Embedding Sustainability: NTT DATA's Decarbonization Journey with Italy's Top Bank

Creating a sustainable roadmap to guide Italy's historic bank into a greener tomorrow.

This blog highlights NTT DATA's collaboration with one of Italy's oldest banks, Intesa Sanpaolo, a project that earned the team the prestigious NTT DATA Sustainability Award. The goal of the project was to transform Intesa Sanpaolo's complex digital infrastructure by implementing technology solutions to enhance energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. The team developed tools for monitoring emissions and identifying inefficiencies at the application level, including a green coding tool and a CO2 and SCI monitoring tool. These tools, deployed across over 100 applications, have already identified significant potential reductions. This collaboration has introduced a decarbonization strategy for current and future projects and fostered a cultural shift towards sustainability within Intesa Sanpaolo's IT department.

Index

Introduction
Understanding The Client's Needs
Developing a Decarbonization Roadmap
Creating a Lasting Impact
A Cultural Shift Towards Sustainability
Call to Action

As environmental challenges deepen, businesses all over the world are urgently seeking new ways to reduce their carbon footprint and improve energy efficiency. Two-thirds of NTT DATA clients have submitted a net-zero pledge, putting their faith in our expertise to help them decarbonize their business operations. The financial sector is no exception as the demand for sustainability within banks and insurance companies continues to grow.

NTT DATA has been at the forefront of this sustainability movement for decades, helping clients integrate new and advanced technologies to transform their environmental impact. The focus is not only on reducing carbon emissions but also on leveraging technology to create more efficient, resilient, and impactful business operations.

This was certainly our mission as we took our latest digital transformation project with the historic Italian bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, a project which earned the team NTT DATA's Sustainability Award. The success of this project stands as a testament to the power of new and advanced technology in driving a more sustainable future. As businesses face increasing pressure from regulators and stakeholders to shift towards a sustainable development strategy, many key decision-makers feel completely lost about where to start. Intesa Sanpaolo's decarbonization journey serves as an ideal case study for sustainable growth. So, how did NTT DATA guide Italy's one of oldest banks into a greener future?

Understanding The Client's Needs

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's one of oldest banks, serves millions of customers. Due to the bank's historic status, its complex IT infrastructure was identified as a key challenge, being largely outdated and inefficient. This is a common issue across many businesses, where legacy systems are long overdue an upgrade. From the outset, it was clear that a commitment to sustainability would require a comprehensive approach to overhauling Intesa Sanpaolo's digital infrastructure. Our initial step was to understand the specific needs and challenges faced by the bank. This involved a thorough assessment of their current IT systems, energy consumption patterns, and carbon emission levels.

Currently, the digital sector accounts for up to 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Within this percentage, nearly 80% of emissions come from hardware (16% from data centers, 5% from networks), according to ADEME and French Telecoms regulator Arcep. This is because many businesses are stuck with inefficient legacy systems that require huge amounts of energy to power. We set out to change this for Intesa Sanpaolo.

As with every project, we began by pinpointing the client's needs in order to set out our key sustainability goals. The main areas of improvement which we identified were:

Reducing the environmental impact of digital technology.
Improving the energy efficiency of IT operations.
Reducing costs associated with the use of IT infrastructure and running software.

Developing a Decarbonization Roadmap

After identifying Intesa Sanpaolo's specific pain points and highlighting what they wanted to achieve, our team got to work in building a decarbonization roadmap. We developed two tools to monitor emissions and identify inefficiencies at application level. This allowed Intesa Sanpaolo to clearly see the areas where their energy use could be optimized.

C02 & SCI Monitoring Tool:The specific Key Performance Indictors (KPIs) that were identified were measured against two metrics: CO2eq, the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the IT application and Software Carbon Intensity (SCI), the amount of carbon units per functional unit. To monitor these two KPIs, NTT DATA developed a tool capable of showing the impact of the IT next to important client data. The purpose of this was to understand which IT systems were generating the most inefficiencies in order to identify where we could have the most impact by introducing new and advanced technology solutions.
Green Coding Tool:The second innovation introduced within this project analyses software code for its environmental impact, highlighting areas that are not environmentally friendly and suggesting improvements. It ensures that new and existing applications are optimized for energy efficiency, thus reducing the banks' carbon footprint.

