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Accenture Song has publicly detailed a recent AI project it completed for Bricomarché, one of France’s leading home improvement retailers.

The project saw Accenture Song build an AI-based chatbot for the retailer’s website. According to the firms, the chatbot was trained on home improvement content created by Bricomarché to help online shoppers choose and purchase paint.

Customers can ask the chatbot to assist them with defining the style of a home improvement project. When the chatbot’s AI-generated advise is insufficient, it can fetch explanatory videos from Bricomarché’s content library. 

Once an online shopper has an idea for their home improvement project, the bot can highlight the types of paint that should be used and the optimal quantities. According to Accenture Song, it can also point consumers in the direction of accessories such as brushes that that they may need.

The chatbot is built on Azure OpenAI Service, which provides access to OpenAI language models hosted in Microsoft data centers.

The project is notable on several levels.

First, it’s a high-profile case study that will highlight Accenture Song’s AI skills to potential future consulting clients. Accenture Song is Accenture’s in-house marketing agency: the business unit employs several thousand staffers who brought in fee income of about $18 billion during its last fiscal year.

Parent company Accenture is the world’s largest IT consultancy and, as such, has plenty of AI expertise on hand. But from a marketing standpoint, it’s still important for Accenture Song to separately demonstrate that its employees can put generative AI models to good use. The deal with Bricomarché will help it in this area.

Another important aspect of the deal is that Bricomarché is one of the most well-known retail brands in France. That means the chatbot project will come handy for Accenture Song when it pitches French corporations on marketing projects: relevant case studies are a major asset even for a well-established consultancy.

“Generative AI has the potential to be a real game-changer in retail and is driving companies to reinvent how they run their businesses, serve their customers, and get work done,” remarked Laurent Thoumine, the head of Accenture’s retail consulting business in Europe. 

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