It has been almost a year since Capgemini announced our new ambitious sustainability targets to achieve carbon neutrality across our operations no later than 2025, and to become a net zero business by 2030. And what a year it has been. While the COVID lockdowns around the world disrupted people’s lives and the broader global economy, they also accelerated, for many, new and more sustainable ways of working. It seems an appropriate moment to assess our progress towards net zero and look at how we are starting to adapt to what a post-COVID new normal might look like – one that embraces sustainability as a core pillar of our day-to-day working lives.

Let me start by reflecting that the sustainable transformation of our organization at the scale and pace we have targeted is ambitious and will materially impact every aspect of the way we operate. A transformation such as this requires radical change in everything from procurement and IT operations to people policies and business models. As I’m sure any of my peers will attest, it is a significant undertaking.

At the center of our sustainable revolution is leadership, authenticity, and transparency

Achieving this radical transformation, requires leadership from the top of the organization, and at Capgemini our Group CEO Aiman Ezzat has publicly stated: “I have put acting on climate change at the heart of our Group priorities with a focal point of our ambitious target of net zero by 2030.” This leadership direction is enabling the unlocking of the Group’s entrepreneurial spirit and provides the mandate at every level to transform.

Having this genuine commitment from the top enables us to focus on authentic and meaningful change. I have been outspoken about some of the “greenwashing” that we have seen over the past year,  with companies making carbon-neutral or net zero claims but without disclosing any information about the scope of emissions they are including or their chosen type of offsettings.

This cannot be the way forward – given the scale of the climate emergency, we need both a commitment to bold ambition and complete transparency. That’s why, along with the publication of our new sustainability ambitions last year, we have endeavored to be fully transparent about the scope of our focus.

How we are accelerating our net zero transformation

So, as we enter the twelfth month on our journey, we have now established at the heart of our net zero transformation our ten-stream sustainability transformation roadmap that will enable us to achieve our sustainability ambitions.

The program started with establishing executive governance, and last summer we created our net zero board including both our CEO and CFO as well as other Group Executive Board members. This was complimented with our net zero cross-functional committee, bringing together executives at the operational level. These two groups, supported by a dedicated team from our Invent consulting business, enabled us to rapidly accelerate our sustainability actions.

Last autumn, we had our new carbon reduction targets validated by the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) as being in line with 1.5^oC climate science. We also committed to switching to 100% renewable electricity by 2025 joining RE100, the global corporate renewable energy initiative.

The next major step was to cascade our global targets down to country and function level, and to build detailed action roadmaps that take into account regional specificities, business models, and opportunities. Starting with our largest geographies, roadmaps covering over 70% of the Group by headcount were completed by the end of 2020, with the remainder of countries subsequently addressed. Central to this process has been our environmental management team, responsible for our globally ISO14001 certified Environmental Management System.

Accelerating our approach through partnerships and collaborations

While much can be achieved internally, to really achieve the scale and scope of transformation required for a net zero world, we recognize the criticality for collaboration – with clients, partners, NGOs, and suppliers. Since joining the Race to Zero campaign as a founder member last summer, we have also joined the World Economic Forum (WEF) 1 trillion trees campaign to conserve, restore, and grow one trillion trees around the world, and our CEO joined the World Economic Forum’s Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, a global community of Chief Executive Officers who catalyze action across sectors and engage policymakers to help deliver the transition to a net zero economy.

We are also mobilizing with our clients and our people. Our people are critical to our net zero transition, and to bring over 270,000 own our journey we have accelerated our sustainability learning pathways and this year have launched a new tool for the calculating carbon impacts of our client engagements. Understanding the climate science and the carbon impacts at the client engagement level will be crucial for both delivering our targets, and in supporting our clients with their sustainability challenges.

Driving change in our core impact areas

With supply chain emissions, our global procurement team has started the not-insignificant task of calculating our initial baseline measure of our supply chain carbon emissions. This is the first important step in delivering our science-based supply chain target of halving the absolute emissions of our supply chain by 2030.

