Helping businesses drive their sustainability forward

As a system integrator, you’ll understand the need to deliver competitive advantage to your clients – and from your perspective, that means demonstrating the return on investment you represent. This can be achieved in a variety of different areas: for example, according to Forrester research, every dollar invested into user experience generates a return of $100. However, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd in a saturated marketplace and get your unique selling points across.

One place where you may be able to find that opportunity is in sustainability, especially as it has become an increasingly important part of modern business in recent years. While MIT has found that 90% of executives recognise the importance of sustainability, only 60% of businesses have a fully-formed sustainability strategy in place. And this gives you the chance to develop and offer integrated solutions that focus on environmental benefits just as much as operational or financial ones.

How to stand out with sustainability

First of all, it’s important to understand the value that businesses can gain from sustainable products, solutions and services. Part of it is reputational: amid heightened regulatory and social pressure, businesses can no longer be seen to be paying lip-service to environmental efforts. A meaningful, demonstrable commitment is now the expected norm, and businesses may turn to integrators to access solutions that deliver on that commitment.

But there are three other benefits that companies want from investment into sustainable solutions, all of which can form part of your strategy:

Profitability: McKinsey research has found that a good sustainability strategy can help businesses cut costs by 60%. That could be down to lower energy demands from more efficient hardware, or being able to recycle and remanufacture devices to extend their usable lifespan. Either way, the potential benefits to the bottom line can be significant.

Simplicity: specialist providers often deliver solutions that are very narrow in scope, which forces businesses to deal with several different providers to reach their sustainability goals. Using an integrated, end-to-end service with a comprehensive span of capabilities, delivered through one vendor and a single regular payment, is a much easier option.

Security: every business is aware of how critical it is to protect sensitive data and ensure it can’t fall into the wrong hands. This makes secure disposal and recycling of devices, including certified data destruction, a key selling point that many businesses will be looking for.

How SCC can help

SCC has developed a full suite of sustainability-focused solutions called Recyclea, which is ideal for system integrators just like you. Combining recycling, remarketing and remanufacturing, our end-to-end approach allows businesses to maximise the lifespan of devices, reduce the carbon footprint caused by having to buy new ones, and dispose of any residual data safely and securely. Furthermore, our specialised dashboards allow the scale of the sustainability benefits to be quantified in real-time, so that they can support a business’s environmental credentials.

The Recyclea service is already helping organisations across several sectors improve the sustainability of their day-to-day activities, including:

• Defence: we work with defence contractors to securely wipe data from assets that are no longer required, so that they can be resold or donated without any risk of critical information being shared accidentally.
• Finance: our protected asset disposal, data wiping and secure on-site shredding means that financial organisations can meet stringent data protection regulations, during and after asset lifecycles.
• IT: Recyclea eases the arduous tasks IT providers face in managing large numbers of assets, including the ability to resell devices that are no longer needed to maximise its value and reduce e-waste.
• Healthcare: secure data destruction and responsible recycling helps health trusts and other care providers to meet strict regulations around the disposal of healthcare equipment.

Leading the way in recycling

SCC Recyclea has a proven track-record in helping businesses and system integrators operate in more environmentally friendly ways. In the 2021/22 financial year, we erased data on more than 57,000 devices, redeployed more than 90,000 devices either for reuse by the same customer or by a different party, and securely recycled more than 570 tons of hardware.

Furthermore, early in 2024, we’ll be opening Oscar House, a new bespoke recycling facility that will run entirely on renewable electricity and supporting our goal of sending zero waste to landfill. This state of the art facility will have the capacity management to process circa 1 million devices per year and will become part of our ongoing commitment to making sustainable business a practical reality in every sector – giving system integrators like you a service that can help you stand out in the marketplace.