Accenture’s Expanded Partnership Drives Sustainability Impact | Leading Through Change | Salesforce

Happy birthday.

Guess what? Today is our 50th anniversary at leading Through Change. How awesome is that? Now listen, Leading Through Change, they're feeling a little sensitive about it. They haven't fully embraced their 50th. I told them 50 is the new 40. Boo. You look great. And who doesn't like a reason to celebrate with some cake and some bubble? So all a great reason. Well, listen, this is apple cider, y'.

All.

Not getting me in trouble. So time to celebrate because 50 episodes is a huge feat and I'm just so excited to that. When we started, it was like the Dr. Seuss saying, oh, the places you'll go. We didn't know where we were going, but look where we are now. So amazing. Thank you all for joining us on this journey as well. Good morning. I'm Leah McGowan Hare, and welcome to another one of our live 50th episode of our live weekly conversations as part of our weekly Leading Through Change series. I'm so excited and hyped up, I can't even get my words out. It's a chance for you to hear from our amazing leaders around the world who are doing their best to get through these challenging times and support their communities. Now, before I hand it over to our very own Marc Benioff, I want to preview the next hour. Mark will be interviewing Julie Sweet to discuss the powerful combination of Accenture Sustainability Services, Salesforce Sustainability Cloud and Salesforce Customer 360, which for the first time is bringing sustainability to the core of business. We'll then dive into a special demo by Kevin to highlight the latest on sustainability cloud that is going to be so awesome. And we will be moving past that. We'll have a very special, special performance by the one, the only Chris Isaac. And it's going to be so much fun. So make sure that you stick around for that. And as we do every week in Leading Through Change, we want to give back. And this time, we're going to be working with American Forest to help rebuild our forest to be more resilient and sustainable. And if you want to be part of that, please, please join that salesforce.comtrees Once again, salesforce.comtrees now with that, I want to turn it over to an amazing conversation that Mark had with Julie Sweet earlier. Enjoy. Time to eat some cake.

All right, well, thank you so much for joining us today. And Julie Sweet, welcome to Leading Through Change. Once again, we're thrilled to have you here.

Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me, Mark.

Well, I'm So excited. And you've been such an inspiring figure through this global pandemic over the last year, helping us to know where we're going and how to prepare for the best. Really appreciate everything that you and your company have done. And wow, it's been a big year for you too, hasn't it?

You know, I think it's been a big year for all of us and it's great. The same thing, Mark, to see what you've been doing with whether it's leading on PPE or leading on vaccines and helping people get back to work. I think this year has been a year of companies really stepping up and what you guys have been doing at Salesforce is really fantastic.

Well, I think if you asked me a year ago what PPE was, I didn't know. Think about that. We've bought almost 60 million pieces of PPE and distributed over 300 hospitals is beyond my imagination. And then the bridging of that work into work that we've done together with contact tracing, where we establish contact tracing systems all over the world. And that's been a huge success. Especially entire regions of the world have been able to eradicate the virus using contact tracing. Julie, I just want to congratulate you on that fantastic work you've done.

Thanks. We did it together and it's one of the examples. A lot of times people are saying, well, in this new world where we work remotely and that can you still innovate? It's one of the examples that I point to because we innovated together to create that solution and now we're doing the same thing with vaccine and also in sustainability. It's really, for me, innovation comes down to being willing to work with others, to be learners, and really having that strong sense of purpose. One of the things I really want to thank you on behalf of our 500,000 people at Accenture is the work we did with you on work.com to put people back to work, including Accenture. And so we rolled out work.com so that first that we could have end to end case management. We're going to be doing the vaccine management, but it's really enabled our people to have a seamless and frictionless experience at a time when, frankly, people are fatigued and there's a level of fear. And it's not just about functionality, but also about people feeling cared for when they have something that is frictionless, that's very well designed. And that was, again, us coming together with great technology, a great understanding of people and process. And it's another way that we're really proud that we've contributed together, and it's something I hear a lot about from our people.

Well, it has been an unbelievable year, and it's an exhausting year. Let's get serious. I'm in my home, you're in your home. And for so many of our clients, they're in their homes as well. This is my first pandemic. I didn't realize a year ago that I'd still be sitting here and waiting to be vaccinated, waiting for the pandemic to close, waiting to be able to get back to work, waiting to reopen all of our businesses, and we still don't have a date in mind where we know all that is going to happen. That's been my biggest surprise. How about you?

