Capgemini: Mastering Data for Sustainability Progress
Data is vital to sustainability, providing insight on where changes can make the biggest improvements.
Generative AI has the potential to streamline this process and could cut years of effort away from net zero goals.
Capgemini has released a report on data-powered enterprises with a focus on the use of generative AI.
The report, titled Data-Powered Enterprises: The Path to Data Mastery, highlights a surge in organisations unlocking huge value from data and executives are changing the way they use it to become more sustainable.
Dr James Robey, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Environmental Sustainability at Capgemini, says: “Capgemini continues to prioritise sustainability, ensuring it remains at the core of our business strategies and operations.
“We believe in empowering our employees to take proactive steps towards a more sustainable future, making a tangible impact on the world around us.”
Capgemini: More than 50 years of innovation
Capgemini is a global leader in consulting and IT services and has been helping businesses to innovate since 1967.
Headquartered in Paris, the company has offices in more than 50 countries and has acquired and developed data tools to support companies with innovation.
Known for its strong financial performance, the firm is also deeply committed to sustainability.
Cyril Garcia, Head of Global Sustainability Services and Corporate Responsibility at Capgemini, says: “We are bringing our unique combination of consulting expertise, engineering capabilities and digital transformation to help them both minimise their impact and use today’s sustainability challenges as a catalyst for innovation and a driver of value.”
Why do businesses need to become data masters?
Capgemini says that data master organisations have improved decision making and monetisation.
The amount of data created, captured, copied and consumed in 2025 is expected to be nearly three times as much as in 2020.
Between 80-90% of this data will be unstructured in formats like HTML or emails, requiring careful focus to capture and process the right information.
The first Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) reporting cycle will start in 2025, requiring businesses to have a deep understanding of data to accurately report their climate impact.
Data in sustainability
The report shows that to minimise environmental impact, 60% of data executives are reducing data collection, 54% are optimising data storage and 43% are refining data software and algorithms.
As many as 83% of business executives say they evaluate vendors on their sustainability credentials to help in reducing Scope 3 emissions.
AI can have a higher carbon footprint than traditional IT programmes – 78% of executives surveyed by Capgemini acknowledged this.
This larger environmental impact makes it important that sustainability is integrated in generative AI strategies to align businesses with responsible corporate practices.
So far, only 57% of the executives surveyed in the data masters category ensure they use AI solutions sustainably and 43% in other organisations.
The role of generative AI in data
Early generative AI is notorious for producing unreliable information, so organisations need to ensure that AI solutions are trustworthy.
Only 42% of data executives feel they have the data needed to train generative AI models, and 61% say their organisation is facing a shortage of AI skills.
Capgemini’s report shows that data masters get more benefits from using generative AI – they save 14% more time from these solutions than other organisations.
Amazon is using generative AI to produce review summaries, providing customers with a short paragraph explaining the most frequently mentioned customer sentiment.
Bloomberg is also harnessing AI for its BloombergGPT that provides a range of data cleansing functions to save labour.
Shawn Edwards, Chief Technology Officer at Bloomberg, says: “We see tremendous value in having developed the first LLM focused on the financial domain.
“BloombergGPT will enable us to tackle many new types of applications, while it delivers much higher performance out-of-the-box than custom models for each application, at a faster time-to-market.”
Walmart has launched Walmart Luminate, a new business that analyses and derives insights from customer behaviour, perceptions, and channel performance.
Walmart’s global advertising business, which includes its RMN, Walmart Connect, grew 28% in 2023.
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