CEO at Business Connexion.
Jaco Moolman, the organisation’s managing executive, indicated that clients will get full understanding of their energy sustainability footprint from board level to the ground floor; be it issues of effluent, water, waste and other environmental issues.
“It assists our clients to be highly aware of how they can improve their business; from human capital, equipment to resources. This creates the right behaviours. What’s unique is the completeness of our partners who have been around since the advent of sustainability.”
The unique SoFi content libraries for peer benchmarking and sustainability project selection amplify the Business Connexion services within Energy and Industry Solutions and Business Consulting Businesses.
The services being amplified include energy efficiency offerings where automation and tooling optimise energy consumption and Sustainability Consulting and Reporting.
The partnership, clearly, puts Business Connexion in the unique position to offer a full range of services from one point of contact in Africa and this will result in direct benefits for its clients. As Africa’s leading provider of Data Centre facilities, Cloud Computing Services and a leader in custom application development, Business Connexion powered by SoFi software will be taking sustainability into the Cloud.
Johannes Gediga, PE International Regional Sales Manager, noted that Africa’s energy resources were being depleted and there was an urgent need for interventions that will ensure systems were in place to tap into opportunities for renewable and alternative energy sources.
“This unique partnership allows us to bring together all the unique opportunities and our vast experiences to the table to share best practice with our counterparts, help companies strengthen capacity to identify sustainability performance gaps and seize new opportunities for improvement and growth.”
PE International’s SoFi software has been ranked in the top five energy, carbon and sustainability solutions 2013 for the fifth consecutive year [The Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) Report, 2013]
Written by: Musa Ndlangamandla – Transform SA Ad Sales/Editorial Executive.
Musa is a senior journalist from Swaziland and until January 2012 he was Chief Editor of The Swazi Observer Group of Newspapers. He is a former advisor and speech writer to King Mswati III. Musa studied Law and holds a number of certificates from leading schools of Journalism. He has travelled to over 35 countries on assignment. He also writes as a freelancer for various leading publications.