Operationally, we are making significant progress on energy transition to 100% renewable electricity. By the end of 2020, Capgemini’s operations* in Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland were fully running on renewable electricity. In parallel, the integration of the real estate portfolio from our acquisition of the Altran organization commenced with Altran sites being added into our renewable electricity transition program.

Work has also commenced to double the onsite renewable energy generating capacity at our Indian campuses is also in progress, and already we have installed another 8,400 solar panels this year bringing online an additional 3.1 MW of generation capacity. Our global real estate team has also developed one of the first GreenLease frameworks in our sector, which sets out the selection criteria for new sites and which will have significant impact on the future sustainability of our portfolio. The criteria, which will be applied when choosing buildings as well as renewing leases, includes renewable energy, energy efficiency and monitoring, sustainability accreditation, electric vehicle charging points, and proximity to public transport. This program has recently been recognized through the Green Lease Leader program.

The last year has also seen a complete overhaul in the conception of business travel. With the COVID lockdowns, Capgemini pivoted almost overnight to near universal working from home while continuing to deliver to our clients. This remarkable transformation was in part supported by our pre-pandemic focus on reducing travel carbon emissions through empowering our people with the collaboration tools to work flexibly. This flexibility will continue to underpin our future delivery models enabling the continued dual focus on delivery excellence and reduced carbon impacts from travel.

We have also launched a new global travel policy, which ensures that carbon considerations are front of mind when making daily travel choices and have commenced the transition of our company fleet to 100% electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030. Finally, we recognize that commuting is also a material component of our environmental impacts and have recently conducted our largest-ever employee travel behaviors survey to understand our people’s current and pre-COVD commuting behaviors.  The analysis, currently underway, will be crucial as we implement plans to reach our 2030 target to reduce by 50% the impact per employee of commuting.

Continuing our net zero journey

While our primary focus must be on reducing our carbon emissions, we recognize that there will always be a proportion of our carbon footprint that cannot be eliminated. To compensate for these residual emissions, we are currently finalizing carbon-offsetting approach (with our focus being on nature-based removal projects).  We’ll share more about this soon.

Overall, it’s been a busy 11 months, but given the scale of the challenge required to limit global warming to 1.5^oC degrees above pre-industrial levels, there is still much to do. As we look forward five months to the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, we remain committed to extending our own sustainability focus whilst collaborating with our clients, partners, and suppliers to support theirs.

* excluding some sites from the Altran organization acquired in April 2020.

Can you share an example of how app modernization supports federal agencies in achieving their missions?

Sarah Granade, Manager: An agency we support was having difficulty responding accurately and promptly to requests for information concerning critical logistics information. The information needed for responses was captured manually and stored across hundreds of thousands of paper documents. Each time a request for information was made, the agency had to spin up a team of analysts to sort through the documents to find specific pieces of information. This process was extremely time consuming and led to slow response times. Capgemini has taken a multi-step approach to resolving this issue. The first step was to design and build an automated process for capture and storage of the information. This initial step allowed for queries to be performed in a matter of minutes for responses to data requests that may previously have taken a week or longer to compile.

Capgemini is now modernizing this automated logistics application by introducing an open-source, web-application. This application will provide a single, consistent, maintainable source of data for over 2,500 locations for the agency. The app will greatly increase the ability of the workforce to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively by keeping the focus on the user throughout and ensuring a consistent experience across devices such as laptops and mobile phones.

Thanks to the efforts of Capgemini over the past 10 years in support of the agency, this logistics system is and will continue to be relied upon at the highest levels of government for reporting and analytics, and will continue to enable increased data integrity and availability, as well as enhanced business intelligence reporting capabilities.

How have you helped your clients implement an API-first strategy? What has been the impact for those clients?

Lini Abraham, Senior Manager: A client faced an increasing need for integrating cloud-based SaaS solutions with existing systems and services, such as across multiple Salesforce orgs for which users had to be provisioned from an enterprise active-directory system. The client had many point-to-point integrations using various technologies and applications on legacy platforms. Capgemini used an API-led approach to unlock data from the enterprise active-directory system. This data, accessed through APIs, was consumed to provision users in Salesforce. This approach simplified the architecture and eliminated the point-to-point integrations and reduced license and operation costs.

