Horizon Software trusts Greenly to measure its carbon footprint

Horizon Software is an innovative and continuously expanding software company worldwide. We have over 100 customers across 26 countries. Horizon is a pioneer in the financial markets industry with its modular and adaptable software. Big data, scalability and low latency are at the heart of the systems we build, and we leverage the latest technologies in the financial industry, combined with deep expertise in trading and modeling.

Deployed on premise or as SaaS, Horizon’s on-demand platform allows clients to quickly create, test and implement automated trading strategies in real time. With offices in EMEA, APAC and North America, Horizon is a multi-award winning company, including the winner of the FOW Sell-Side Trading System of the Year 2020 award.

We believe that our impact goes far beyond financial performance! Our current B Corp certification allows us to join companies that wish to integrate social and environmental objectives into their business model and operations. We are audited every year in our ESG approach and wish to go further, in particular by obtaining B Corp certification, which allows us to implement a set of good practices adapted to our sector of activity and which requires us to commit ourselves with our employees, suppliers, and customers in particular.

Why Greenly? 🌱

We already had a few projects on recycling, building insulation, bicycle bonuses, etc., but we wanted to go further, and in a pragmatic way, with the CO2 equivalent indicator. For any issue in a company, the first and most important step is to measure and define it... which we did with our carbon footprint! We also saw that it is an important element for the B Corp certification, as they value the fact that companies perform carbon footprint assessments, because it means that they measure their actions.

First, I learned what a scope 1, scope 2, scope 3 meant, with a better understanding of the sources of emissions by type and category. I also learned that we could successfully break down what the CO2 equivalent was through invoices. The rate of participation of our employees in the questionnaire, about 40%, revealed a still low level of maturity on environmental issues, and we have a lot of work to do to raise awareness and get people involved internally. We also feel that there are differences in sensitivity depending on the country.

What actions are we going to take as a result of this carbon assessment?

First of all, we are going to continue to «pollinate» our employees by getting them more involved and training them, especially with the help of the Planet Tech’ Care movement, is part of the list. We need a return on investment, not small useless gestures but effective actions to reduce our carbon footprint. We also want to go further in our eco-design practices with low code, we seek to maintain and improve our Green IT processes. It is important for us to be an influencer on this subject, with also the promotion of our Low Carbon Managed Services offer for the hosting of our solution but also in the development of the software (renouncing the ultra-latency race of our sector of activity to limit the impact on the environment of this type of energy consuming trading). In terms of purchasing, we have set up a scoring system with a questionnaire integrating environmental criteria to better choose our suppliers.