Yann Lepant, managing director – head of data and AI UKI, Accenture Technology

What has been your path to power?

I don’t see my journey as one to power. This is not a word I cherish. 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. Over the next few years, I cut my teeth on client focused technology strategies and full-cycle technology transformation delivery/management roles, 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, the need to have a rounded understanding of our client imperatives, technology capability as well as a strong delivery acumen was essential to that role.

One of my proudest achievements has been the creation of the technology analyst group for Accenture, which provided a differentiate home and career proposition for 500+ technology graduates in the UK. This helped 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 need to ringfence our capability in the data and AI area and gradually built our expertise in its multiple disciplines, such as data engineering, data management, data architecture, visual and analytics, AI/ML and more. From the get-go, our focus has been to help our clients define meaningful but realistic data and AI strategies and support them through realisation. I’ve always had a vision that this journey needed to be business-led and technology-enabled.