The article below was written by Michael Dixon of Dixon Environmental who attended Enviance's User Group Meeting, "Envision". Enjoy. Can You Make a Quantitative Business Case For Your Enviance Solution? Michael R. Dixon, P.E.
Dixon Environmental At the Envision 2006 panel discussion entitled "Ideas for Developing a business Case to Expand Enviance Across Your Organization", I listened with great interest to the various ways that companies pitch Enviance to their management. Of course everyone has been teeing up their justification with the warm and fuzzy "compliance assurance and certification" approach and lately adding to the old stand-by, scary "fines and prison" penalty approach, the dreaded "Sarbanes-Oxley Act" implications. However, I was particularly intrigued by Rhonda Owens' presentation on a financial justification for a Title V solution at DuPont. Not only was the Enviance-based solution a fraction of the cost of a "home grown" system but DuPont also justified the selection with a financial evaluation at two (2) of its plants. This evaluation indicated that a Return on Investment (ROI) between 22% and 97% would result by the avoidance of hiring additional engineers to track the vast number of Title V permit requirements at these plants. Surely results like these are what caught the attention of DuPont's management.
At the reception that evening I chatted with Leighton Barnish, the global environmental manager for Syngenta, and he really drove home the point that you need to make a business case in terms of savings. Leighton said that "in today's competitive global economy, any environmental information solution needs to be justified by its contribution to the bottom line". Hearing all this talk of ROI, I was motivated to initiate a similar analysis for our branded solution, MONITOR™ powered by Enviance. Our initial MONITOR™ offering is now one (1) year old and we have seven (7) chemical companies with nine (9) individual plants subscribing to our service to assist in complying with EPA's Miscellaneous Organic NESHAP (MON), a Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standard for the control of Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) from organic chemical manufacturing industry. With this baseline on our initial offering of MONITOR™ for MON, coupled with our history of providing these MACT services to our clients, we were able to better quantify the savings for our subscribers. Briefly, we looked at the next five (5) years which encompasses 2½ years preparing for compliance plus another 2½ years documenting initial compliance and submitting on-going semi-annual compliance reports. While there are a wide-range of plant sizes and potential MON burdens, we focused on a typical plant size; not too small, not too large. Without MONITOR™ we estimated the administrative costs (preparing planning reports, verifying regulatory interpretations, providing training, submitting compliance reports, etc.) over the next five (5) years. We assumed for our estimate that the plant would use consultants to conduct the work; and we believe that if the plants hired additional personnel instead, the costs would likely be even higher once salaries, benefits and overheads were considered. Our subscribers who use MONITOR™ to prepare these reports can expect to save, on average, approximately $150,000; resulting in an ROI of over 40% per year. Better still -- the on-going ROI is far greater! Larger plants will realize a higher ROI; while smaller ones will see a slightly lower ROI. Clearly the business case for MONITOR™ for MON compliance can be calculated based on administrative cost savings alone, thus justifying the modest investment. Of course MONITOR™ provides the compliance assurance and certification functionality you come to expect with Enviance, but to really sell the solution to management, the ROI analysis is all you need! Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. In today's competitive business climate good business decisions need to be grounded in solutions that provide measurable results that can be quantified as savings (or at least cost avoidance) to your company. At Dixon Environmental we continue to roll-out solutions utilizing the Enviance platform that not only add value but provide a significant return on investment. Our latest offering for the New Source Performance Standard (NSPS) Subpart YYY for the control of VOCs from wastewater has been specifically designed to leverage Dixon Environmental's own web content, Enviance's data management power, and our expertise with the chemical industry to provide a significant and measurable ROI to our subscribers. If you have questions or want to contact Mike Dixon directly about this article, he can be reached at: Email: mdixon@dixonenvironmental.com
Website: www.dixonenvironmental.com
Phone: (877) 919-7200
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