Business Brains  Grow your packaging, and why sustainability is
behind Steelcase's big IT overhaul  Posting in Design
Integrating disparate enterprise applications will be core to a
central understanding of progress.  Recently, I had a chance to
speak recently with Angela Nahikian, the director of global
environmental sustainability for workplace furnishings company
Steelcase.  Given her company's strategic focus, it shouldn't
surprise you to hear that the two biggest factors in the
company's overall sustainability initiatives are how to pick the
most environmentally sound materials for its products as well as
how to tame the very real transportation impact (big products,
big impact) that Steelcase has.  Nahikian says that one of the
biggest challenges in her sustainability initiatives is the very
simple fact that enterprise technology is not set up to collect,
analyze or synthesize the sorts of data she needs to make
educated decisions about sustainability.  "We need data and we
need patterns," she says.  O