PwC utilizes innovative technology solutions such as Microsoft Sustainability Manager to champion sustainability

Sustainability is a challenge for companies going through modernization

PwC’s core purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. It guides how the company serves its clients, its people, and the world. To help its clients build trust and deliver sustained outcomes, PwC provides professional services across two segments: trust solutions and consulting solutions. Within these segments, the company brings a range of capabilities to help organizations solve faster, solve more, and realize more value. These capabilities include cloud and digital, deals, ESG, cybersecurity and privacy, governance/boards, risk, transformation, tax services, and much more. Across its global network of nearly 328,000 professionals in 152 countries, PwC is committed to advancing quality in everything it does. 

As technology has continued to progress, PwC has been on the forefront as an industry leader to provide consulting services to companies on how to best utilize technology to grow. In working with organizations across the globe, there has been one pattern that’s emerged: “the biggest challenge that most of our customers are going through right now is really getting complete, accurate, reliable sustainability data,” says Sammy Lakshmanan, Sustainability Partner at PwC US. “That's a single universal challenge that we see across all of our clients, across all sectors. There's no one-size-fits-all approach to effective sustainability data collection and reporting. We help our clients look at sustainability from a people, process, and technology standpoint.” 

PwC has a passion and commitment to help climate transition as the world moves forward into the future. As a broad consulting services company, PwC is uniquely positioned to help its clients with comprehensive services, including meeting their growing regulatory commitments and enabling companies to embed sustainability into their operations. All this is done while also assessing a company’s tax implications around sustainability initiatives and how to leverage sustainability to drive top line growth. 

“We support clients during every phase of their journey,” says Lakshmanan. “Our clients have varying levels of sustainability and sustainability maturity and aspirations—those that may not want to be the sustainability leader, but are still interested in developing and executing a strategy around sustainability and those that are completely looking to transform their business models through a sustainability lens. No matter which client we’re working with, our relationship with Microsoft is key to bringing our clients the right solution.” 

PwC provides sustainability insights through Microsoft technology  

As a cloud solution partner to Microsoft, PwC offers a variety of solutions in the marketplace that help untangle complex world problems. PwC Solutions are built on Microsoft secure technology to help its clients deliver sustainable growth, agility, and lasting innovation to secure data, improve operations, and personalize the customer experience. 

“PwC and Microsoft have an award-winning 360 relationship that has lasted over two decades and a big part of our success together is how our missions closely align in solving our clients’ most important challenges together,” says Lakshmanan. 

The solution that PwC provides its clients for accurate sustainability data insights utilizes a combination of Microsoft technology products to achieve the most accurate results—Microsoft Sustainability Manager, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. PwC couples that technology with its proven expertise to help its clients create and execute a sustainability strategy. The solution leverages the Microsoft Azure technology stack for streamlined data collection and the technology’s predictive analytics capabilities to drive actionable insights to support the business. It enables companies to achieve their sustainability goals, helps them to ensure that they're being compliant with the regulations, and, most importantly, gives them the insights to think through all the necessary capabilities that they need around carbon accounting. 

For instance, many of PwC’s retail clients are focused on creating a modern data platform that uses the Microsoft technology stack to set a foundation that enables the sustainability data fabric to build trust with their customers as they sell their products. “Of course, you’ve got to be compliant,” says Lakshmanan. “Managing the data from source through quality, transformation, and ultimately reporting, are challenging given the level of accuracy and assurance we are now seeing with new regulatory requirements. Using the data beyond reporting to drive decision-making around the global and visible challenges of microplastics, eco claims, net zero, and waste, for example.” 

The exponential power of partnership

In 2023, PwC was recognized as a valuable Microsoft partner through the 2023 Partner of the Year Awards. The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards acknowledge outstanding successes and innovations by partners in over 100 countries and in a wide variety of categories and industries, including cloud transformation and social impact. PwC won or placed as finalist in 14 diverse categories across the world. In the US, the company won for Low Code Application Development and SAP on Azure, and also finalized in Compliance, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Azure Analytics, Dynamics 365 Finance and Dynamics 365 Sales & Marketing.  

