In a landscape where businesses are scrambling to adopt generative AI, one of Accenture’s top artificial intelligence (AI) executives offered business leaders a harsh reality: This is not a side project.
At the recent Fortune Brainstorm AI conference, Arnab Chakrabortydirector responsible for AI at Accenture, argued that the era Gone are the days of treating technology roadmaps as separate from business goals. “Data and AI strategy is not a separate strategy, it is the business strategy,” he said, emphasizing that for modern organizations these elements must form the foundation of the entire operations.
This idea stems from a massive, ongoing collaboration between Accenture and Australian telecommunications giant Telstra. In January 2025, both companies moved beyond the traditional client-consultant relationship to form a dedicated joint venturea move intended to circumvent the slowness of typical corporate structures. Dayle Stevensa Telstra head of data and AI, told moderator Jeremy Kahn the company had a five-year strategic roadmap, but realized the market was moving too fast for standard timelines. “We thought we could do what we wanted to do within five years and we wanted to do it within two years. »
To achieve this, the partners had to free themselves from the rigidity of the annual budget cycle that afflicts most large companies. Chakraborty said the joint venture was a “very bold move” and “an industry first” for both telecom and consulting. “We had to create a new company, you know, where this whole data and AI setup was trained and what it does is create a new identity.” He said the business was still very integrated with Telstra, but it was incorporating innovation from the consulting world and Silicon Valley.
Repair the foundations first
Chakraborty argued that, based on what he has learned, when building an agentic organization, it is important to not think only about technology. “Think about the people and the culture. It’s so essential.” This is important, he added, because to drive AI adoption, “you actually have to redefine the culture of the organization.”
When it comes to technology, of course you have to clean up the mess of existing systems. Chakraborty warned executives not to “get carried away with the shiny AI” and neglect the unglamorous work of data foundations.
Stevens offered a candid look at the technical debt that large organizations face. Telstra, like many established companies, had allowed complexity to fester, operating with “80 different data platforms” because different departments had historically obtained data independently.
“You can’t get quality data without improving that data ecosystem,” Dale said. The company is now in the midst of a radical simplification to consolidate those 80 platforms down to just three. They have already reduced that number to 27 and plan to complete the consolidation within 18 months.
Flexibility and empathy
The annual cycle can be a trap, Stevens added, as large companies lock in spending plans every 12 months, but “AI is evolving very quickly.” She said an internal disruption for Telstra is that it needs to be “much more adaptive. We need to be much more agile to be able to pivot and change as new technologies and opportunities emerge”.
Stevens told how Telstra rolled out a generative AI tool called “Ask Telstra” to frontline staff. Instead of presenting it as an efficiency game, they presented it as a solution to employees’ biggest complaints, or “pain points.” The response was overwhelming, she said: “We literally got a standing ovation,” suggesting that workers are ready to embrace AI, but that there are many issues that need to be addressed, and their employer needs to be aware of and support them.
The Telstra executive also said that the Australian media had been seduced by the idea that AI would replace jobs and so they had set up an “AI Academy” to communicate to workers that they would actively train people. When you focus on the human aspect and those pain points, Stevens added, it’s very well received.
Earlier in the panel, Chakraborty highlighted another human element that is missing from the AI narrative. “I would say trust is key,” he said. “You know, today the (return on investment) challenge is due to lack of confidence,” he added, referring to the number of billions that have been spent on data center infrastructure to support AI adoption, without an underlying confidence in the returns to come. This also extends, he added, to “how do you focus on trust by design of AI systems? And how do you enable your people and your organization to mitigate trust with your stakeholders? So how did you do that?”
This is a question that executives highly recommend every business leader asks themselves. “I think the commitment of leaders to lead by example is extremely important,” Chakraborty said. “(The) CEO and their direct reports (have to be) fully behind this. They are attracted to them. They personally lead by example. I think that goes a long way in getting people on board.”