Convergence of green performance and business sustainability

Technology and business trends today.

Enterprises continue to strive hard to create a greener working environment through energysaving IT solutions that have eco-friendly designs and functionality. While document management helps save paper use, it continues to be a principal focus for enterprises looking for smarter and more intelligent uses of new techniques, which allow them to store, manage, protect and share digital documents in a safer, more efficient and reliable way.

Fuji Xerox has been making concerted efforts over the past few years to demonstrate that environmental and business goals don’t have to be competing objectives, but can be integrated into one business model.

Fuji Xerox Hong Kong has undertaken a wide range of green initiatives starting around year 2000, including energy- onsumption reduction in operations, evaluations of suppliers’ ‘green’ credentials, and adopting a ‘zero-landfill’ recycling policy for used products by establishing its own recycling centre in Tsuen Wan. It also recorded a total yearly 7% reduction of CO2 emissions during the fiscal 2009 compared to 2008, despite of increased business, demonstrating what is possible for companies upon integrating environmental impact reduction targets into mainstream management.

Doing more with less, achieving better returns on investment and lowering total cost of ownership have all been key focus areas for our customers.

Setting Role Model For The Industry
The company aims to set an example for others. It has devised a system for evaluating the environmental performance of its contractors and suppliers, which helps guide its procurement decisions, encouraging partners to ‘go green’.

It also conducts a survey among channel partners to find out how ‘green’ they are and identify any room for improvement.

The company has also developed the Ecological Workplace online tool, to help choose and run energyefficient document management solutions, helping end-users reduce energy consumption and operating costs.

Over recent years, the company has won a host of other government and industry awards, starting with the internationally-recognised ISO 14001 Environmental Management System certification in 2003 for its work in integrating environmental considerations into long-term business objectives.

In 2008, Fuji Xerox Hong Kong was the first company in the document management and printing solution industry to win the coveted, governmentsupported Environmental Performance Award at the Hong Kong Awards for Industries. This recognises Fuji Xerox Hong Kong’s longstanding commitment to implementing effective green strategies, which is reflected across the company’s operations and in its customer offerings.

Technology And The Environment
Fuji Xerox has seen greater investment in document management solutions from customers. With these market realities in mind, a new strategy was announced in 2010 encouraging customers to “buy fewer machines’’ and instead, make better use of intelligent software solution such as ApeosWare Management Suite. This has redefined the rules of the industry, moving from a boxed mentality to a solution perspective, raising the bar for excellence and effectiveness in multifunction device management.

This not only marked a new era for the industry, but also set out a new business direction for the company, fulfilling its green objectives and demonstrating the commitment to environmental protection.

Green & Healthy Office
In line with Fuji Xerox’s green approach, the new solution features an Eco Copy (see graphic) function on a simple, user-friendly interface, which provides features such as duplex and multi-up copying in few simple steps to reduce paper consumption. The interface display encourages the use of duplex and multi-up printing by telling the user how many sheets of paper have been saved.

A basic advantage of the new solution is that all features require only a single server, which means a reduction in power use and CO2 footprint. With Fuji Xerox new solutions, organisations can set rules that minimise print use by exploiting multi-up and doublesided copying as well as controlling the volume of colour printing.

“Going Green is not as hard as corporations might think,” says Henry Kwok, General Manager of Marketing at Fuji Xerox (Hong Kong) Limited. “Our new simple Green Solution evokes user consciousness about the environment and effectively reduces paper wastage.’’ This green focus and all the key features form a holistic strategy to effectively manage documents in the more demanding environment of the future office. Fuji Xerox through
its latest solution is now able to address each of the key user trends that are emerging in the changing workplace and aim to deliver improved company workflows and more effective business operations.

Extra data security protection by Fuji Xerox
Customers are concerned about data security in the multifunction document management solutions.

Fuji Xerox, a trusted partner to customers, has stringent disposal and recycling processes of MFD hard disk in place to ensure the greatest possible protection of customer data, which includes:

1) Upon reaching its end-of-lifetime, the MFD will be shipped to the Fuji Xerox Eco-Manufacturing Co, Ltd. in Thailand where it is taken to pieces and recycled.

2) Dismantling the hard disk from the MFD and returning it to the customer for self-handling 

3) Implementing international standard “3D Procedures” – ‘Degauss’, ‘Destroy’ and ‘Disposal’ of the hard disk in front of the customer.

Fuji Xerox Eco-Manufacturing Co, Ltd. achieved its zero-landfill goal by placing an even greater focus on recycling. Its facility in Thailand, which is at the heart of the company’s International Resource Recycling System, has reached recycling rates of 99.8 per cent, generating 21,200 tons of re-usable resources from used products and consumables processed in FY2009.

With climate change looming as a top-of-mind concern for most people, Fuji Xerox’s new direction will further help to meet its target of CO2 emission reductions of 30 per cent by 2020.