IBM buys Envizi to help firms automate sustainability reporting

IBM has acquired sustainability data analytics provider Envizi to add to its offerings that help companies measure environmental impact across the entire supply chain.

While financial details of the sale remained undisclosed, the Australian company’s software claims to automate the collection and consolidation of more than five hundred data types and supports major sustainability reporting frameworks.

IBM acknowledged in a statement announcing the acquisition that the various types of data companies need to understand and report on with regards to sustainability initiatives remains “highly fragmented” and “difficult for all relevant parties to access”.

The blue-chip company added that Envizi solves this problem by offering “user-friendly and easily customized dashboards which enable companies to “analyse, manage and report on environmental goals, identify efficiency opportunities and assess sustainability risk.”

Envizi is already being deployed by IBM, the company added, to help it streamline tracking and reporting of its progress against the company’s internal goals in renewable electricity procurement and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction.

IBM claims that when combined with its own AI-powered software, Envizi will also enable its customers to automate feedback generated between their corporate environmental initiatives and the operational endpoints used in daily business operations – which will help make sustainability efforts more scalable.

In this context, IBM said that Envizi would integrate with IBM’s asset management tool Maximo, which helps companies extend the life of their critical assets; IBM Sterling, which helps companies gain supply chain visibility; IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite which helps forecast the impact that environmental conditions have on business operations and IBM Turbonomic, which helps companies automate decision making in terms of where to run enterprise workloads.

IBM’s general manager of AI Applications Kareem Yusuf said that Envizi would help companies turn data into predictive insights that would lead to more intelligent, actionable decision-making being made around sustainability.

“Envizi’s software provides companies with a single source of truth for analysing and understanding emissions data across the full landscape of their business operations and dramatically accelerates IBM’s growing arsenal of AI technologies for helping businesses create more sustainable operations and supply chains,” he added.