Paraphrase all the answers

1. What are the core problems and challenges presented in the case study?

Many significant challenges were present in Accenture’s journey of IT transformation. One major obstacle that they faced immediately after separating from the original company and becoming Accenture was the limitation in time for using Anderson’s technology. For only one year, Accenture were allowed to use Anderson’s technology infrastructure, which raised their need to build a new infrastructure a short period of time. This has led to another important decision to be made about which application should be develop in-house and which one they should outsource, and whether they should outsource in or out the firm. Moreover, an issue was the high cost of running and maintaining infrastructure. Considering the diversity of their business offices all over the globe and the offices’ adoption of their own systems, it was very difficult to attain one-platform infrastructure for all their branches. After opting to apply one-platform infrastructure, they had to decide whether it was better to choose a single-vendor approach or it was more beneficial to deal with different vendors. They used one-vendor infrastructure for easier communication and information sharing between the applications. However, regarding to this decision, they had to overcome the problem of one instance of the system for all the offices around the world with their different needs. In addition, IT employees’ unwilling to was a problem that Accenture needed to overcome. Accenture had to convince IT employees for the invaluable opportunities of business growth and cost reduction that the proposed solution may bring to their businesses since it required IT employees to learn and to change their rules to adapt to the new system. In 2001, Andersen Consulting took the brave step of parting from Arthur Andersen, its parent. After separating from Arthur Andersen, the new firm changed their name to Accenture. The new firm had a bright future but it also faced some challenges in building a new IT infrastructure that is capable enough to support a global organization that offers consultancy on a leading edge technologies. It was obvious that Accenture’s IT infrastructure needed to be rebranded.

Organization structure of Accenture was quite different from Andersen’s, so this also added to deficiencies of the firm. The new firm also had a limitation for using Andersen’s technologies for only 1 next year. So the constraints were already there as the new firm emerged. Accenture had to face few challenge in IT too while moving ahead. Their systems were made up of patchwork of legacy applications that didn’t interconnect among themselves. Also, the systems used outdated software platform which made it impossible for the key systems and database to be accessed remotely over the internet.

There was also a dire need of strong infrastructure for individual accounting and HR software systems for different offices since they had no global infrastructure with accounting and HR systems. Due to the outdated software platforms they were using, they major systems and data repositories were inaccessible remotely from the internet. For this purpose, they sought assistance of large and expensive private networks which added to their costs. Mostly, they did the financial aggregations and reporting manually which wasted a lot of valuable time and resources.

Another challenge that Accenture encountered was to persuade the group business leaders to migrate their customized local applications to a standard platform. By standard platform, they wanted business leaders to migrate their applications to a single global instance of that platform. Accenture decided upon a single instance platform since they thought that multiple instances of a platform will result in complexity in a longer run. In future, even if there is a minor update, having multiple instances will demand that update to be run for all those instances which becomes quite complex and is wastage of time and resources.

In short, a smart transformation was needed that could cater organization’s need to in building up a new IT infrastructure.

2. Describe at least 3 Management practices used by Accenture in the IT transition process from 2001 to 2008.

· Changing management’s and employees’ attitudes towards technology:

One major factor that clearly contributed to the prevalent success of Accenture’s IT transformation was changing how the firm as a whole conceive IT. Accenture dealt with IT like an independent business, and a panel of C-level executives would determine the budget the spending priorities of IT. Having different executives would help have “strategic, financial, operational, and technical” point of views, which guaranteed more thoughtful, and thus, Accenture has succeeded.

· Ensuring efficiency and effectiveness:

During the tremendous transformation of IT in Accenture, the steering committee has made many actions in order to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. For example, when choosing the platform, the steering committee decided to use one-vendor architecture. They prefer one vendor to multiple vendors for applications from one vendor can share information with each other flawlessly, which would end up with effective and efficient deployment of IT. Also, the products they develop are driven by the internal customers’ and system users’ needs. Instead of having an outsourcing company to decide which applications and requirements are needed for the business, managers and customers could contribute to the decision of developing a new model.

· Considering cost reduction through the use of innovative technology:

The IT has a dramatic influence in terms of cost saving. One major decision the help reduce the spending was choosing one-platform architecture. This allowed them to significantly minimize the cost of deploying and maintaining IT in the offices around the globe. Also, they sought cost reduction by moving the servers from Madrid to Argentina.

After the transition process, the employees count has reached up to 180,000 which was 75,000 back in 2001. There was seen a significant increase in Accenture’s revenues which went up to $21.6 Billion starting from $11.44 Billion in 2001. Their revenue is reported to be increased by 143% after the transformation process.

Accenture created a strong, central IT governance which enabled them to reduce their IT costs by 64% after the transition process. Another management practice that was practiced during the transition process was about encouraging the innovation. Accenture encouraged all positive ideas on improving their IT infrastructure and the outputs were fruitful; they reduced their IT costs and increase their revenue.

Accenture chose right people for right things which enabled their firm flourish and prosper. All the people in charge were aligned with the goals of the organization which enabled organization to achieve success in this transition period. People were motivated and enthralled, so they really made good decisions for their IT infrastructure. The IT management of Accenture’s had a clear and bright vision. They proposed IT to run as a business within a business instead of running it as a cost center and this is what made them stand out.

Accenture had managed to do proper project planning for their organizational goal. They were focused and clear on their organization objectives in the IT transition process. Also, there was proper system for tracking and reporting project progress so the stakeholders knew where they stand. This enabled them to compare their actual progress with the planned progress so they can estimate how far they are from reaching the actual goals. These were key management practices that helped in a successful IT transition process.

3. Pretend that you are the CIO of Accenture - What decisions you need to make beyond 2009?

If I were the CIO of Accenture beyond 2009, I would continue having an independent committee that would decide for the budget and spending of IT. As it was in 2008, this committee would include different C-level executives for having a comprehensive thought of what might and might not benefit the firm. Also, I would inspire the departments to provide their suggestions that are related to IT to the committee to be seriously discussed, as long as they are attached with ROI analysis for more than a couple of year. I would rather highly reward the employee who came up with the suggestion if its efficiency, effectiveness, and cost reduction were proven. Also, I would promote the innovation in using IT to support the business. Overall, I would follow the steps of Accenture’s CIOs since 2001 to maintain the prosperous story of Accenture accomplishments in the IT field. Looking at the organizational culture and available options at Accenture, I feel that it is very important for Accenture to be equipped with latest technology since 3/4th of their employees spend their time outside the office and travelling to client locations. It is the need of these road warriors to possess advanced technological platforms to offer an extra ordinary level of uninterrupted services to the customers. All offices of Accenture need to use a standard information system to communicate date and information with each other. Standardization is of great importance for any organization as it efficiency of internal communication. A standard information system is easy to manage and organize and it helps in managing customer and partner relationships. I would recommend the company to use SAP as their Management System, Microsoft as their official software provider and Intel & Cisco as the hardware providers. Cisco shall be used for all network related equipment whereas Intel should be consulted for all hardware related services. These 3 products meet firm needs and demands with lower level of complexity and are expected to offer greater benefit. The decrease in IT costs in the past 9 years is commendable. SAP is a perfect fit with a single-platform solution. SAP is regarded as number one platform to offer financial solutions, technological services and HR applications. It is important to choose one-platform solution since it will enable the firm to have lower IT support resources when dealing with single approach platform.