Furthermore, Capgemini implemented a C4E (Center for Enablement) for oversight on API design, standards, and tools. We set up well-planned API design and naming standards for ease of discovery and reusability. We also set up a CI/CD pipeline that was critical for distributed development and a centralized deployment process.

How do you embed UI and UX principles into your work and why is this so important?

Christine Horab, Senior Consultant: There are many important guiding principles when it comes to UX/UI, but there are three I would like to highlight. I always find myself repeating, “listen to the user, they are the key to a successful product.” Simply put, the product being developed should address what the user needs. For example, when creating a product, the team should avoid adding features the user did not express interest in. Doing this could result in an unnecessarily complex product for the intended users. It is also important to note that engagement with users should not stop once development starts. User feedback is the most useful tool to know what areas of a launched product are lacking and how they can be improved. Another principle that plays an important role in UX/UI is to maintain consistency. Users want a product that makes their life easier. If there is a lack of consistency within the interface, users cannot easily complete a task without figuring out where to navigate to next. Elements should maintain consistency across the entire product.

For example, a user knows that to submit their work they can scroll to the bottom of the page and there will always be a submit button on the lower right-hand side for them to complete their work.

The final principle I would like to highlight is something you may have heard a time or two before – communication is key. Not just with the users, but also with developers and clients. Keeping all channels of communication open ensures that the final developed product addresses user and client needs.

For all Capgemini Government Solutions blogs, Click here.

Tell us about your role at your current company. What projects or responsibilities are you particularly passionate about?

I’m currently the Vice President of Client Solutions for Protagonist, which is a boutique consulting firm that uses Natural Language Processing technology to analyze narratives in the media.

As the VP of Client Solutions, I serve as the bridge between our clients and our teams of analysts. Unlike Capgemini, we don’t sit on site with our clients – rather, we only meet with them a handful of times in the course of an engagement, so understanding our clients’ needs and building trust quickly is crucial to success. Armed with a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and goals, I lead teams of analysts to transform a collection of quantitative and qualitative analysis into meaningful insights. The goal of our work is to empower our clients to reimagine and redefine their communications strategies to better connect with their customers and key audiences.

We work across three sectors: the US government, Fortune 500 companies, and large foundations. All our clients face unique challenges, but I love working with our foundation clients the most. They want to know how to shift perceptions of poverty in America, where the debate around climate change is going, and how do conservative audiences think about criminal-justice reform. The questions are big, messy, and challenging – my favorite type!

How has your career evolved from your time at Capgemini? What skills and experiences have been beneficial in that growth?

My time at Capgemini was instrumental in preparation for my current role. When I started at Capgemini, I naively came in thinking that working with data is straightforward, but in reality, you’re always dealing with imperfect data to solve real and complex problems. Learning how to think outside the box to harness data to tell a story was crucial in helping our government clients advocate for evidence-based policies. Now, when I’m approaching how to answer a client question, being creative and innovative is second nature.

The biggest takeaway from my time at Capgemini was learning how to lead people. When I was promoted, I started with managing one direct report and eventually ended up leading a team of 13. It became clear to me that everyone needs different things to feel supported; managing people is definitely more an art than it is science! I had to learn how to adapt my (very Type-A) style to listen and observe what worked for different personalities. The most important thing I learned was how to give people opportunities to grow. Allowing space for someone to own something that I was doing was hard for my perfectionist tendencies. It meant that the task might not get done right. But ultimately, letting go helped members of my team learn new skills and build their confidence while also giving me time and space to tackle the next bigger issue. In the end, it allowed all of us all to grow.

I’ve taken this leadership philosophy with me to my post-Capgemini life. Managing people is one of my favorite parts of my job. I love mentoring people, especially those who are just starting their careers, because it’s rewarding to support their development and then seeing where they go next.

Favorite Capgemini memory?

