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Strategic Issues for Accenture Bangladesh: A Developing Country Perspective:

Case Analysis II

Article  in  Vision-The Journal of Business Perspective · March 2016

DOI: 10.1177/0972262916629740

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74
I would like to strongly recommend that the company
redesign its mission, vision, goals and objectives for
Bangladesh market. There should be a short-term plans for
5–7 years as well as 15–20 years long-term plans which
need to align with the growth of information technology
sector in Bangladesh. The company must initiate capacity
building programme in local market to ensure skilled
workforce in its pipeline for upcoming years. More impor-
tantly, Accenture Bangladesh needs to establish the ground
of its operational set up in Bangladesh market and then
should focus on the growth and sustainability, which seems
to be ignored by the company’s current strategic plan.
Considering the level of investment and international
image, it would probably not be difficult for Accenture
Bangladesh to attain short-term goals. However, the key
challenge would be to sustain the growth, whereas the
silent competitors would be prominent in the marketing
warfare.
Case Analysis II
Wahida Shahan Tinne1
DOI: 10.1177/0972262916629740
Introduction
The case is based on Accenture, known as a one of the
leading organizations in the world, providing manage-
ment consulting, technology and outsourcing services.
They had offices and operations in more than 200 cities
in 56 countries and clients in more than 120 countries
with approximately 358,000 employees. It earned net rev-
enues of US$31 billion for fiscal year 2015. Accenture
promised to provide end-to-end solutions for banking and
non-banking financial institutions, fast moving consumer
goods companies, pharmaceuticals and other telecommu-
nication companies. In 2015, they focused on an opera-
tional strategy consisting of five major trends: The Internet
of Me, Outcome Economy, Platform Revolution, Intelli-
gence Enterprise and Workforce Re-imagined.
Brief SWOT Analysis
Accenture had established itself as a leader in global mar-
ketplace. Moreover, taking control of the Bangladeshi
market was more convincingly done by the management
1Department of Business Administration, ASA University Bangladesh Shyamoli, Mohammadpur, Dhaka Bangladesh.
Email: tinne_4066@yahoo.com
Corresponding author:
Wahida Shahan Tinne, Department of Business Administration, ASA University Bangladesh Shyamoli, Mohammadpur, Dhaka Bangladesh.
E-mail: tinne_4066@yahoo.com
Vision 20(1)
team inherited from GPIT. It had selective partnerships
with international IT giants such as Huawei, Oracle, Dell,
Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft to insert the inter-
national standard product and service offerings for all of its
deliverables.
Since its inception, Accenture Bangladesh has been
struggling to develop its value propositions. The growth of
IT-dependent businesses (10 new financial institutions
every year), de-pricing of internet cost and penetration of
Internet connectivity forced the company to undertake
development initiatives through rigorous marketing of IT
solutions. Operating at local market was a necessity for the
company’s initial stages of survival.
Accenture has the competence to offer modern services
and have own network and market to provide digital ser-
vices jointly. By this, it can also find new investment
avenues in the ICT and telecom sectors. With increasing
labour costs in India, and the decreasing cost of capital in
Bangladesh, the country was on the verge of becoming a
popular outsourcing destination. The company was initi-
ated to capture international contracts and acted as a system
integrator for local industry.
While internet penetration rates were rising with grow-
ing number of users in the last decade, Bangladesh lagged
behind in facing dreadful challenges in the IT sector.
Absence of proper operational practices and guidelines
for data standardization and security made the overall pro-
cedure lengthy and difficult. The major obstacles in its path
of creating digital society were full utilization of capacity
and scope at a time of upgrading ICT infrastructure.
Right Moves
Accenture was well known for its offerings and capitaliz-
ing on evolving management trends and technologies to
benefit its clients. The new management of Accenture
Bangladesh was composed of former Grameenphone and
GPIT employees, foreign graduates and local IT experts.
It engaged in setting key performance indicators that
would focus on effective stakeholder management by
adopting very specific and efficient operating strategy.
The main strategic step was geared towards positioning
Accenture in a way that would identify its core competi-
tive advantages through specialized products/solutions and
service excellence and expertise, not on price. Integration
of departments was attained by asking department heads
to take ownership of all the projects. It enabled all teams
to work coordinately in completing commercial target.
 Shimul 75
The company was also focusing on relatively less deve-
loped international markets such as Nepal and Bhutan,
and offered its services as an original equipment manu-
facturer vendor to foreign clients. It served clients in over
15 countries and had partnership with the local government
towards developing the IT infrastructure in Bangladesh.
Accenture also inaugurated training and employee exchange
programmes with many fortune 500 companies worldwide
to facilitate knowledge transfer and acquisition.
Wrong Moves
Within short span of time, the company had experienced
frequent changes in management. Therefore, every time a
CEO or a CCO had been changed, strategic priority and
cultural aspects were also altered accordingly. In addition,
it caused a very rapid conversion of existing management
team as well as subordinates, pushed the company in creat-
ing job insecurity and caused delay in applied operational
activities. GPIT had confronted an identity problem from
the very beginning when it was inaugurated. However,
the issue was resolved when Accenture acquired the sole
control of ownership as it already had earned reputation
of becoming global leader in its industry. So, Accenture
could be able to come out from the shadow of Grameen-
phone to articulate its fortune with own image. Accenture
Bangladesh faced the challenges of delivering structured
message of its vision through proper promotional cam-
paigns. Moreover, it lacked a planned marketing team
while operating in the fastest growing and most competi-
tive arena in the country. Accenture only did its marketing
through IT seminars, fairs and sponsorship of some local
software expos, which could barely highlight its full
potentiality.
Recommendations
Accenture’s first step towards the future began with an
analysis of current growth barriers. Those barriers were
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included global competitors, sales cycles, investment and
risk averseness for long-term growth, narrow casting inter-
national markets, grey practices in local markets and other
IT firms and venture capital investors. As far as internal
factors were involved, the company set out to investigate
its shortcomings in terms of bureaucracy, lack of efficiency
in product design, pre-sales, pricing and processes, and
lack of experience in the BPO industry.
However, poor infrastructure including frequent power
crises and slow and unreliable Internet connections are the
most immediate problems for the software industry of
Bangladesh. At the same time, IT businesses most often
could not secure their financial access in local financial
institutions due to the intangible nature of ICT products.
Moreover, there was quite consequential gap between the
existing education system and the industry practices. A
serious communication gap was evident between govern-
ment representatives and the ICT sector as government
officials had deficient knowledge on fundamentals of
information technology.
Bangladesh Government has taken initiatives to over-
come the barriers of ICT-based companies. All Software
and ICT-based companies, including those under foreign
ownership exempt from income tax until 2015. Both a gov-
ernment sponsored long-term equity fund and short-term
working capital financing are offered to ICT companies.
A special hi-technology and software technology park is
being built by the Government to facilitate the develop-
ment of the entire infrastructure needed by companies.
However, Accenture can take some initiatives to make
stronger position in ICT industry of Bangladesh. Accenture
should specialize in particular product or service ranges in
order to create more reliable and unique sales propositions.
Accenture should create a quality controlled match-making
platform. Accenture should develop specialized training
facilities and motivational programmes for talented ICT
employees and coordinate interaction between industry par-
ticipants, supporting associations and educational bodies.