Transforming Organizational Capabilities Through AI: Accenture Australia & New Zealand
“The biggest thing we’ve done is uplift the whole organization’s capability and understanding of AI.”
In our latest report, Amrop’s Global Digital Practice examined the leadership competencies essential for successfully integrating AI into organizations. We invited CEO/GMs from midsize, PE-backed, family-owned and other companies, to share their real experience in leveraging AI strategies for their organization and customers.
Amrop's Fiona Getty spoke to Alex Trott, Managing Director and Data & AI Lead at Accenture, Australia & New Zealand, as well being a Senior Transformation and Consulting Leader with the company. Building on more than 25 years with Accenture in locations around the world, primarily in the Banking Industry, Alex is now leveraging Data and AI across Australia and New Zealand to drive transformation.
Fiona Getty: Could you first say a few words about Accenture’s ownership structure and size?
Alex Trott: Accenture is headquartered in Ireland with currently around 750 000 employees globally. That’s broken down into global service groups such as technology, strategy, and consulting, customer engagement agency and operations. We go to market as industries, and we have five industry groups – Financial Services; Resources; Comms, Media and Tech; Products; Health and Public Service.
Fiona Getty: Does Accenture use any AI tools internally at the moment?
Alex Trott: Yes, there are a number of different tools used for different parts of the business. We are the largest user of Microsoft technology – Teams, co-pilot and so on, which all have AI on top for productivity. Then there’s tools which we would use in our technology and operations business to drive productivity around the technology life cycle – helping with coding or with other technology, project development. Anything from using generative AI to helping understand mainframe systems and reverse engineer code right through to code development and so on. In operations – we run operations: HR, finance, accounting, banking operations for a number of companies, and we will use tools that help with automation and productivity. The third segment is around tools that we use with our clients to help them and their business – we have assets which we use that in turn use generative AI that then help our clients drive changes to their business.
Fiona Getty: Great, thank you. You mentioned that you’re the largest user of Microsoft products. In terms of decision-making – who has driven the decision internally to use those products?
Alex Trott: We’re the largest implementer of Microsoft, so it’s a very strong, global partnership, and we work on product development, so it’s very much a two-way relationship. We go to the market together when it comes to certain clients and projects, we work towards joint solutions. But we have relationships with a number of the large tech providers, including Google and AWS, from very broad to very specialist, for example, small use cases around public service.
Fiona Getty: What business results would you expect from the investment of the use of AI tools internally, and what business results do your clients expect?
Alex Trott: It depends on different things for different industries. The types of results that we’re seeing in terms of productivity for our business are very much related to how we deliver work – it’s about productivity and effectiveness. Gen AI, for example, is very good at synthesizing and condensing very disparate data and providing a point of view, which helps us work with clients and create better.
A lot of what we’re seeing is Gen AI providing augmented data to help people do their jobs better – and that’s us as consultants or what we’re consulting our clients to do as well. So, you might look at a commercial banker that deals with clients, and they might use Gen AI to consolidate data about the industry they’re working in or other information about the client or help them prepare for meetings and so on, using the consolidation and analysis features that come from Gen AI, for example.
Fiona Getty: Do you measure the productivity of work using these tools?
Alex Trott: Yes – for our technology business we’re seeing anything from a 30-50% increase in productivity of code generation, which is amazing, and, likewise, we’re seeing a 30-50% increase in productivity in our operations business where Gen AI and automation is used. There are very significant things that can be eliminated and some others that can be automated and augmented, because it’s not just about efficiency – it’s about effectiveness and capability.
Fiona Getty: Have you had to create initiative to up-skill the management and employees, and what development tools have you or do you use?
Alex Trott: Yes, we use two approaches. One is around how we use the tools ourselves – and that’s through general training, trying those things out. And then there’s role-specific training, for example, one of our engineers would look at some of the tools that could help them and there’s training around those. But the bigger thing that we’ve done is basically uplift the whole organization’s capability and understanding. The word we like to use is “curiosity” – so, it’s actually about uplifting everyone’s curiosity around Gen AI, because what we want is for all our people, when dealing with clients to be versant in Gen AI and have a point of view for how it works as a technology, how it affects industries and the companies of our clients.
