Beatles, Stones, The Who, the rock of Led Zeppelin evolving into the Punk phenomenon, Glamrock of Bowie & Queen, the Brit Pop gems of Blue, Happy Mondays and Oasis sandwiched between the Hit Factories of Stock, Aitken & Waterman and the Spice Girls, which in turn inspired the blossoming of modern feminine songstresses of Adele, Lily Allen and Florence & the Machine.

The truly exceptional artists were able to evolve their music as the culture and listeners’ needs changed. What’s more, they had a sophistication in their music that enabled brilliant performances in venues that ranged from dingy pubs to the esteemed Albert Hall.

This, sadly enough, got me thinking about scalability and environmental software. We can be forgiven for being reasonably confident about the direction of environmental management and reporting in the corporate world. We have legislative reporting in place for carbon, water, and air pollutants, and well established voluntary programs such as NABERS, the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Global Reporting Initiative provide strong frameworks for more expansive management. However, with the corporate adoption of such initiatives still at a relatively minor scale, it remains to be seen how the vast majority of organisations will respond, and what direction is an appropriate strategic direction for their business.

For a business at the early stages of their sustainability journey, investing in a scalable environmental software solution will allow them to get some robustness in their data management at minimum cost. Overtime, they will most likely increase the depth and breadth of the activities they want to manage, and may indeed be pulled in different directions from their stakeholders. As their needs evolve so too will their solution, they won’t have to face the challenging task of migrating their data and starting again with a new system.

For a business already at scale without a system, an appreciation of the change management risks involved in over investment upfront is critical. Successful rollouts of massive technology platforms like SAP rely on strong processes and a disciplined culture of engagement. Unless environment and sustainability permeates through an organisational culture large system rollouts will be difficult. Take the option to start with a solution that targets smaller pieces of your environmental puzzle, get wins in place and scale up based on that success.

So if you’re looking at investing in an environmental and carbon management solution, take a leaf out of the British music scene and find a solution that will evolve as listener (or stakeholder) needs grow.

Simon McCabe is the resident Green Crusader and Business Relations Director for Intelligent Pathways. Read his bio here.