Yann Lepant, managing director – head of data and AI delivery for Europe, Accenture Technology
Describe your career to date
It has been a journey of learning through successes and failures, meeting some great people along the way and building a network of talented people to work with.
I fell into data way before it was a thing many people cared about. I started my career as a data architect, with a strong focus on integration of large transactional systems, before gradually moving over to the analytics world. Over the years, I cut my teeth on client focused technology strategies and full-cycle technology transformation, always staying close to the data and gradually building up my knowledge of end-to-end technology delivery.
Working at Accenture for over 20 years has enabled me to deepen my expertise of client concerns in multiple industries. I have always been a strong believer that to be a credible and trusted advisor, it is essential to have a rounded understanding of client imperatives and technology capability, as well as a strong delivery acumen.
One of my proudest achievements has been the creation of the Technology Analyst Group for Accenture, which has provided a differentiate home and career proposition for more than 500 technology graduates in the UK. This helped to bring a new level of talent and diversity into the firm and significantly bolstered engagement and energy within that community.
A few years ago, I saw the opportunity for Accenture to accelerate our capability in the data and artificial intelligence area and gradually built our expertise in its multiple disciplines (ie data engineering, data management, data architecture, visual and analytics, AI/ML, etc). Today, I help organisations transform to become “insight led” by helping them to modernise their technology capability, embed AI at the core of their operations and enable the business to take ownership of their data and insights.
What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?
This is a tough one. I would say that keeping calm and composed under pressure is definitely one of them. More seriously, I think that being curious is a key element. Keeping up to date with new technologies, current affairs, clients’ priorities, trends and strategies, etc, has enabled me to build credibility and relevance for our clients.
What level of data maturity do you typically encounter across your client base and what tends to hold this back?
This varies greatly across our client base. While most companies have terabytes of data in existing data platforms, very few exploit it successfully or with control.
The call to migrate existing platforms to the cloud is driven not only by scaling needs but by the imperative to consolidate and rationale data silos, transform to leverage new capabilities such as real-time processing and advanced ML models and give control to the business to consume, share and capitalise on value derived from data and insights.
Maturity levels depend greatly on what step our clients find themselves in this journey.
Key challenges they typically face are a) articulating the value of data as an asset; b) defining tactical as well as strategic use cases to optimise the flow of value release to their organisation; c) finding the right talent to deliver on their data strategy; d) rotating their organisations to change ways of working and become more data-driven.
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