Client-wise: working on developing a training video on how to work with the transgender community. The content was super important to our client, and we worked with experts in the field to get it right. We also interviewed members of the transgender community to talk about their experiences. The vulnerability and strength they conveyed in their stories was incredible. Additionally, the work was a crash course in content and platform development. I had no experience writing a script, building graphics, casting a narrator, etc. It was intense, but what a way to learn. It was a good confidence builder in the “you can figure it out” mindset.

Company-wise: Capgemini was so good about balancing professional and mentoring opportunities. I was selected by the leadership team to attend a multi-day training session for emerging women leaders across the company. I learned so much about executive presence, building a personal brand, and networking with other leaders across Capgemini’s US practice. On the more fun side, we had a bocce team that played near the White House. It was a great way to get to know people who weren’t on your project.

In your personal and/or professional life, what are you excited about and looking forward to next?

Professionally, I can’t wait to get back in front of clients. We’ve all adapted to Zoom life but there’s something about giving presentations and having the conversations in person that makes it so much more fun and engaging.

Personally, I just moved across the country from San Francisco to New York City! I’m from New Jersey, so I’m excited to be closer to my family and explore all that NYC has to offer. Plus, I also just bought a condo so I’m learning all about home improvement.

Any podcast recs?

I listen to a TON of podcasts! In my regular rotation are:

• The Daily – NYTimes does a great job of breaking down current events.
• Ear Hustle – Written and produced by people incarcerated in San Quentin prison, it humanizes incarcerated men and is sometimes heartbreaking, but also always charming at the same time.
• You’re Wrong About – This one takes older pop-culture moments and cheekily tells the listener what really happened. I loved the ones on Elian Gonzalez, Chandra Levy, and Princess Diana.
• I also loved Floodlines – it’s a limited series about Hurricane Katrina. It came out right as COVID was ramping up and it was interesting to compare the government responses to both.

For all Capgemini Government Solutions blogs, Click here.

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Our employees, along with many others, have learned over the past year that working outside the office can blur the lines between professional and personal lives. CGS has been acutely aware of these challenges and continues to provide resources and guidance to employees on how to mitigate them.

One way CGS has focused on this topic is through the Future of Work Committee, an employee-led organization which aims to support employees during the recent crisis and prepare them for a post-pandemic work environment. To accomplish this, the committee has hosted speakers to talk directly to the CGS community about work/life balance and stress management. We asked Cole Freeman, Chair of the Future of Work Committee, about the efficacy of these events:

“One of our goals was to increase colleagues’ awareness that CGS cares about their mental well-being during a difficult time for most people. Initially, we put out a survey asking the CGS community about the relationship between their employer and their mental well-being. We plan to conduct another survey to track our progress and hope that these events have inspired positive responses.”

The first speaker that the Future of Work Committee hosted was Caitlin Magidson, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor. This event focused on the future of work/life balance, creating a sense of well-being, and exploring self-care strategies to manage life stressors. As an organizer of this event, Cole was pleased with the reception from colleagues. “Hearing from a professional with experience on mental-health awareness showed a commitment from CGS to take these topics seriously and showed the willingness to start conversations on mental well-being.”

The next event in this series featured Bill Webner, a Vice-President at CGS, who presented a leadership testimonial on work/life balance and stress management. Bill discussed how these topics have changed over the course of his career, how COVID has affected his outlook, and some best practices he’s developed to maintain work/life balance.

After another successful event, the Future of Work Committee is already planning the next iterations in this series. This summer, the committee will host a diverse pool of volunteer speakers from within the CGS community to speak about their personal experiences. These events will focus not only on how they adjusted to their new professional livelihoods during the pandemic but also how they have navigated work/life balance throughout their careers.

In addition to hosting speakers, the Future of Work Committee is finding new ways to encourage positive attention to work/life balance and stress management. The Future of Health Committee, an offshoot of the Future of Work Committee, has emerged as another organization in which our community can find support. This group aims to prioritize physical health through fitness challenges, 5K runs, health incentive awareness, and CGS health initiatives. The committee has gained popularity with its new series of Fitness Fridays.