“PwC has a growing alliance and practice with Microsoft, and we are honored to be named a winner and finalist, globally and regionally, in the 2023 Microsoft Partner of the Year awards. This is just the beginning, together we are innovating and creating solutions to help solve the world’s most important challenges; this is The New Equation for PwC and Microsoft,” says Patrick Pugh, Principal of Global Microsoft Alliance and Transformation Leader at PwC US. 

With PwC’s innovative solutions and deep industry knowledge, amplified with the power of Microsoft technology, the two companies are jointly transforming industry and instilling shared values of trust, sustainability, and innovation. “PwC and Microsoft have been working with a retailer who has industry-leading sustainability, performance, and ambition,” says Lakshmanan. “It’s already had a robust renewable energy program and solar energy installations at many of its facilities. It has a growing program to ensure that its products were sold from environmentally responsible companies, but it only gathered data and reported on greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis. That's nowhere fast enough for its people to make decisions on a day-to-day basis.” 

By leveraging PwC's deep industry knowledge and implementing Microsoft Sustainability Manager, the client was able to move to monthly and even in some cases weekly calculations to inform its analytics and accurately determine where those emissions hotspots are now going. Beyond that, this retail company is looking at how it takes the Microsoft technology stack and drills down from the material level to the product level. The company wants to understand how to source the actual data, quantify the impacts and emissions, and improve the sustainability footprint of the products that it is selling in stores. 

This retail company’s overarching goal to is reduce its scope 3 emissions, all of which is enabled through the Microsoft technology stack. “We helped them identify the data elements they would need for this methodological transition as well as the supporting data infrastructure and roadmap to put those changes into effect,” says Lakshmanan. “We're building towards a feature in which the retailer can make data-driven decisions on its suppliers and its own company performance, not just on financial performance but on environmental and sustainability performance and choose to work with the companies that uphold its mission and values.” 

Advancing AI to make an even greater impact in the future

In April of 2023, PwC announced plans to invest $1 billion over the next three years to expand and scale its AI offerings and help clients reimagine their businesses through the power of generative AI. The investment builds on PwC's long-standing commitment to AI, strengthening its ability to deliver human-led and tech-powered solutions.  

This investment features an industry-leading relationship with Microsoft, creating scalable offerings using OpenAI’s GPT-4/ChatGPT and Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. This will enable PwC to transform the way it works while harnessing the power of generative AI. PwC will leverage this technology to help support clients in reinventing their businesses and delivering better outcomes by generating richer insights, driving more productivity, and developing new products and services. 

“We are at a tipping point in business and society where AI will revolutionize how we work, live and interact at scale,” says Mohamed Kande, Vice Chair, US Consulting Solutions Co-Leader and Global Advisory Leader at PwC. “PwC has long been a pioneer in responsible AI and this latest investment and collaboration with Microsoft will help our people and clients realize the augmented productivity and new growth opportunities associated with generative AI, doing so in a responsible way while driving the right results.” 

“If you think about AI, and indeed the full spectrum of automation, this is fundamental to sustainability, to really enable our clients to make the right decisions at the right time in the right and responsible way,” says Lakshmanan. “We do not want any of our clients to underestimate the importance of transparency and trust when leveraging AI technologies- that's why we've created a responsible AI offering.” 

“We are excited that PwC will utilize Azure OpenAI Service to transform the way they work, and to deliver innovative customer solutions that take advantage of the world’s most advanced AI models, backed by Azure’s trusted enterprise-grade capabilities and AI-optimized infrastructure,” said Eric Boyd, Corporate Vice President, AI Platform, Microsoft. “Our collaboration with PwC and OpenAI will be a game-changer that opens the floodgates for businesses to experience generative AI applications in a safe and secure manner.” 

PwC has already started implementing capabilities within Azure OpenAI Service for clients in various industries including insurance, aviation, and healthcare, among others. These solutions have successfully enabled clients to save time and costs while helping get visibility into sustainability. 

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