We spoke with Justin Keeble, an MD leading the sustainability arm within Accenture Strategy, about the past, present, and future of sustainability services—a still undefined space that is growing rapidly. In Part 1 we discussed the three eras of sustainability services and the need for service providers to bring together all of their capabilities if they want to offer holistic sustainability services. Part 2 delves more into the rationale behind sustainability services and examines the dynamic that must include not only a service provider’s complete set of capabilities but also the entire enterprise. Sustainability services may be undefined, but in a rapidly growing space that addresses what is likely the most pressing issue facing the planet as we speak, many service providers must build a missing capability quickly. Whether they do so from the inside or outside, providers cannot afford to be lax and late to the party.

Sustainability services start with your longstanding clients for strategy, services, technical consulting, or all three—that’s vital in an undefined but competitive marketplace

Accenture’s first port of call when it comes to sustainability consulting and services is through its longstanding clients. Whether an enterprise’s drive is fuelled by pressure from consumers, regulators, or competitors, it will reach out to Accenture, where an existing relationship or contract is ongoing, for support.

Accenture aims to help clients along the whole sustainability journey—shaping strategy, leading the transformation, and even running parts of a business. When it comes to the wider space of sustainability services (as Part 1 outlined, is yet to be fully defined—encompassing the breadth of strategy consulting, managed services, and technical consulting), Accenture sees its differentiator as being able to offer the full range of both consulting and services.

Accenture Strategy does compete with traditional consultancies and certain boutique firms, but the sector and function coverage of the latter two groups is often limited. The nature of competition in delivering sustainability services and consulting varies depending on the sector and type of problem. Some technical environmental consulting firms might have very niche offerings or technology, but, ultimately, they lack scale when competing across the sustainability umbrella.

Two critical but simple themes drive sustainability services: Leader conviction and/or business value.

The most common catalyst for an enterprise seeking sustainability services from Accenture is a leader’s conviction that the sustainability agenda must be championed both in and by the enterprise. They want to take a stand and accept personal responsibility for the actions of their company; they see a new or looming pressure, maybe a challenging investor question, a threat from a competitor, or a regulation poised to constrain the market—and they want to act. Keeble cited the example of a leading UK utility provider’s CEO wanting its strategy to facilitate a transition to a low-carbon economy and then reaching out to Accenture for services.

The second driver is simple and rational—it’s driven by a business opportunity or creating new value, which either Accenture or the client may have identified. Take the alcoholic beverage industry as an example, where a leading player identified a massive energy saving potential, and Accenture found what levers were available to the company to drive that change.

Sustainability serves everyone within the enterprise—something that every function must understand.

Accenture Strategy, which encompasses the sustainability consulting arm of the wider sustainability services package, services the leadership level of an enterprise. The interaction can vary depending on its nature, for example, “enterprise value initiatives” might serve the CFO, and a supply chain initiative might be led by the Chief Procurement or Operations Officer.

But it’s not only a case of sustainability serving the C-suite; it’s wider than that: In the modern world, sustainability is serving everyone within the enterprise—something every function must understand. This fundamental concept draws increasing emphasis for any service provider hoping to play in the sustainability services space, to engage all their capability if they hope to achieve the breadth and depth that a holistic, sustainable transformation requires.

Enterprises must learn how to track non-financial value and engage investors on sustainability

A recent survey by Accenture and the UN Global Compact found that only 12% of CEOs see shareholder pressure as a motivation to pioneer sustainability. The widely-held belief that sustainability-type initiatives go against the wishes of investors might be outdated, as the Harvard Business Review found, but that mantra clearly hasn’t filtered into the minds of the world’s CEOs.

Service providers have a key role to play. In reaching across their capabilities, they can bring the widest possible range of elements—whether that’s brand value, customer experience, and retention, or a range of non-financial KPIs—into an enterprise’s sustainable transformation. Critically, this must involve enterprise value and be at the forefront of the CFO’s and CEO’s agenda.

The Bottom Line: Sustainability serves the whole enterprise—service providers must draw from their whole enterprise to be a major player, and develop an ecosystem that makes up for any shortcomings.

Tying together the central theme from our time with Justin Keeble—sustainability is holistic. It is all-encompassing, for both enterprises and any service provider that hopes to be a major player in the field. Just as sustainable transformation must filter through the whole enterprise and beyond, service providers must draw on their whole range of expertise to enter the game.

Given that the sustainability services space is still undefined, the odds are many service providers will need help. They must draw on their existing ecosystems and make haste in building new ones by partnering or acquiring—the traditional way to develop capability. Although the term “sustainability services” may not roll off everyone’s tongues just yet, the industry is bubbling under the surface and rapidly expanding. Many service providers won’t have a choice but to build these capabilities from the outside, and some may well be too late already.