Accenture's Resources group helps companies in the chemicals, energy, forest products, metals and mining and utilities industries achieve high performance, creating shareholder value by proactively helping to identify and drive market-making strategies and outsourcing arrangements. Our industry professionals help senior executives anticipate change, develop transformational business strategies and exploit technology for sustained competitive advantage. In Ireland our focus to date has been largely in the utilities sector where we have been helping companies prepare for the introduction of competition to the energy markets.Our forest products industry experience is also relevant in Ireland.
Accenture's energy group has been a part of the industry for many years. Our experience spans the entire value chain, including upstream, downstream, oil service and pipeline companies. We collaborate with leading energy companies to help them meet competitive challenges and shape solutions that advance their journey towards high performance.
We team with lumber, pulp, papermaking, converting and packaging companies to develop and implement innovative strategies. We bring the industry a solid foundation of tools, knowledge, experience and people that help forest products companies turn the industry's challenges into opportunities and create high-performance businesses that can succeed in a competitive and rapidly evolving global industry.
It's about making difficult decisions in an unpredictable environment where the differences are often subtle. This is especially true today as utilities confront changing regulations, aging infrastructure assets, skills shortages, fuel price volatility and the need for environmental sustainability. However, utilities looking to build for the future can also look to a fresh set of business solutions enabled by new digital technologies, sensing devices and software capabilities. Accenture leverages its industry experience, business process knowledge and systems integration skills to help utilities become high-performance businesses.