With CGS continuing to sponsor these sessions, Cole recognizes the impact these events can have in addressing the changes in our lives as a result of working from home. “The company has acknowledged that this is a difficult time. Having regular work/life balance sessions can give employees the opportunities to realize that a lot of their experiences and stories are shared.”

For all Capgemini Government Solutions blogs, Click here.

Authors:

Joshua Sweren, Consultant

Government Solutions Homepage

Diego Plaza

Why did you choose to join Capgemini Government Solutions (CGS)? I joined CGS because I had a sense that it was a company that appreciated change and understood the need for growth. I wanted to join a company where I could add value and make a difference and be part of the company’s growth. CGS has proven to be a company that appreciates the opinion and expertise of its employees and continuously shows its desire to grow its business and employees.

What is your role and how has that evolved while at Capgemini?
Over the last five years, I have been with CGS in the Contracts Department, but my role has changed over time. I started off at CGS as a Senior Contracts Administrator and I am now the Director of Contracts. My role has evolved out of necessity, for the Contracts Department to grow, adapt, and expand over the last couple of years as a result of changes to the business environment and the evolution of federal government needs and regulations.

What sets CGS apart from other places you have worked?
The fact that CGS has a large parent company backing it while having a certain level of autonomy from the rest of the Capgemini Group allows for CGS to be unique and successful. This rare combination allows the Market and Operation teams to operate day-to-day in a “middle-sized” company environment while being able to rely on the technical capabilities, experience, and expertise of a large company. Given this unique circumstance, CGS employees gain new experiences and exposure in other areas that they would normally never access at a larger company, which contributes to each employee’s overall professional growth.

Serey Vanny

Tell us about your career journey with Capgemini. Of all the company’s I’ve worked at, CGS has been the one place where I have learned and grown the most in my career. I feel blessed to work with a great team of people who really value each other’s strengths and ideas, and really feel I can have my voice heard to make decisions that can help drive the business in the right direction.

What are your favorite perks that Capgemini offers?
My favorite perk is a good work/life balance, with the ability to work remotely. We have the technology set up so we are able to perform our work from any location if needed, and I am extremely lucky to be part of a wonderful team who recognizes and promotes both hard work and balance at home.

What experiences have you benefited most from during your time with CGS?
I have benefited the most from my tenure at CGS from having a great manager who is always looking for opportunities to help me grow and challenges me to learn new things based on my interests. Because of this, I have had opportunities to work on different projects that allowed me to learn new technical skillsets and consistently expose me to fun new projects.

For all Capgemini Government Solutions blogs, Click here.

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Data is at the heart of every organization. But without structure, and without understanding, it’s simply, well, data. A jumble of everything and nothing. Just as, without structure, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is simply words.

What gives data meaning is analytics – which in turn can shape business operations, thereby giving organizations a clear competitive advantage.

However, achieving these benefits is easier said than done. CFOs and process owners are often overwhelmed with the amount of high quality, accurate data that needs to be accumulated and used in real time across multiple sources. What they need is an automated, digital data system that automatically collects, organizes, and analyzes data, using appropriate metrics.

Armed with something like this, they will be able to enhance their decision-making, accountability, and financial health, while enabling their employees to predict and prevent losses and monitor performance.

Actionable, frictionless business insights

An automated analytics model of this kind becomes truly useful only when the data it interprets is drawn from across an integrated organization – what we at Capgemini call the Frictionless Enterprise.

Becoming a frictionless enterprise is about seamlessly connecting your people and processes to break down the silos within finance operations across data, functions, and ownership to eliminate friction. In turn, this can deliver next-generation, enterprise-level outcomes, including reduced operational risk, enhanced agility, increased revenues, improved margins, and improved sustainability.

But how can this be achieved within your finance function? What’s needed is a self-service analytics platform with best-in-class metrics that transforms data into actionable business insights based on historical trends and predictive models. Armed with these insights, CFOs and process owners can achieve frictionless decision-making in real time across their organizations.