Absolutely. I remember thinking we just kept moving the goalpost, and in September, we said, we have to stop doing that, and we just have to turn the page and call that. Our new reality is one where we don't have an end date. There isn't something about going backwards. I think there's an opportunity, as we think about leading through this change, to actually see opportunity in that, for example, we had to quickly pivot to hiring and onboarding completely virtually. So since March, we've hired 60,000 people. Well, at first we just digitized what we would have done in person, but now we've created new experiences and better connections with teams than we had when we were bringing people to the office. And there's only a certain amount of interaction they could be. And it's just a small example about how we're trying to think differently about this new reality. And how can we actually make better experiences from the learnings that we have now?

Well, I think that that is really what's happening. I mean, we're learning so much. I mean, I can't believe how much I've actually learned about the world in the last year. It's amazing to me. And we're in a situation right now where I think, hopefully the scenario is that we have this pandemic. It's still very much going on all over the world. I just talked to some of our executives in the uk they're locked in their homes. It's quite a very, quite a serious situation there. The numbers are just extraordinary what's happening in there. And we hope that the scenario is that we're able to give everyone the vaccine, one of them, that has been created in the UK and the virus subsides, and they all get back to work. And get back to school. And you can see that in Israel, where they're taking that very aggressively, where a third of the country has already been vaccinated. And that's what we want. We want to get back to work and get all the kids back to school. I mean, this has been an unbelievable year. We're going through an economic crisis. We've gone through a racial justice crisis. We've been going through an environmental crisis. We're going through this economic crisis. We're going through an education crisis with these schools and getting these kids educated. I mean, this is, like, beyond my imagination of what anyone would have to deal with. And even a political crisis, very much so, in the United States, as we've seen in the last several weeks. So when you look at all of that together, it's like, wow, we've got to just take these one at a time and bring them under control. And I hope that the number one is the pandemic. The second scenario is that more of these types of mutations to the virus emerge and they escape the vaccine, and this is the scenario none of us want and that this continues, and maybe they get linked together in a way that we're just in a new pandemic world, and this is our new reality. And that's the second scenario, and that's the scenario none of us want. We don't want to be in a pandemic world. We want to be back into the world that we had. And of course, we're grateful all the time, but we want to be able to do so much.

I agree, but that is why we've been thinking about this new reality, because I think there's also such a letdown when you keep trying to think you're going to get to the right point. I'm curious as to how you've been thinking about mental wellness, because I just had my leadership team together, and we were talking about our priorities, and one of the ones that I said to my leadership team is we need to commit to wellness. Prior to the crisis, we were working with Arianna Huffington and Thrive Global, and it created a program about mental wellness, which we were just rolling out. And when the COVID hit, we changed it up quickly because we knew that people wouldn't be able to invest as much time. And we've had 140,000 people out of our 500,000 go through it, which is great on the one hand, because it was a service that they really needed. Nine out of 10 have said it's helped them, but it's also A sign, right, of people really needing it. And I think as we continue to move through, we're spending a lot of time as a leadership team thinking, what does it mean to commit to wellness, both personally as a leader and for our people? And I know that you also think a lot about this. I'd love to hear what you're thinking in this area.

Well, I so strongly agree. And right from the beginning, I realized that mental wellness was going to be an issue for me personally, for all my employees and my customers, my partners. Because when you are going through a situation like a global pandemic and when so much is changing, you're going to go through unbelievable amounts of stress, and it's just not what we're set up to be. You know, we're not. We were not set up to just ride easily through a global pandemic as if it's, you know, we're just watching, you know, a comedy. This is a very serious situation, and it's a horrible situation, and it's a stressful situation. And so everyone needs to learn new techniques and new capabilities. I know just for myself, I've had to double down on my meditation practice. I've had to double down on the amount of exercise that I'm getting. I need it, you know, and when I. When that's not working, I need to talk to a family member, a friend, you know, or a professional counselor so that I can get my own help. And I think platforms like Thrive or the things that we've been doing at Salesforce and posting on YouTube, which is, you know, our wellness program called Be well Together, which features these experts from all over the world on how to survive and succeed and through a pandemic. This is really important, but this is tough. And a lot of CEOs, like me and you, we want to talk about being invincible, about never having these challenges. The reality is all of us have these challenges. Every employee, all of our family members. We have to keep an eye on everybody. And this is a very difficult situation. In fact, one third of all of our employees have self reported even in the first quarter of the pandemic, that they were experiencing mental health challenges.

Well, it's great what you're doing with your Be well program. I think, again, this will hopefully be one of those silver linings because this will be hopefully an enduring focus for our companies and an enduring awareness which is trying to make something good out of a bad situation. But that's one of the ways we're thinking about it.

