Paving a smoother road to carbon neutrality

On the racetrack, this team competes to win in the FIA Formula E World Championship. Off the track, it's committed to fighting climate change, accelerating the transition to clean, secure, and affordable renewable energy. Thousands of fans have already pledged in solidarity to reduce their carbon footprint. To match that enthusiasm, the team has its own transparent and aggressive carbon-reduction actions.

The team is certified as carbon neutral but had to commit to rigorous reporting guidelines that presented unexpected difficulties:

• Manual, cumbersome data collection and reporting processes
• Lengthy reporting spreadsheets and extra time spent on reporting duties that required staff to go above normal responsibilities.

These hurdles made it difficult to identify opportunities for improvement. The team was looking for ways to overhaul the process to make reporting on carbon emissions more streamlined and get easier access to insights.

Tackling complex data challenges was core to our partnership with the team. We used our skills in data science and technology to uncover insights that strengthen performance in the championship. From unlocking competitive intelligence from radio exchanges to examining driver preparation for the city tracks in the simulator, we used advanced analytics to help the team make fast, accurate decisions.

Carbon-emissions reporting is another data problem that the team needed to tackle. We quickly identified how we could help ease the team's pains by embedding automation into the process. For example, the carbon impact from air travel previously required someone to manually calculate the distances between airports and contact air carriers to get the carbon impact per passenger for each leg. This led to complex spreadsheets that needed further editing to create the final report.

Based on our findings we worked with the reporting team to automate the process for collecting, cleaning, merging, and analyzing carbon-emission data and reporting. We also made the approach user friendly so the team can easily access insight on its carbon consumption and offset data.

By automating carbon reporting with Genpact, the team had a more efficient approach to championing the battle for a more environmentally sustainable world. We removed the human error that was creeping into the team's reporting processes and dramatically reduced the effort required to collate vast volumes of data and information. We turned cumbersome reporting into a business tool that the team could use to capture its carbon data.

The revamped carbon reporting process enabled the Formula E racing team to:

• Make better decisions with more timely insights
• Identify carbon-saving opportunities and raise issues with management at the right time
• Cut time spent collecting carbon data by 50%
• Give team members more time to focus on race-day success
• Eliminate employee frustration and restore satisfaction

The path to renewing its annual carbon-neutral status with the Carbon Trust is now substantially easier. But our carbon-emissions work with the team didn't end there.

Both of our organizations wanted to find more ways to use data to reduce the team's emissions. And so, the next stage of the journey began: to create a carbon-emissions calculator that could help the team make more informed and environmentally sustainable travel choices.

The calculator gathered data such as the distance between two locations and used a machine-learning model to predict what the journey would involve and gave the team travel recommendations based on carbon output. Each user could see just how big or small their footprint would be when traveling between races or for business meetings.

The calculator helped the company make decisions between journey time and carbon use. And the additional visibility helped with resource planning and deciding who would go to a race or whether a meeting could be held virtually.

Each season, the team sets a carbon-reduction target. Employees could use the calculator to contribute to the goal.

Technology plays a crucial role throughout these programs. “The key to solving climate change is to look at it with a data lens and a change management approach," says Sanjay Srivastava, Genpact's chief digital strategist. “Our work with the Formula E team shows that when you apply intelligent automation and advanced analytics to fundamental challenges like climate change, you can help people make choices that have a lasting impact on their communities and planet."

As the team inspires more people to adopt sustainable practices, it also offers businesses a shining example of how they too can use data and tech for the good of their organizations and the planet.