Business Analytics & Information Systems

What is the Relationship Between Sustainability & Business Analytics?

Business Analytics uses technology-supported techniques for exploring, analyzing, integrating, and reporting social and environmental performance data to facilitate decision-making and enterprise-wide management.

We will need the power of BAIS in order to optimize the positive social and environmental impact of business. However, we need to better understand how information systems can support sustainability and ESG performance--and why this is needed now more than ever.

BAIS experts have long observed that Business Analytics & Information systems (BAIS) is "confronted with new demands from business units, customers and employees. Sustainable information systems management covers not only the economical, but also the ecological and social perspective, extending traditional concepts of (BAIS)" (Business & Information Systems Engineering, 2009) and the key role BAIS can play in "the sustainable development of enterprises from the perspective of integrating the economy, environment, and society" (Sustainability, 2020).

BAIS directly assists in environmental and social sustainability practices through activities such as:

• Green enterprise computing

• Green information systems and technology

• Environmental intelligent management systems

• Business analytics tools (Internet of things, data visualization, data mining, individual footprint)

• Optimizing user energy in data storage centers and cloud infrastructures

• Sustainability awareness and environmental behavior incentives through information technology (IT)

Why Sustainability Needs Business Analytics

The sustainability challenges we face--from climate change to water insecurity to labor rights--can be understood as the result of a disconnect between business and the environment and communities in which it operates. BAIS is uniquely capable of bridging this divide by making information about social and environmental risks, impacts and opportunities more explicit, credible and accessible to decision-makers.Microsoft's AI for Earth initiative is a powerful example of how BAIS can bridge the information gap and accelerate our ability to protect the environment and safeguard human health with advanced technology. There is substantial potential for sustainable MIS to bring together business processes, resource planning, direct and indirect activities, and extended supply chains to effect positive changes across the entire activities of governments, organizations, and individuals.MIS has helped corporations become more environmentally and socially sustainable by:

• Serving as a knowledge link between information, organization, and the natural environment

• Implementing sustainable BAIS initiatives as a part of a corporate strategy (e.g. proper tracking and managing of e-waste)

• Creating Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission tracking systems within a logistics department

• Building metrics and indices for supplier evaluation on sustainability

Case Study: How Brazil’s first AI for Earth grantee plans to use AI to better conserve precious rivers

Microsoft AI for Earth is supports projects that "use AI to change the way people and organizations monitor, model, and manage Earth’s natural systems." They have awarded funds and support to over 1,000 projects in 120 countries. Learn more about how machine learning is empowering forest protection in Brazil.