Julie, one of the things I'M so excited about and part of your leadership and vision for Accenture is the idea that Accenture is going to be a leader in sustainability. This is so important to me because we've seen so many changes in the world just in the last year, with weather patterns, with deforestation, with these horrible California wildfires that have been happening here at my home. Give us your vision for sustainability and how will Accenture help to lead the world? Other companies, other cos like me and you, to create a more sustainable world.

Well, thanks, Mark. I feel like this has been a journey we've been on together because I've been going to the World Economic Forum, I think maybe six or seven years now. And every year, without fail, your big event there, you fail focus part of the event on sustainability. And you were an early voice and it's definitely made an impact on me. When I became CEO 18 months ago, one of my commitments and by the way, commitment also to my children because I have two girls who are 12 and 14 who are every day reminding me that my generation destroyed the planet and that we have had to do something about it. I really made the commitment that not only would Accenture continue to raise its game, we've been known as a leader, but we needed to do more. We announced just in October that we will be, by 2025, have net zero emissions. We will use 100% renewable energy in our facilities around the world, up from only 26% last year. Then also focus on water, which is an important area that probably doesn't get enough conversation, but that in addition to operating ourselves, we work with the world's leading companies and they look to us to help create solutions so that they themselves can meet their goals. And we said we want to embed responsible business by design with sustainability as being one of the first focus areas and that to do that most effectively, we should be doing that also with our partners like Salesforce. And I'm really excited about the work that we're doing together because it is about bringing technology, the knowledge of companies and then helping them accelerate their own journey to being a more sustainable client and therefore also being able to bring more sustainable products and services to their own customers.

Well, that's so powerful. You know, we all know that you're working so strongly to help companies be more trusted to have more digital growth and to be more digital and to answer the digital imperative. We know that you're working with them to create more customer success and customer based systems. But this idea that you're also focused on helping companies Become more sustainable. This is a very exciting because I think every organization needs support in these areas that you just went through. Whether it's net zero or whether it's zero waste or reducing water, this is absolutely critical. And these are not core competencies a lot of companies have. What's the biggest challenge in making that happen?

To your point, it's not the core competency of a lot of companies. Right. And I think as I talk to CEOs, one of the other challenges has been actually connecting the dots within the organization. A lot of times sustainability has been off to the side. It's part of corporate responsibility or it's in a portion of the organization. And actually to become more sustainable as a company, you have to have different operating models. You have to have a mindset that's different. And that's where this idea that we have a responsible business by design and doing it by design means that you actually have to have the leadership mindset. And so the approach that we're taking is approach that is really holistic that we're now going to do to expand our work together with combining our services, your sustainability Cloud and Salesforce Customer360 because for the first time, we're actually going to bring sustainability to the front office, to the customer engagement, provide that insight that companies need as a part of their business, not as a sideline, but really embedded in their business. And that's something that together we can do so much better than a part and we can do it faster. It's not just a nice to have. When we think about sustainability and why businesses, it's about performance, people and purpose. And sometimes people focus only on the purpose. But our research shows that when you put technology and sustainability together, companies perform two and a half times better in large part because their customers, their consumers really want it as well. It also matters for talent. Our latest research says that one out of every two employees wants to work and believes that after the pandemic, it will matter more whether their company has sustainable practices, is focused on inclusion and diversity and reskilling. So these are the kinds of things that really matter to attract the best talent. And of course, we need to do it for the future of the planet.

Well, you're going through so many things. I was just making a note to myself. I mean, trust, growth, customer success, innovation, equality, diversity, inclusion, sustainability. And work from home. And the work from home imperative and surviving and succeeding through this pandemic. I mean, how do we prioritize what is the most important thing when we're looking at These things, we can't do it all. So what do we do first?

It's a great question. I mean, it's interesting because post Covid, what we're seeing is compressed transformation. That question, I think, means something different post Covid than pre Covid, because what we are seeing is companies needing, because of the change in their consumers, the change in their markets, the disruption to their business, to have to change more. And to give you some example, back in May, when we asked companies whether they were investing in digital transformation, about 56% said yes. Just a few months later, it was 80%. As you think about how to prioritize, the point is to invest and rebuild and reimagine with these things at the table. And so if you prioritize, what's your business area and then you use the lens, as I think about rebuilding, how do I think about sustainability as a part of the lens? So rather than trying to pick, is it sustainability versus inclusion and diversity, it's about taking the priorities of your business and then embedding these things around inclusion, diversity, reskilling, and sustainability into that strateg priority. And I think that is a huge shift for many companies that we're helping with.

