Sustainability by design

Similar to Accenture's leadership in the digital revolution—embedding digital technology into all our products and services, as well as creating new and distinctive offerings—we are now systematically embedding environmental, social and governance (ESG) capabilities into our client-facing offerings and assets across our core business. This includes our suite of Sustainability Services, which are focused on helping our clients advance their sustainability goals. But more than that, we are working to put sustainability at the heart of every asset and offering across our core business.

We call this Sustainability by Design.

With the UN Sustainable Development Goals as our North Star, we have put sustainability at the very core of how we think about everything we do from evaluating risk to improving brand value to uncovering opportunities for revenue growth and cost reduction to how we think about driving innovation, both for ourselves and with our partners and stakeholders.

The following are just a few examples of how we do Sustainability by Design.

Supply Chain

We are rotating our suite of supply chain services to embed sustainability, for example as we help clients optimize their supplier base, we analyze supplier performance on financially material ESG issues, such as emission performance relative to their industry peers and other ESG metrics while applying data-driven insights to assess spend data on ESG dimensions across different categories and locations.

Software Development & Engineering

In May 2021, Accenture co-founded the Green Software Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to drive standards, tooling and best practices for building green software. This consortium will also work to develop training, education, and certification while helping the software industry contribute to the information and communications technology sector’s broader targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Cloud First

Through Sustainability by Design, all of our cloud migrations are now green cloud migrations. This is being enabled by Accenture’s proprietary myNav Green Cloud Advisor, which helps organizations make sustainability-led decisions about their cloud migration journeys.

Zero-Based Transformation

With sustainability built into our approach, we are finding new ways to help our clients define the right cost levels and structure. From applying green software practices to using renewable energy to powering offices, we help clients achieve their cost savings objectives while becoming more sustainable.

Prioritizing learning on sustainability at scale and speed

From our Global Management Committee and across Accenture’s 600,000+ people, we’re embedding a sustainability mindset throughout our company. We’re doing this by building our ‘Sustainability Quotient’, a company-wide learning program that enables all our people to understand and consider how our work can have a more sustainable outcome and drive change in line with the SDGs.

Putting sustainability at the heart of everything we do on innovation

Sustainability is also embedded into how we innovate with clients. As companies reinvent themselves to become more sustainable, we lead with innovation to help clients “imagine and invent” their own futures. We bring together our capabilities across the company to develop and deliver disruptive innovations at scale to help business leaders achieve their sustainability goals.