Accenture is making sustainability native to everything it does—internally and with its clients—and is redefining how it measures its impact. Enterprise leaders and governments must follow suit. 

In the recent past, we’ve called for enterprises and service providers to get ahead of the sustainability transition—then more recently to catch up as the market for sustainability services ramps up. Now the pace of change is accelerating—beyond even our own most ambitious predictions. We spoke with Justin Keeble, MD, Global Sustainability Services at Accenture about how it’s addressing the climate crisis—both internally and with its clients. Led by CEO Julie Sweet, Accenture is making sustainability native to everything it does internally, and in every client project regardless of industry, function, or technology—aiming to put clear water between itself and competitors who try and match it in the sustainability sphere. It is also going further by redefining how it views its impact as an enterprise and provider of all manner of sustainability services. If we’re going to achieve the transformations we need to over the coming decade—service providers, enterprises, and governments must follow this example.

Accenture’s sustainability revolution is being driven from the very top.

There have been big shifts in Accenture in the last few months—mirroring the shifts in worldwide attitudes to sustainability. Peter Lacy was appointed Chief Responsibility Officer (CRO) and Global Sustainability Services Lead—but the drive is coming from CEO Julie Sweet to imbed and integrate sustainability into everything Accenture does. Three key points are being built into its strategy:

• Responsibility by design: sustainability will be embedded in every project, service, and part of Accenture—it will be the default rather than a standalone department, team, or strategy.
• 360-degree value: Accenture is developing metrics to go beyond measuring its own corporate responsibility, to track its broader impact on clients both on an account and on a project level. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the details as Accenture grapples with a problem few have solved: how to define and measure sustainability’s value.
• Launch of sustainability services: A response to a market where sustainability has moved from the fringes of businesses’ visions to their core. Firms are recognizing that entire business models need to change—every industry from energy (distributed and renewable energy) through to banking (adjusting for climate risk) are all seeing their fundamental business models change. Accenture’s services are targeted towards helping clients manage this transformation.

Five areas of sustainability services are being molded as part of Accenture’s push that will reportedly see significant investment over the coming years.

Keeble explained how these five areas were in-part chosen as end-to-end capabilities and values within Accenture—spanning its Strategy, Technology, and Operations groups:

• Low carbon energy industry transitions: while sustainability is broader than just carbon, it’s what’s capturing enterprise leaders’ imaginations as we speak. Accenture will help clients accelerate through their industry’s transitions—including by developing industry-specific capabilities.
• Building more responsible value chains: taking clients through supply chain transformation from material feeds through to “end-of-life”—predominantly by bringing together its Supply Chain and Industry X teams.
• Green IT and cloud: Accenture is driving sustainable change off the back of its Cloud First announcement and analysis of the potential emissions savings of cloud transitions, with new patents pending; businesses used to look to cloud for cost-savings and service transformation—but now it’s also about energy savings, process optimization, reporting, and much more.
• Sustainability measurement, ERP, and ledger: deploying enterprise solutions for sustainability monitoring and improvement.
• Responsible workforce: aligning company values to those of employees is key, including within Accenture—but sustainability is also transforming and demanding new skills, and clients have to plan for this in their new business models.

By becoming native, the value proposition of sustainability changes for service providers and their clients.

Accenture’s discrete Sustainability Services practice currently pulls in a small revenue—but this doesn’t account for the broader impact of the firm’s work… 360-degree value (see above) plans to capture this. This has held back a more ambitious view on sustainability services for many service providers for so long—but the value of sustainability in its many forms is broader than one consulting project when it’s baked into everything a provider and its clients do.

We’re seeing similar shifts in many service providers that didn’t originally have a distinct sustainability services practice—like Accenture and some others did. Accenture is pushing the accelerator to ingrain sustainability in everything it does—the competition needs to not only catch up in developing sustainability services capability but, to keep pace with Accenture, it will also need to leapfrog many steps and make sustainability native to everything internally and with clients.

Keeble commented on the existential crisis facing boutique environmental consulting firms: with sustainability issues getting to the core of how businesses function, enterprises are going to want full-service propositions, not discrete environmental services—targeting sustainable outcomes and realizing value at scale. To this end, we’re likely going to see more and more alliances and acquisitions between big service providers and boutiques.

Strategy consultancies will face the challenge of achieving scale. The competition to Accenture will come in the firms offering end-to-end transformation propositions—from design and consulting, through to implementation, and beyond to monitoring, management, and optimization.

The Bottom Line: Sustainability is rapidly moving beyond standalone services—just as the market was catching up. Real sustainability transformation will come from making it native in everything you do—whether you’re an enterprise, service provider, or government.