Creating a Lasting Impact

Following a thorough planning stage, the system was put into production, monitoring over 100 applications within Intesa Sanpaolo's IT network. Initially, the technology managed to identify potential carbon reductions for over 70 applications. More specifically, NTT DATA's solutions lead to improvements in three key areas:

Reduced carbon footprint:By tracking and measuring the energy consumption and carbon emissions of its IT systems, Intesa Sanpaolo can now actively identify areas and methods to reduce its IT carbon footprint. This initiative is leading to a significant reduction in carbon emissions, helping the bank achieve its environmental targets and drive lasting change. However, this is only the beginning of a long-lasting process, with continuous improvements and advancements anticipated as we continue our partnership.
Cost savings:Optimizing software and hardware usage for greater sustainability also translates into significant cost savings for Intesa Sanpaolo. Reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions often goes hand in hand with lowering overall resource consumption, such as electricity and cooling. This reduction in resource usage leads to lower operational costs, making the bank's operations more economically efficient.
Improved efficiency:The implementation of KPIs such as CO2eq and SCI enables Intesa Sanpaolo to monitor the efficiency of its software and hardware continuously. By identifying areas for improvement and implementing changes to enhance efficiency, the bank not only reduces its environmental impact but also improves the overall performance and efficiency of its IT systems. This ongoing optimization process ensures that the bank remains at the forefront of sustainable IT practices.
Enhanced ESG reputation:Our work with Intesa Sanpaolo helped strengthen the bank's commitment to sustainability and responsible IT practices. This commitment enhances the bank's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reputation, increasing customer loyalty and stakeholder engagement. Beyond this, there is increasing regulatory pressure on large enterprises to reduce carbon emissions, which we were able to help the bank respond to. By proactively transforming its IT infrastructure, Intesa Sanpaolo sets a precedent for corporate responsibility and compliance with future regulations.

Even though these outcomes demonstrate the significant impact from this project, the team could not stop there. The problem with many sustainability projects is that they lack long-term thinking and fail to account for the fluid nature of business operations. Because of this, we were committed to implementing lasting change that would optimize the impact of all projects, future as well as present. The insights we gained from NTT DATA's monitoring tools enabled our team to create a long-term decarbonization strategy that ensures sustainability remains a core focus for Intesa Sanpaolo moving forward.

Efficient, scalable, and sustainable IT solutions ensure that businesses are prepared for future technological advancements and regulatory changes. For Intesa Sanpaolo, this transformation provides a foundation for ongoing innovation and growth, ensuring they remain competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

A Cultural Shift Towards Sustainability

The biggest outcome of this project was that NTT DATA was able to instigate a cultural shift towards sustainability within Intesa Sanpaolo's entire organization. With over 2,500 employees, the key to making this change stick was to embed sustainability into the organization's core values; buy-in was crucial for ensuring long-term commitment to environmental goals. After all, it is the employees who use these IT solutions daily, so the most important piece of the puzzle was to help them understand the impact of these changes we were implementing. By understanding how the changes impacted their work and the environment, employees felt more connected to the sustainability goals. This sense of ownership and responsibility was crucial in making the change last.

Beyond this, the success of this decarbonization project showed the scope for all businesses to become more sustainability focused. The growth potential in the realm of corporate sustainability is immense. As more companies recognize the importance of reducing their carbon footprint, there is a growing demand for innovative solutions that support organization-specific sustainability goals. While the potential for sustainable growth is vast, every organization comes with its own unique challenges and opportunities. These can stem from various factors such as industry-specific requirements, geographical location, regulatory environments, and existing infrastructure. Recognizing and addressing these unique aspects is essential for developing effective sustainable growth strategies.

To move beyond superficial green-washing practices and make a genuine impact, businesses must develop and implement tailored solutions that align with their specific sustainability goals. This involves conducting detailed audits to understand the current environmental impact, setting clear and measurable objectives, leveraging appropriate technologies, and engaging all relevant stakeholders in the process. Customized strategies ensure that sustainability initiatives are both practical and impactful, addressing the specific needs and constraints of the organization.

Want to learn how your businesses can achieve sustainable growth?

Read our previous blogs on decarbonization to learn more about how NTT DATA is driving sustainability beyond the banking sector:

Are you seeking new ways to decarbonize your organization? Reach out to an NTT DATA expert for a consultation to learn what solutions best suit your organization.

The project team received NTT DATA's Sustainability Award

The project team from NTT DATA Italia (from left: Dario Frongillo, Maria Vittoria Trussoni, and Daniele Carlo Vinci)