06/29/2008

Catalyst Resources released a "green audit" of their SaaS collaborative workspace project. The Rich Internet Application (RIA) enabled Catalyst Resources to reduce its carbon impact footprint by 21,000 lbs of CO2 per month, while reducing expenses and increasing billable activities by nearly 20%.

ebizQ received the following:

Since 2002 Catalyst Resources has evolved and enhanced their secure online collaboration, project management and document sharing solution for use by remote employees and select clients. Recently Catalyst began to track how the web collaboration solution impacted the company's greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the need for air travel and local commuting.

"When we ran the analysis, we were pleased with by the significant reduction in our own carbon footprint." said Paul Giurata, Managing Partner of Catalyst Resources. "The question then became how we could broaden the green impact, by expanding the solution from an internal resource, into a customizable team space to be used by our entire client base."

While a "green strategy" to reduce carbon emissions is becoming a must for businesses in both the public and private sectors, changing individual behavior is challenging. Catalyst recognized that to get clients to adopt the web collaboration solution, it would need to provide a better user experience and enhanced productivity as compared to the traditional process of email, face-to-face meetings and hard copy documents. The implementation would also need to be scalable so that Catalyst could add additional clients to the system without adding additional support staff.

Catalyst redesigned their collaboration solution into a SaaS platform with an RIA interface. The multi-tenant SaaS implementation scales to any size and handles business needs both internally and beyond the firewall. Workspaces can be configured by each client to incorporate their own branding, as well as their own industry-related terms and language. Permissions control who sees and has access to what content. The RIA interface minimizes the training requirements, provides fast performance, and is natural to use.

After implementing the new SaaS RIA web collaboration solution, Catalyst was able to reduce their business travel and commuting across seven clients to achieve an average CO2 reduction of 21,000+ lbs per month. (roughly the amount produced by 3 US households in one year). See detailed chart on the Catalyst Resources SaaS Blog at http://www.catalystresources.com/saas-blog/going_green_using_saas_and_rias

Importantly, the web collaboration solution designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions, also aligned with other business objectives including improving productivity and business agility, reducing costs, and expanding reach. In one month alone, Catalyst saved 70% in travel costs and increased billable activities by 20%.

Other benefits included:

Expand Recruiting Talent Pool - The web-based SaaS collaboration platform reduces the dependency on recruiting local talent. Catalyst now has team members in Vancouver, Portland, NYC, St. Louis, and Atlanta.
Broaden Customer Reach - Due to the need for frequent on-site meetings, customers had to be located to within 2 hrs of Catalyst’s offices in NYC, Boulder, CO and Silicon Valley. With SaaS web collaboration, Catalyst now serves customers throughout the U.S.
Efficient Business Development - Without a hectic travel schedule, business development staff can spend more time directly interfacing with potential clients and less time in route.
Increase Efficiency - Without web collaboration, travel time was using up to 20% of staff time.
Increase Profitability - With the same capacity, Catalyst is able to increase billings by 15%‐20%

"The Catalyst web collaboration solution is a great example of using RIAs and SaaS to solve a common business problem " said Giurata. "As governments move to cap carbon-based emissions, businesses will need to track their emissions and adopt environmentally friendly business practices. As demonstrated by the Catalyst Resources green audit, a SaaS web collaboration solution can meet these requirements and save costs at the same time."