So what you're saying is we need to integrate these values in every initiative that we're doing. Is that the right. Is that right?

Absolutely. And then what you do is you prioritize the business initiatives, but you do so with these things embedded. And so, like, when we develop our assets and our offerings and we work with partners like you, it is part of the lens of everything we do now. And that was a shift for us. Right, because it's not on the side. It's about how we do business and how we serve our clients.

Well, Julie, thank you so much for being with us on leading through change. It's always a pleasure to be with you and thank you for your tremendous leadership and congratulations on your incredible work as the CEO of Accenture. We're so grateful. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark, as always. It's great to catch up. Bye. Bye.

What a great conversation. I always so enjoy hearing Julie Sweet speak. Just such a powerhouse. And I really loved how she talked about how you embed those values in those business solutions. So you embed sustainability, you embed diversity, inclusion, and it's not a side piece or an afterthought. So great, great conversation. So thank you both Mark and Julie. Now I'm excited to hand it over to to Kevin, who's going to walk us through the power of sustainability cloud.

Thanks, Leah. We've heard from Mark and Julie why sustainability is a crucial and urgent business imperative. Now let's see how Salesforce and Accenture can help customers adapt to our new business reality. As the CEO of Northern Trail Outfitters, I'm getting pressure from my board, my customers, my employees and many other stakeholders to achieve ambitious sustainability goals. With Salesforce Sustainability Cloud and Accenture Sustainability Services, we can reinvent the way we operate in every area of our business to capture the value that sustainability unlocks. But where should we even start? The World Economic Forum's new Stakeholder Capitalism metrics are a strong ESG reporting framework and built on years of work by many groups in this area. But the big question I have is how to turn this into reality. Well, Sustainability Cloud is built on Salesforce's Customer360 platform, the world's number one CRM. And that brings together my sales, service, marketing, e commerce and analytics efforts and now my sustainability data as well. Suddenly I have a one stop shop for all of our investor grade ESG data, our reporting and business decisions. So let's dive in. Powerful tableau dashboards allow me to visualize all of our ESG data to discover trends and identify the most strategic areas for improvement. I can report on it and I can act on it. So here's a fascinating insight. In our ESG data, we are seeing the highest customer loyalty to our brand in regions where we exceed our employee diversity targets. Now my teams can totally use that kind of data and where else do I need to focus? One of our environmental goals is to achieve net zero carbon emissions. As an example of ESG data at work, let's dive into the carbon data and see how we can get to net zero sustainability. Cloud automatically calculates northern trails emissions from sources like electricity, business travel and fuel use. This saves my team from working in spreadsheets. It opens the data to everybody in the company and it gives my teams deep insights into the impacts on our ESG performance. We can see from our data that a majority of our emissions are indirect. Really from our upstream suppliers. We're a retailer, so this isn't surprising. But we need to understand our supply chain's impact so that we can share reliable data with our customers and our partners. This year our board is pushing us to set ambitious targets. But maybe even more importantly, I really want us to exceed our customers expectations. And to do that, we're going to be cutting the carbon footprint of our product portfolio by 40%. And since so much of our carbon is in our upstream value chain, this will require us to engage our suppliers in new ways. By using Salesforce's Experience Cloud, my team gave our suppliers a way to interact directly with us on their ESG data and their progress. We have our suppliers log in and join us on the journey to reducing the carbon in our products. With the Salesforce Customer360 platform, we can then aggregate our supplier data to create targeted engagement strategies to enable our suppliers along their sustainability journeys and reduce the impact across our value chain. Now that we have data from our suppliers, we can build marketing campaigns to target customers that we know resonate strongly with sustainable products. Using Journey Builder and Marketing Cloud, we segment and automate outreach with personalized alerts to keep them up to date on our sustainability standards and goals and to drive them to our lowest carbon intensity products. All this work has enabled us to add digital labels on our E Commerce site to provide transparency into the carbon footprint of our products. We've already seen demand for those products go up and we've seen an overall revenue increase which our board is very happy about. And look, we all know that minimizing the carbon impact across our value chain is just the start. Every area of Northern Trail's business has a role to play in our long term sustainability journey. Many of you are beginning to experience the same sustainability imperative as Northern Trail in this demo. Accenture and Salesforce are excited to partner with you on your journey as we continue to evolve this joint offering. Watch out for more news in May. Now back to you Leah.