Orange Business, ESSEC & Accenture partner to grow AI skills

Orange Business works closely with the ESSEC Business School, one of Europe’s premier management institutions, through the ESSEC-Accenture Strategic Business Analytics Chair. This is a corporate academic collaboration between Accenture and the ESSEC Business School. Orange Business acts as a key partner, challenging students with real-world data and AI cases. The goal of the Chair is to shape the next generation of data and AI managers.

The 2026 challenge asked students to design the foundation for a scalable, measurable, responsible AI tool. The criteria outlined that the deliverable needed to be measurable and aligned with the Orange Data and AI Ethics Charter, the EU AI Act and ISO/IEC 42001. The latter is the first international standard framework for establishing, implementing and continually improving an Artificial Intelligence System (AIMS).

As GenAI adoption accelerates, enterprises are entering a new era of opportunity and complexity. They must navigate a rapidly changing landscape of large language models (LLMs), limited model transparency, shifting regulations and growing demands from customers and stakeholders for responsible, trustworthy AI. Responsible AI has fast moved from being an ethical ideal into a strategic imperative for businesses. 

The goal of the project was to develop practical approaches to help enterprises evaluate AI maturity, identify risks and build the governance framework necessary to deploy AI responsibly and confidently. 

The evaluation was performed across the most representative LLMs to assess performance against a comprehensive set of digital trust metrics. This covered the full range of defined evaluation criteria, enabling a consistent comparison of model capabilities, reliability, transparency, security and overall trustworthiness. 

Throughout the project, all established targets and evaluations were successfully met. The results demonstrated that the selected models could effectively be assessed against a trust framework, highlighting the robustness of the methodology. 

Throughout the project, students were supported by the Head of Responsible AI Orange Business, Muriel Moenza and expert coaches and subject-matter experts from Orange Business, who provided guidance and industry perspectives to help them strengthen the tool's quality and relevance. 

The project delivered a comprehensive responsible AI assessment framework, underpinned by a scalable evaluation methodology and automated scoring capability. 

What did the Orange Business 2026 responsible AI project demonstrate beyond technical success?

Beyond the technical achievements, the project demonstrates the power of cross-functional collaboration. Bringing these perspectives together enabled the students to develop a balanced and practical approach to GenAI evaluation. 

For Orange Business, the project has served as an important internal learning experience, helping connect responsible AI governance efforts with operational implementation, customer expectations, and future market opportunities.

The project aims to integrate responsible AI monitoring capabilities into our Live Intelligence platform, enabling customers to continuously assess and manage the performance of their AI models against key responsible AI metrics. 

By providing visibility into areas such as fairness, transparency, reliability, explainability and compliance, the tool will help organizations to identify and mitigate risk throughout the AI model lifecycle proactively. 

The project has shown that responsible AI is not just a compliance tick box. It shows the need for a robust mechanism that proactively manages AI risk, ensures regulatory compliance and drives transparency for customers and stakeholders alike. 

This year’s project builds on the success of the ESSEC 2025 Corporate Project, winner of the ESSEC 2025 Best Corporate Project “Coup de Cœur” award, demonstrating the power of combined academic excellence, expertise and shared commitment to responsible AI. Together with Orange Innovation, as part of this ongoing strategic collaboration, an innovative end-to-end Gen AI proof of concept (PoC) was delivered in 2025.

In 2026, the next step was taken by focusing on AI governance, evaluation and risk management – helping enterprises build AI solutions that are reliable, ethical and aligned with business and regulatory expectations. 

Moving forward, we at Orange Business will continue working with academic institutions, technology partners, and industry experts to advance trustworthy AI solutions and strengthen the responsible adoption of Gen AI across the ecosystem.