Fiona Getty: How do you implement that?
Alex Trott: We have a large program called TQ – meaning “Technology Quotient”, as in EQ or IQ, but for technology. It is a program for all our 750 000 employees and has levels you can reach, so there’s training that people can take and then do courses around that. There are modules for 15 different technologies, like Cloud, Data, Edge Computing, Gen AI and so on, and we’re trying to introduce a gamification aspect in it. For each of the modules there’s between 1 and 5 hours-worth of online videos and exercises, followed by an assessment at the end of it, which helps you enhance your TQ.
Fiona Getty: Is this training program available only to your employees or clients too?
Alex Trott: We’re making the platform available to our clients as well to help them with the TQ in their own organizations. One of my responsibilities is to uplift the capability of our Australia business around Gen AI, which is part of TQ, and we now offer the training program to our big clients as partnership and to others as paid engagement to help them.
Fiona Getty: Sounds fantastic. Would you say that the use of AI and your approach to the training of your team is giving you a competitive advantage in the market?
Alex Trott: I think so. Our advantage is the depth and that we’ve actually been working with AI on ourselves, as in, our technology and our operations business, and therefore, I think we have real practical experience of it as well as just training. We can then use that to go to market, it gives us a good advantage as well. I’m not sure that we’ve packaged it as well as we could – I think our marketing around it can be uplifted, but we’ve got the underlying ability, we just need to sell it better!
Fiona Getty: It kind of relates to my next question, which is about the sort of competencies you feel like you might still need when it comes to AI?
Alex Trott: Yes, it is related, and I believe it is all about client focus, solution-lead selling. The key aspect there is around our industry perspectives or narratives about it not being just a technology that we’re trying to take to the market – it’s actually a solution to an industry problem. So, it’s that translation into the real world of these technologies, which is the challenge for us – as an industry and also as a company.
Fiona Getty: How are the clients responding?
Alex Trott: They’re hugely embracing it, but, at the same time, many of them don’t actually know the journey to go on, and this is what we’re spending a lot of our time doing – thinking through the best approach for first clients to take on that AI journey, which is a combination of experimentation, top down strategy and assessing the value working across the data landscape and what you need in order to be successful in Gen AI.
Fiona Getty: How do you expect it to play out over the next 24 months?
Alex Trott: We used to have a digital part of our business, which now doesn’t exist because digital is everywhere – and I think the same thing will happen with AI. Now we have an AI part of our business which is really scaling, but ultimately it will sit everywhere in our business. So, I see my own role, as we’ve built it, disappearing within the next 12-18 months – so many of these different industries and functions have all pivoted to use AI, so it’s really about AI becoming part of every aspect of business.
Fiona Getty: We’ve talked about upskilling the whole team, but are there perhaps any specific requirements for the skillset of the AI leaders or the future tech leaders, which will work with AI as an integral part of the business?
Alex Trott: I really like the concept of curiosity because as businesses reinvent themselves with AI, people need to reinvent themselves as well, and, therefore, the open-mindedness to work out how it’s beneficial rather than threat will be crucial. But that goes for all of us, while for executives the challenge is to know how much they need to depend on experts, because just depending on experts, I don’t think is the answer. Everyone needs to have a certain level of knowledge and skills around it, and, therefore, these broad training programs and executive training programs are hugely important. For many of the training courses we have a relationship with Stanford, with MIT, with Berkeley – we send our technical people and our businesspeople on courses that we’ve worked on together with the institutions, and that really helps uplift the skills.
Key Takeaways
Fiona Getty began her search career in 2005 in Scotland, initially specializing in international relocations, having placed Partners in markets spanning Europe, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore. Having relocated to Melbourne in 2014, Getty established herself as a leading Search specialist in the Advisory and Consulting space, facilitating Partner hires and strategic team moves for Big 4 firms, Management Consulting & Strategy firms, and specialist boutiques. She also led the Melbourne office of a global Search Firm for seven years before joining Amrop Carmichael Fisher in 2023.
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