Application areas

Let’s put some specifics on those insights in finance areas. They include:

• Improved service excellence – businesses can gain actionable insights from their operational performance, predict SLA and KPI trends, reduce risk through leveraging anomaly detection algorithms and predictive analysis, and provide AI controllership to ensure financial statements compliance
• Enhanced benchmarking – CFOs can focus on the metrics that matter to them, measure the efficiency and health of their finance processes, simulate the benefits of improvements, and measure the speed to value of their transformation and innovation initiatives
• Improved business insights – organizations can take advantage of predictive analytics that deliver powerful insights into their P&L, revenue, sales, and working capital, resulting in informed decision-making and enhanced value.

Finance intelligence in action

The benefits of this smart, frictionless approach can be considerable. Here are a few real-world examples that we at Capgemini have delivered for our clients:

• For a global paper company, we identified actions for a €45 million working capital opportunity, improving DSO by seven days and DPO by one day
• For an international engineering and service company, we used analytics to support business decision-making through cost and resource optimization, enabling an increase in profitability, productivity, and efficiency
• For a global FMCG company, we provided visibility into the cost for customer replenishment – leading to an improvement of 0.5% to 2% in logistics costs
• For a global agriculture business, we improved controllership, providing financial planning and analysis encompassing activities around budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, and analysis.

All these instances illustrate the point we made at the outset. Data without structure or understanding is just data. What gives it meaning is smart, frictionless analytics – and when it has meaning, it’s not only actionable: it’s valuable, too.

To learn more about how Capgemini’s Finance Intelligence – part of our Frictionless Finance  offer – can help start your journey in smart analytics and real-time, frictionless decision-making, contact: daniel.jarzecki@capgemini.com

Daniel Jarzecki is a transformation director with over 18 years of experience in managing Business Services delivery teams, building successful solutions, and running transformation programs for Capgemini clients across multiple industry sectors. Daniel’s passion is to enhance business operations with intelligent automation and use data-driven insights to help clients transform and improve.

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In our 7th episode, Anisa Sanghrajka (Senior Consultant at Capgemini Government Solutions) talks about Capgemini supports Federal Agencies push the needle forward in terms of technology and innovation. Watch below! https://www.youtube.com/embed/S9nSgh1VB5k?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.capgemini.com

For all Capgemini Government Solutions blogs, Click here.

Authors:

Matthew Gribbin (Senior Consultant)

Christine Horab (Senior Consultant)

Kyle Jackson (Consultant)

Melody Asadpour (Consultant)

Government Solutions Homepage

There’s a lot sitting on the shoulders of IT leaders. As well as having to fundamentally change how they deliver corporate IT services over the past year, they’re being tasked with helping their organizations become sustainable businesses. How? By using technology to drive sustainability initiatives, such as digital collaboration platforms to reduce travel, and applying AI to optimize supply chains that reduce wastage.

While this potential for IT to be an enabler of sustainability is hugely positive, there is a growing recognition that enterprise IT is itself a contributor to the global carbon footprint. According to a new report from the Capgemini Research Institute (CRI), the rising demand for computing power and data storage poses “a significant environmental challenge.”

Big tech takes proactive steps

This challenge must be tackled. But where should enterprise IT leaders begin? Capgemini Invent advocates a journey to sustainable IT built on the four pillars of Sustainable Strategy, IT Transformation, Employees, and IT for Sustainable Business — a topic covered in our recent blog and addressed by our Sustainable IT services. IT leaders can also ramp up their ambitions by observing and learning from the big tech firms taking proactive steps to decarbonize their operations. In fact, 48% of the 1000 organizations surveyed for the CRI report said technology firms should be setting standards and decide the norms for sustainable IT.

In the CRI report, we learned that many of the tech giants are making decarbonization and wider environmental impact pledges. For example, Microsoft is planning to become carbon negative by 2030, and 70% of its massive data centers will run on renewable energy by 2023. Likewise, HP has set a target to ensure its global operations are powered with 100% renewable electricity by 2035. And Samsung has a goal to recycle 7.5 billion pounds of electronics waste by 2030. The report adds that sustainable IT is not only limited to the migration to more sustainable hardware and energy but extends to initiatives such as application portfolio rationalization and efficient coding.

