In posting our question, we were considering what impact being green could have on the revenue side of our business. As we had hoped, several executives indicated that they would look favorably on companies making a green effort. The responses were definitely encouraging. Considering our environmental impact is now even more of a factor than before. Making your company more attractive to customers, saving money at the same time, while contributing to a global cause, all sounds like a win-win-win to me.

We haven’t implemented everything we planned, but here are a few things we did to be more green:

Limited office space – We moved our office to San Francisco as part of our company growth. Instead of renting a large space with extra common areas, we procured a smaller space with room for people to work. We’ll rent larger conference rooms, which we need far less often, from a nearby company that offers meeting rooms and other amenities. This is a win-win-win for us (sound familiar). We’re keeping our fixed costs low, reducing our impact on the environment, and yet not reducing our ability to work collaboratively or meet with clients.

Virtual corporation – We fully support working at home. We use online software tools such as Google docs and a virtual PBX so that the working location of the employees does not impact productivity. We have agreed upon times when we’re in the office together. We reduced our commute with these decisions, and at the same time, increased productivity, improved our green-ness and improved employee satisfaction. Wait a minute, is that another win-win-win?

Email PDFs – We try to use as little paper as possible. Email and shared online documents cut our usage significantly. But then, contracts often require a dreaded signature. When a real signature is needed or when we must start with paper, we scan the final document into electronic form as a PDF so that the document can be emailed. For most recipients, an emailed PDF they can print is no different than a FAX. We bought an HP scanner which has a very convenient PDF button right on the top.

e-faxing – We use myfax but have heard eFax is good choice as well. You can send faxes via email attachment and incoming faxes come in as electronic documents. When combined with the previous point, you really can do most of your document handling sans paper. The recipient will still be printing on paper unless they are also using an e-fax solution. I guess we only have a win-win this time.

We’re not done yet, but we feel we have made a good start. We have some new contracts to sign with clients and partners. We’re going to look at using an electronic signature service such as EchoSign. One of our existing partners used the service with us and the process was straight forward. We need to review with our legal team how binding the signature is for legal matters.

We’re still using printed business cards. Maybe someday the infrared technology will be prevalent enough where we can just beam our details to a contact standing a few feet away. Our mobiles have this ability, but the recipient does not always.

In the end, we’re happy we made the effort. Being green feels good and is a strong motivator to re-evaluate business processes. We like obtaining more customers. Saving money in this economy is also good. We’ll see over the course of the year what impacts our actions have on our business

Feel free to let us know what else we could be doing!