Strategic IT transformation at Accenture

Arthur Anderson was the parent company of Accenture, which was set up in 1913. In 2001
Anderson consulting took a step of separating from its parent company and rebranded it as
Accenture. Even though being separated from its parent company it’s had a right to use
Anderson’s technology for 1 year.

Accenture had to undergo many challenges in the initial stages. The Anderson’s systems were
composed of a patchwork of legacy applications that didn’t interconnect. Software platforms
were obsolete, due to which key systems and databases could not be accessed remotely through
the internet.

To overcome the challenges they had made implementations in the company. Offices were in
different countries and they had their specialized staff developing their software applications.
They thought that internal IT as a cost center with an assigned budget, it was run by technology-
savvy engineers with limited management involvement.

They selected 2 platforms ;

Best-of-breed platform: the best possible application in the market was bought for a specific
need.

one platform approach: one strategic partner provides the compatible applications.

Accenture opted for a single-vendor approach. It chose Microsoft as a partner to run most of its
back end IT, provide basic communications, and for productivity applications. It also used SAP
for its financial and human resource solutions and HP for its hardware needs and CISCO for all
network-related equipment.

Outsourcing was one of its fundamental initiatives to reduce costs. By 2010 only 14% of
Accenture’s IT staff worked for the company directly whereas, 86% was borrowed via the
Accenture global delivery network (GDN). By using these professionals in GDN delivered
customized IT solutions under “follow the sun” model.

Accenture undertook an excellent journey in transforming its IT capabilities. As its global

workforce doubled its organization managed to reduce spending per employee by 60% and its
overall expenses as part of net revenue by 58%.