4 practical use cases from big tech

For enterprise IT leaders seeking similar outcomes, there are some practical use cases from the world of big tech in the CRI report — the figures cited all appear in the report:

• Procurement: Only 43% of organizations say environmental impact is critical when selecting an IT vendor. Tech giant Cisco takes a wholly different approach with its proactive sustainable IT stance. Cisco directly influence suppliers to ensure they are using carbon-focused sourcing strategies, model designs, product fulfilment, manufacturing energy use and transport mode selection. The company is working with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) so that it is transparent about progress against its overall goal to cut one million metric tons of GHG emissions across its supply chain.
  Learning 1: Ensure your technology vendors are transparent and accountable on sustainable IT norms as part of a sustainable IT procurement policy.
• Carbon cost: Setting a carbon cost against IT operations can help different functions within the organization really understand the impact of their IT footprint — currently, however, only 27% have set a cost. Microsoft is a pioneer in this area, having introduced internal carbon fees as far back as 2012. These are levied on internal business units for the carbon emissions associated with the company’s global operations for data centers, offices, labs, manufacturing, and business air travel.
  Learning 2: Use carbon cost setting as a driver and incentive for sustainable IT, challenging business units to include the cost of carbon in their annual budget.
• Utilization: Data centers guzzle energy. In 2019, data center operations accounted for nearly 1% of the world’s energy demand. And currently, only 17% of organizations have deployed measures to use sustainable energy sources in their data centers. Google is one of the big tech companies to act on this, having shifted execution of non-urgent workloads in its data centers to when low-carbon sources of energy are abundant.
  Learning 3: Use artificial intelligence/machine learning to optimize data center utilization. AI/ML can deliver critical load balancing techniques that optimize workflows and enable dynamic scheduling based on renewable power.
• Rationalization: Only 19% of organizations measure the energy impact of their pre-production application environment (development and testing) and only 21% measure the sustainability impact of the production environment (live applications). Intel has developed the Software Development Assistant, which enables programmers and engineers to take energy measurements from a system as it executes specific workloads.
  Learning 4: Rationalize applications, and audit applications to identify and decouple energy-intensive ones — experience shows this can cut operational costs by 11%.

Sustainable IT levers

The above offers a small flavor of the use cases and learnings discussed in our latest research report. Further practical use cases include moving from on-premises infrastructure to cloud computing for significant energy savings; adopting more energy efficient data-transfer mechanisms, for example shifting to edge computing to reduce energy use by processing data closer to the source; and auto switch-off for hardware in the office.

The task of IT leaders is to identify the right levers as part of their sustainable IT strategy and not fall for trends which aren’t the right fit for their ambitions. Also, it’s important to prioritize spend with partners that share common objectives, so that we can scale impact, promoting the enterprise IT as a true enabler of sustainability.

Find out more

• Want to continue this conversation, contact me here
• Find out how Sustainable IT from Capgemini Invent can support your transformation here
• Read the CRI Report here.

Author

Courtney Holm

Vice President, Sustainability Solutions at Capgemini Invent

Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting is defined by Capgemini Invent as a capability that capitalizes on Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning to “recognize historical patterns, select best-fit statistical models, and draw on a variety of inputs and forward-looking variables, (..) to create more accurate demand forecasts with less manual effort.” In other words, it is an automated, data-led approach to intelligent Demand Forecasting.

Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting is increasingly part of the modern Supply Chain. Its success rests on the combination of: 1) a centralized analytical organization supported by AI, Machine Learning, Big Data and automation providing statistical forecasting, 2) a thin local organization managing exceptions, all working together in 3) a well-defined process. In this article, we consider why so many leading Supply Chain organizations are adopting Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting.

“By 2023, at least 50% of large global companies will be using AI, advanced analytics, and IoT in supply chain operations.” (Source: Gartner Predicts 2019 for Supply Chain Operations)”

Traditional and new Supply Chain challenges require a fresh approach to Demand Forecasting. Supply Chains are confronted with increasing operating costs, high working capital, and a lot of manual work in forecasting. Furthermore, expanding product portfolios, channel diversification, and external disruptions increase complexity and a need for Supply Chain resilience and agility. Traditional Demand Forecasting is not designed for this.

