Web Technology and Softwares:Green cost cutting measures

Energy consumes a significant portion of a company’s expenses; it’s the energy your company uses, converts, and discharges that produces its profits. Getting a handle on how you use energy, how much energy costs you, and how much energy you waste can be a real eye-opener. Small changes in energy usage can have dramatic effects on a business.

Analytics
Many business intelligence providers offer sustainability management tools designed to measure, manage, and provide data on key energy, environmental, economic, and social indicators. In addition to helping you meet your company’s green goals, sustainability management tools can also help you use your resources more economically.

Automating reporting will ensure end-to-end data gathering and presentation to those who need the analytical data. Performance monitoring can be used to look at how energy is used within your business and makes you aware of how various areas are
meeting planned goals.

Real-time energy monitoring can help to reduce a company’s overall energy consumption pinpointing where energy is being used with no real benefit, such as leaving production machinery running when workloads are low, heating areas when not in use, or fully lighting areas that only need a minimum amount of light. Real-time energy monitoring lets you identify which facilities are underutilized or operating at peak usage, allowing you to make production decisions on the fly.

Supply chain monitoring may seem counterintuitive, but not paying attention to a supplier’s energy use could result in higher production costs for your company. It can also help companies uncover anomalies early, signaling possible production delays.

The ability of business analytics to consolidate data into quickly understood information can be applied to the greening process. By monitoring current usage against desired goals, and tracking your usage over time, you can use business analytics to increase your overall efficiency, as well as to document any compliance goals you need to meet.

The Cloud
The average business PC only uses up to 20% of its computing capacity. Most of the time, corporate PCs sit idle, consuming energy but not accomplishing much of anything. We’ll get to that point later.

Cloud computing is promoted as a way to store data so that it’s available to any device, anytime, anywhere a connection to the cloud (Internet) is available. Although that’s true, that’s only half the picture. The cloud is also a post-effective way to provide software services, virtualization, and scalable computing resources. Instead of purchasing new, faster desktop computers for everyone, you can grab the necessary computing power from the cloud. Remember that 20% usage rate? Move to cloud-based services and you extend the life of your PCs. You obtain a green benefit by reducing short-term recycling needs; an economic benefit by reducing short-term PC purchases; and a long-term green effect by concentrating your computing needs into a more easily manageable central site.

There are powerful economic factors pushing us toward cloud computing. One of the major reasons is the more efficient use of power by cloud computing providers. Spreading computing loads across many users as well as time zones improves hardware utilization, while at the same time spreading fixed costs over more servers and users.

Cloud-based services aren’t limited to classic office productivity applications. A wide range of commercial services is available to address almost the entire range of business needs. By moving these applications to the cloud, you also open up the possibility of true mobility. Some of your staff may be able to perform some or all of their work from home, reducing the overall energy footprint at the office. And of course the cloud keeps everyone connected when they’re traveling.

Web Analytics tools to measure data

Web analytics is a basic building block of e-commerce that is undergoing a significant transformation. Web retailers still use internally developed and vendor-supplied programs to measure such important metrics as site traffic, conversion rates and average tickets. But retailers are using web analytics to understand a broader universe of data. There’s a lot more real-time data to measure today, and analytics is the tool that will help retailers measure their performance in new channels such as mobile and social commerce.
Historically, web managers have used analytics to measure customer behavior on their primary e-commerce sites. But with new and improved analytics tools, retailers now measure interactions with shoppers across such channels as e-mail, display advertising, search marketing, mobile commerce and social media.
Analytics will be used going forward to measure more data on a real-time basis and that will give web merchants insight into immediate customer behavior and how that behavior has changed over time. Shoppers now interact with retailers through new channels, such as mobile commerce and social media, and will generate new types of behavior web merchants will need to track.
In the past two years, consolidation has spurred more investment by analytics firms, especially for social media tools. There has been resurgence in research and development on web analytics among the various software developers in the past year, and consolidation among vendors has played a role. The new software releases are easier to use, let users measure and monitor multiple channels in more finite detail and look much more closely at individual buying behavior across a broader spectrum.
Retailers can benefit by making these increasingly sophisticated social analytics tools available to more employees. The more individuals within a retail organization that understand and use analytics, the retailer will have a better understanding of what’s driving customer behavior and their purchasing patterns.
The goal of better analytics reporting and understanding remains a top priority for some retailers, especially in using analytics to measure e-commerce and social commerce metrics on a tight deadline. Retailers also need to avoid information overload.
To streamline web analytics program, collect and measure data based on the top priority of each e-commerce department. Best Buy now uses analytics to measure transaction and traffic data more precisely, view data on a priority basis and extract the best data to act on. Incorporating top user requirements and effectively measuring what’s happening across new channels, such as mobile commerce and social media.