Accenture plc 

is an Irish-domiciled multinational professional services company.
A Fortune Global 500company, it has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland since 1
September 2009. In 2019, the company reported revenues of $43.2 billion, with more
than 492,000 employees serving clients in more than 200 cities in 120 countries. In
2015, the company had about 150,000 employees in India, 48,000 in the US, and
50,000 in the Philippines. Accenture's current clients include 91 of the Fortune Global
100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500.
On 11 July 2019, Accenture appointed Julie Sweet as their new Chief Executive Officer.
She accepted her office on 1 September 2019.

How Accenture works with their clients

“Cross-industry expertise. Unmatched innovation. World-class tech and talent. We bring

it all together to deliver tangible business outcomes for our clients.” 

Services
“With remarkable people in over 200 cities, we combine local insights with deep
expertise across 40 industries to tailor the services that solve your biggest challenges.”

Strategy & Consulting

Envision and execute end-to-end transformation that turns disruption to advantage.
Technology
Deliver on the promise that technology holds to create lasting value.

Interactive
Design, build, communicate & run meaningful experiences at the intersection of purpose
and innovation.

Operations
Create new intelligent operating models that help you outpace digital disruption and
grow.

Five key factors that positions Accenture well:

(1) Virtual team structure

Their global management committee already operates as a virtual team over three
decades. Thus, mobilizing to address this situation has been seamless.

(2) A standing crisis management committee, led by Chief Operating Officer, Jo

Deblaere

They have had protocols in place, which they have tested for years through real and
simulated crises and they are focused in people, business continuity, facilities
management and financial impact, among other things.

During this global pandemic, their ability to trigger these protocols and then adapt for
this unprecedented situation is allowing them to move rapidly.

(3) Virtual working expertise.

They are experienced in working virtually and already have deployed at scale in the
normal course in our business collaboration technologies and infrastructure for remote
working.

(4) Staff retention.

Their strong corporate functions and investments made to digitize Accenture have
always been key to attracting and retaining talent and operating Accenture with rigor
and discipline.

(5) Services relevance.

Their services are highly relevant to their clients. Deep clients’ relationships with the
world’s leading companies and their unique business model will enable them to help
their clients succeed in this uncertain period.

Client behaviors

Sweet said that Accenture is already seeing changes in client behavior:

“Our clients are focused, as a first priority, on the safety of their people and adjusting to
the need to have remote working, which for many of our clients is very new and we’re
helping many of our clients make that adjustment.”

The ease or otherwise of doing this varies according to the sector in which an
organization operates, she added:

“Our clients, for example, in the public sector are having to respond not only for their
own work forces, but to what they need to do for the public.”

The second activity centers on mission critical services, said Sweet, which again varies
by company and sector:

“So there is a big focus in this first phase on mission critical services, working together
with our clients, being able to do that in some cases remotely, in some cases continuing
to go into the centers.”

The third thing that Accenture is seeing among clients is ongoing impact assessment of
both the global health crisis and the disruption in the economy. This takes into account
travel restrictions, the restrictions of people needing to shelter in place:

“As you might imagine, that assessment occurs along two vectors. It comes at the
intersection of industry, technology and geography, as well as the individual
circumstances of the clients.”

Knowledge transfer

With organizations forced to come to terms with remote working at a rate outside of their
own control, there’s also the questions of skilling up workforces and knowledge transfer
to be addressed. This again Sweet pitches as a strong point for Accenture:

“Because we are so familiar with how to do virtual, what we have done is rapidly look
at…how do you do knowledge transfer remotely? Some of it is already there and to be
honest, we have had a lot of that.”

There are some new knowledge transfer initiatives, she added:

“If you think about SAP, one of the first things we did - [for] SAP, Oracle, any of our
systems - is that we have looked at all of our methodologies. Obviously our
methodologies today do involve being onsite and so we are converting them and then
pushing that out across our workforce and helping our clients understand it.”

Conclusion:

Accenture successfully applied the basic principles of risk management in their

operations amidst this global pandemic. These include creating value, addressing
uncertainty and assumptions, being an integral part of organizational process and
decision-making, being responsive to change, striving for continual improvement
considering best information and human factors, and being systematic.