Essity Collaborates with Accenture and Microsoft to Accelerate AI Adoption for Productivity and Growth

Essity (STO: ESSITY-B) has selected Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and Microsoft to help the global hygiene and health company accelerate the use of AI agents to unlock value and drive efficiencies and growth through improved business agility.

As part of the multi-year collaboration, the companies will work together at Essity’s AI Centre of Excellence. Accenture’s top cloud, data and AI experts with deep industry and functional knowledge will use Microsoft’s advanced technologies such as Azure, Copilot Studio, Power Platform and collaborate with Microsoft experts for technical guidance and support. Together, the companies will create a robust and flexible cloud-based technology platform that will provide next-generation AI capabilities, on which Essity can test and scale solutions across their core business processes and functions to deliver transformational impact.

This first phase of the collaboration will focus on enhancing procurement and finance operations, where cross-functional teams will test, observe and continuously improve these areas over a period of time. Longer term, Essity plans to scale AI across the company to reinvent other end-to-end business processes, enabling new pathways to value and growth.

“To accelerate value generation for our consumers, customers and our employees, we are collaborating with Accenture and Microsoft to access strong industry, functional, technical and product expertise, crucial for ensuring we have the agility to move as the market does,” said Carl-Magnus Månsson, Essity’s Chief Digital and Information Officer. “We are creating a robust and flexible foundation and approach for developing and embedding data and AI in our core business processes to create value and deliver growth. The platform will be developed with leading design principles within a responsible AI framework designed to ensure ethical and legally compliant use and aligned to our company core values: We are committed, we care, we collaborate, and we have courage.”

"Essity has taken a bold step forward in realizing its ambition to be a pioneering company in the hygiene and health sector by reinventing key business processes with AI so it can move forward, faster,” said Patrik Malm, managing director at Accenture and lead of this initiative with Essity. “We're bringing together multi-disciplinary expertise across function, industry, and technology to create a cloud-based platform for collaboration and co-creation. Together with Microsoft, our collaboration breaks exciting new ground for how Essity can better serve consumers with generative AI and agentic technology to create value and drive growth.”

Sophia Wikander, CEO Microsoft Sweden, said: “We’re operating in a transformative era of AI, where the ability to test, observe, shape, and scale solutions rapidly is evolving. Through this collaboration with Essity and Accenture, we’re bringing Microsoft’s agentic AI technologies and technical expertise to empower Essity to reimagine its core operations and unlock new levels of agility and value.”