BMS releases embedded carbon emissions software

BMS Solutions has unveiled a new carbon emissions reporting software product that it is touting as the first to integrate emissions reporting into businesses’ activity management.

Called Cintellate, the product measures Australian organisations’ carbon footprints using data collection, measurement and reporting functions.

It aims to improve emissions reporting efficiencies in enterprise and was developed to assist companies meet the new National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System Act’s new reporting requirements, which give companies until October 31, 2009, to submit their emission report to the Commonwealth.

Managing director of BMS, Mike Moore, said the primary purpose of the software was to provide a common platform for organisations to manage all of the sustainability-related activities within their organisation.

“That can go all the way from corporate governance type audits and business planning down to things like incident management, inspections, competency management, meetings through to stakeholders, communications and of course the greenhouse gas side of things which is the most recent aspect of it,” he said.

Moore said enterprises and organisations generally lacked experience and knowledge with regards to emissions reporting, and didn’t understand why existing spreadsheet solutions were not a sustainable option.

“The sorts of spreadsheets you need to do this kind of work end up being absolutely huge and by the time you’ve gone through and verified it you’ve expended an awful lot of effort just checking the numbers," he said.

“A database makes that much easier and the numbers are automated, it’s built into the workflow people undertake. Everything else we know of today treats reporting as an auxillary task, what we do is record the data as it happens so it’s much more embedded.”

Research firm Gartner agrees the understanding of emissions reporting - even within the tech-savvy ICT industry - is poor. It recently said most IT managers and organisations in Australia had yet to wake up to the corporate requirements for reporting on and improving greenhouse gas emissions.

Gartner also recently rated the “greenness” of global ICT vendors, and found that the industry was finally waking up to a low carbon economy, but the services sector is still sound asleep.

Moore said BMS partners, predominantly consultants, would benefit from the new product by embedding themselves further within organisations through the offering of more services.