Strategic IT Transformation at Accenture

The organization structure for Accenture is relationship-based, and the professionals work closely to deliver quality services to clients, as well as achieve the organization’s main objective. The decision-making structure is centralized, and most communications occur vertically. The governance of the organization aligns with the corporate vision and ensures assignments, responsibilities, and accountabilities of the departments are met. The hierarchy is simple and well-defined with the chief information officer (CIO) as the overall head. The structure is organic and projects depend at hand often respond to the situation at the market.

The CIO general heads the Accenture Information Technology (IT) organization. The departments operating under the CIO include the departments of Business Operations, Infrastructure Services, Business Application Delivery Front Office Applications, and the Business Application Delivery Enterprise Applications. The business operations entail CIO Business Management and Support, CIO Marketing and Communication, Disaster Recovery, Finance, Human Resource, IT audit and policy, IT governance, Supplier Management and organizational development. The infrastructure services entail infrastructure operations and delivery, IT risk, infrastructure planning and service management, and the Accenture infrastructure outsourcing unit. The front office applications entail sales tools, marketing and communication applications, and pricing applications.

The History of Accenture

The inception of the Accenture Company was on 1st January 2001. The Andersen Consulting separated from the parent company, Arthur Andersen (an accounting firm founded in 1913) and was then rebranded, the Accenture. The Accenture name was adopted using $175 million and with the 12 % parent’s company equity which was $1.7 billion. The company has been globally providing management consultation, IT infrastructure, support and has been in a technological leading-edge now for sixteen years. Today, the CIO of the Accenture organization leads in its remarkable IT transformation and the global communication is centralized.

From the birth of the IT at Accenture, the annual revenue has been $11 billion from over its fifty offices around the world. The number of employees per year has been about 75,000 disseminated all over the world. Since the IT infrastructure was very important for the global corporation and collaboration, the Accenture firm had to meet this demand to support its own infrastructure (Jeffery, et al., 2017). The information technology (IT) was then introduced to solve the problems of branch systems that were previously not readily connected with each other, inability to remotely access the databases through the internet, and the difficulty in retrieving an up-to-date global organization’s snapshot at one time.

The Accenture currently uses an integrated IT for its global transactions. The initially decentralized systems at “island” firms posed a central management difficulty, and therefore, the new technology in Accenture was proposed to IT as a business within a business but not as a cost center. The approach enables satisfaction of the current client needs for IT services and products, appropriate service levels for a particular technology, verifiable and clear service levels for IT products, and the IT spending priorities as determined from various business realms: technical, financial, strategic, and operational.

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Customer Profile

The Accenture customers are not from a particular industry but range from a full range of global industries. The clients come for consultation services, IT services, and product purchase. The company’s commitment to its customers increases its chances to develop customers who often return for services. The goal of the Accenture is to help their clients to enhance their businesses, government, and performance. The customers’ base is global covers Asia Pacific, southern and northern America, Middle East, Europe, and Africa. The operating groups to enable customer satisfaction are engaged in communication and high technology, products, port and public service, resources, and financial services (Jeffery et al., 2017).

The competitive issues that are IT related include innovativeness, coming up with client-specified products, and customer retention. Accenture works with large companies and large projects in businesses, institutions, and government. The company also has customers from medium-sized companies, but such transactions are seldom. Examples of customers of Accenture include; the Deutsche bank and the BMW (Kaikati, 2003). Out of the list of 100 companies in the global Fortune, Accenture has 87 as its clients.

IT Values

The IT values of the Accenture are based on organization discipline, security, accountability, collaboration, innovativeness and simplicity (Kaikati, 2003). Collaboration is enhanced through the new capabilities of global IT infrastructure which allows teleconferencing and easy communication among the Accenture global workforce. Also, innovation is an IT value that allows the company to deliver its services to its internal customers. Moreover, the organization is disciplined in IT budget allocation, and this enables it to ensure accountability. Finally, the IT products are simple and secure and customized in a way that would drive global cost-competitiveness.

The Accenture protects the value of its intellectual property as well as that of its customers. The company has patents to its transactions with other organizations. It has policies aligned to ownership, confidentiality, and the use of intellectual properties of third parties. It also engages in appropriate agreements with its employee for secure business. The company maintains the security of the client’s data using its privacy policies. The policy ensures that the company, as well as its clients, is protected against data loss or copyright issues (Jeffery et al., 2017). The Accenture has a web-enabled enterprise system that offers a centralized control, greater flexibility, ability to integrate finance organizations with the major corporate functions, and robust reporting (Kress, 2010). Accenture also uses Microsoft technologies for secure and better integration across its complete financial environment. Finally, the company has a global enterprise relational platform (ERP) system which enables efficient business since it is a single system with improved access, greater control and standardization, and ability to operate at a lower cost.

Internal Standards

The IT governance at Accenture involves the strategy and structure, multi-year planning, year planning, and execution. The key decision areas depend on IT strategy (strategic scorecard, policy formation, et cetera), enterprise architecture including IT standards, IT products and service planning with local and global accountability, operating planning, capital planning, taking initiatives, and analyzing the benefits of the implementation. The involved stakeholders include the capital committee members, the COO, the CIO, as well as the business sponsors. The existing policy ensures the safety of data, clients, and information (Jeffery et al., 2017). The operations rely on constant communication and giving feedback to improve services.

IT Vision of Accenture

To become a world’s high-performing technological, outsourcing, and management consulting organization with a sustainable value to its clients, shareholders, and stakeholders. At the Accenture, IT plays a vital role in the development of an integrated management system.

IT Mission of Accenture

To build IT infrastructures that are secure, scalable, and global, and can improve clients’ efficiency and productivity at a reduced cost of between 20% and 40% of the overall IT costs. This mission gives the Accenture a competitive advantage over other companies.