Increasing accuracy, efficiency and agility

Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting realizes higher planning effectiveness and efficiency than traditional Demand Forecasting. In the first instance, the use of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can yield a higher forecast accuracy and lower bias. Combined, they allow automatic recognition and extrapolation of patterns in demand, while considering a broad range of external data, leaving exceptions to be handled manually. Here, we can see that automation significantly reduces the amount of manual forecast touches that typically erode forecast accuracy.

Another benefit accrues in the process and organizational efficiencies derived by increased speed and automation. The automation of repetitive manual low-value tasks frees the workforce to focus on managing exceptions and higher-value work.

Finally, due to its increased execution efficiency compared to traditional forecasting methods, Touchless Demand Forecasting allows for a more responsive and continuous weekly forecasting cycle, catering to the need for more resilience and agility. The combined effects drive better planning and a more stable Supply Chain, leading to additional benefits in cost, cash, revenue, and service.

To illustrate this, we use the case of Capgemini’s collaboration with a global consumer goods company. After initial segmentation of the portfolio, we ran a parallel test for three months and compared the outcomes of the existing manual Demand Forecasting process and Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting. The latter generated positive results across almost all selected SKU types, increased forecast accuracy with 10-15 percentage points, while highly automating the process. We are now in the process of executing the first phase of a multistep rollout plan.

Transforming the planning capability

While every organization’s journey to Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting will be unique, there are general aspects that can guide an effective transformation of the planning capability and ensure the benefits are reaped. First, the Supply Chain organization should create a vision around the people aspect of Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting. It is important to have a deep understanding of the current and potential capabilities of the planning teams, to determine the right fit with future needs. Secondly, process mapping should be used to understand current demand forecasting pain points. By assessing the gap between as-is and to-be processes, a future-proof Operating Model can be designed. Thirdly, organizations should be aware of the rapid development in technologies. It is important that the implemented technology is a perfect fit with your planning evolution and can answer your key planning challenges, as well as being a match with your current level of planning maturity. Finding the right technology supplier is critical to the success or failure of implementing new Demand Forecasting capabilities. The above describes the first crucial steps of your journey towards Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting.

Key takeaways

Traditional and new challenges in Supply Chains require a fresh approach to Demand Forecasting, in the form of Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting. Compared to Traditional Demand Forecasting, it provides:

1. A higher forecast accuracy and lower bias using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, while still manually managing exceptions.
2. Process and organizational efficiencies through automation of manual forecasting tasks.
3. A higher degree of agility & responsiveness through a shorter forecasting cycle.

Combined, this results in benefits in cost, cash, revenue, and service for Supply Chains. To realize this successfully, the following combination is required: a clear vision on the people aspect, a centralized analytical organization providing the statistical forecast & a thin local organization managing exceptions, new technological Touchless Forecasting assets, the right match with a planning organization’s level of maturity & key challenges, and a well-defined Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting process.

At Capgemini Invent we work with Supply Chain organizations globally to help them embark on this journey and see it through to the end with the ensuing cost, cash, revenue, and service benefits. We have broad experience in facilitating centralized analytical organizations for our clients utilizing Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to produce statistical AI/ML forecasts as-a-service.

This blog is part 1 of a series on Autonomous Planning. You can follow the series on Capgemini Invent’s LinkedIn or our website. Please contact one of our experts below to start your journey to Continuous Touchless Demand Forecasting.

Find out more

Learn more about our approach to Connected Autonomous Planning in the recorded webinar here or download the PoV ‘Consumer products intelligent supply networks: Continuous Touchless Planning’ here.

Authors

	Mark Enthoven Senior Management Consultant in Supply Chain Planning
	Sven de Jong Senior Management Consultant in Supply Chain Planning
	Peter Tacken Managing Consultant in Supply Chain Planning