Based on article published by Kellogg school of management

1. Strategic IT Transformation at Accenture
Presented by
Sajal Gupta
Roll no-101
Accenture

2. History of Accenture
 Who was the parent company of Accenture?
 Arthur Anderson was the parent company set up in 1913
 In 2001 Anderson consulting took the step of separating
from its parent and rebranded itself as Accenture

3. History of IT at Accenture
 Annual revenues of $11 billion
 75000 employees, and more than fifty offices around the
world
 Accenture had the right to use Andersen's technology for
one year.
Accenture

4. Challenges in IT
 Andersen's systems were composed of a patchwork of
legacy applications that didn’t interconnect.
 Obsolete software platforms, due to which key systems and
databases could not be accessed remotely through internet.
 Individual accounting and human resources software
systems for different offices.
Accenture

5. Changing IT Philosophy
 Internal IT was thought as a cost center with an assigned
budget, run by technology savvy engineers with limited
management involvement.
 Technology priorities had political component.
 IT decisions made at individual levels, with offices in
different countries having their own specialized staff
developing their own software applications.
 This in turn increased cost of supporting IT infrastructure
,difficulty in integrating information, and attain economies
of scale.
Accenture

6. Accenture's IT management’s new vision: IT as a business within a business.
 IT products and services conceived and driven by needs of
internal customers and stakeholders.
 Clear and verifiable service levels for each of the IT
products and services offered ,which are benchmarked for
improvement as learning curves and better technologies
enable efficiencies.
 IT spending priorities determined by panel of c-level
executives from different realms of businesses.
 Different level of services offered for a particular
technology.
Accenture

7. Selecting a Platform
BBest- of -breed platform
•The best possible application in
the market was bought for a
specific need
One platform approach
•One strategic partner providing
compatible applications
•Economies of scale is achieved
•Pareto effect
•More depth and functionality
than peer applications
•Less cost effective
•Require multiple specialization
increasing training cost costs.
•Requires middleware's to connect
various to share information
among business units
Accenture
•Lower IT support head count
when dealing with a single
approach platform.
•Seamless flow of information
without need to design custom
interfaces.
•Need to ensure that single
vendor is financially sound

8. Management applications
 Accenture opted for a single vendor approach keeping in
mind complexity created by 600 global and 1500 local
applications
 Chose Microsoft as a partner to run most of its back end IT
operations as well to provide basic communication and
productivity applications.
 The cost benefits were significant ,for example Accenture
was able to move from three distinct servers to one, for
more than four hundred Novell file servers to 50 Microsoft
servers.
 SAP as its worldwide application provider for financial and
human resource solutions and HP for its hardware needs
and CISCO for all network related equipment.
Accenture

9. Outsourcing within Accenture
 Accenture was born in harsh economic times
with dot-com bubble burst and difficult events
of 9/11 were soon to come demanding for
cost cutting at all levels.
 Outsourcing was Accenture's fundamental
initiative to reduce costs. Accenture looked for
lower cost regions like India, southeast Asia
and Latin America
 By 2010 only 14% of Accenture's IT staff worked
directly for company whereas 86% was borrowed
via the Accenture global delivery network (GDN).
 By applying systematic approach to processes,
methodologies,tools and architectures proffesionals in GDN
delivered customized IT solutions under “follow the sun” model.
Accenture

10. What to outsource
•To make this decision Accenture divided its activities into
different buckets
•Processes that provide differentiating competitive core
•Processes involving highly confidential information
•Processes involving tasks that were repetitive .
•Accenture was open to outsourcing routine IT tasks to capable
providers.
•As outsourcing matured ,Accenture continued to seek
opportunities to leverage economies of scale and of location .
Accenture

11. The Big Bang, Single Instance
Approach
 In implementing single instance approach ,Accenture
indentified two additional approaches.
1. It was important to stay current on mission critical
applications .when missions were not mission critical
,upgrades were analyzed based on “if it needs to be done
,and if needs to be done now”
2. A project approval process driven by business benefits
and return on investment ensured that right processes
were taken at the right cost.
Accenture

12. New IT governance in action
Accenture

13. Conclusion
 Accenture undertook an exemplary journey in transforming
its IT capabilities .
 As its global workforce almost doubled its IT organization
managed to reduce spending per employee by 60% and IT’s
overall expenses as a part of net revenue by 58%.
 Accenture was successful in running IT like a business
,managing a nimble and flexible IT department with some
of the lowest per employee costs in its sector.
Accenture

14. IT Transformation Results
2001
2010
75,000
Employees
180,000
$11.44 Billion
Revenue
$21.6 Billion
67%
% of satisfied sponsors
86%
IT spend in $
Reduced by 22%
IT spend as % of revenues Reduced by 59%
IT spend per person
Reduced by 69%
0
Sourced IT staff
2,900
600
Global applications
356
1,506
Local applications
195
Multiple
Technology platforms
One
Not measured
Benefits realized
111%
Accenture

15. Accenture