Accenture is a Fortune Global 500 IT company and a global leader in consulting services. It is also a research and analytics company incepted in Dublin, Ireland, on 1st September 2009. Accenture was antecedently a business associate degreed technology consulting division of an accounting organization known as Arthur Hans Christian Andersen.
In 1989, it was formally established as a separate unit as Andersen Consulting after the restructuring of the Andersen Worldwide Organization. In 1991, Andersen Consulting began its first major outsourcing assignment, which involved BP Exploration‘s, accounting, finance, and support functions. In 2000, Accenture fully split with Arthur Andersen and become completely independent. On January 1, 2001, Andersen Consulting adopted its present name ― Accenture which is derived from ―’Accent on the
future’.
For the full 2019 fiscal year company‘s net revenues were $43.2 billion, compared with 2018 income, which is $39.6 billion.
More than 492,000 Accenture employees are serving clients in more than 200 places in 120 countries. Accenture serves with offices and operations in more than 200 cities in 55 countries. In 2015, a company working with 150,000 employees in India, about 50,000 in the Philippines, and about 48,000 employees in the US. Accenture’s present clients include 95 of the Fortune Global 100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500.
Julie Sweet is the present CEO of Accenture while David Rowland is the executive chairman.
Accenture provides professional services to its clients in the areas of strategy, consulting, technology, digital, and software.
Accenture provides a safe environment for transgender employees. It set a goal to achieve a gender-balanced workforce with 50 percent women and 50 percent men by 2025. Presently, Accenture has
150,000 women, approximately 40 percent of its global workforce. In 2016, Fortune magazine called Accenture the ‘World‘s most admired’ information technology services company.
It provides efficient services and solutions to multiple companies that are on the Fortune Global 100 and Global 500 lists.
Products and Services
Accenture products are automotive, consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, and medical products, media and technology, industrial equipment, retail, transportation, and travel services.
The company provides five services to its clients of Fortune Global 500 to face future challenges.
The five business arms are Accenture Strategy, Accenture Consulting, Accenture Digital, Accenture Technology, and Accenture Operations.
Accenture Strategy works on the business strategy, technological strategy, and operations strategy. This arm shapes the clients’ future, using deep business insights and understanding of how technology will impact their industries to envision – and deliver – solutions at the intersection of business and technology.
Accenture Consulting is concentrated on management consulting, industry-specific consulting services, and functional and technical consulting services to help the world‘s leading companies. It transforms the clients’ businesses by using deep industry knowledge to identify their issues, and then leveraging Accenture’s capabilities to deliver innovative, tailor-made solutions.
Accenture Digital gives compatibilities in digital marketing, mobility, and analytics to help clients to provide better services to a customer. It digitalizes the clients’ businesses, enabling them to harness the power of digital tools – such as analytics, interactive marketing, and mobility services – to improve the user experience for millions of end-users.
Accenture Technology comprises of two areas – Technology Services and Technology Innovation & Ecosystem. While Accenture Technology services provide application services-spanning system integration, Technology Innovation & Ecosystem provides R&D activities to Accenture labs. It power clients’ businesses with innovative technologies – established and emerging – changing the way people and customers experience work, life, and entertainment.
Accenture Operations operates cloud, data centers, security, infrastructure, and business processes services and help clients to transform their technology infrastructure. It delivers business outcomes through infrastructure, cloud, and business processes (BPS) on behalf of the clients.
It also provides performance coaching and development planning to its clients to innovate and transform their processes.
Customers and Stakeholders
The company provides Strategy, Digital, Technology, and Management consulting services to its clients. It solves the challenges of client‘s in the fields of process, marketing, staffing, technology. It also extends its technology and business capabilities through a powerful alliance ecosystem of market leaders.
Some of the clients are 1QB Information Technologies Inc., Adobe Systems, Alibaba, Amazon Web Services(AWS), Apple, Blueprint Software Systems Inc., BMC Software, CA Technologies, Callidus Software Inc., Cipher Cloud Inc., Cisco, Click Software, Collibra, Copperleaf Technologies, Drone Deploy, EcoSys Management LLC., Ferranti Computer Systems NV., ForgeRock, GitHub, Google, Guidewire Software, Inc, Huawei Technologies, Hyland Software, IBM, JDA Software Inc., Microfocus, Microsoft, NetApp, Inc., Nimble, Nokia, Open Legacy, Oracle, Pegasystems, Red Hat, SAP, SAS, SOASTA, Stibo Systems, Tibco, TIA Technologies, Veeva, Vodafone, Xoriant Corporation.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Accenture is perhaps the most notorious example of a large consultancy utilizing this ethos. The firm announced a massive global acquisition plan in 2017, worth $1.8 billion, in order to try and get the jump on competitors across a number of sectors Accenture planned to enter. Ultimately, the analysis concludes that the lion’s share of this war chest was spent in the advertising and design space, as Accenture poured around $1.03 billion into its Accenture Interactive arm.
The solution provider goliath has made a whopping 20 acquisitions in 2020 as the $43 billion company’s M&A engine is on high during the coronavirus pandemic.
It has acquired a wide variety of companies and business units with a big focus on security and big data analytics. These include the cybersecurity acquisitions of Context, Revolutionary Security, and Symantec’s Cyber Security Services business, along with data analytics experts AlphaBeta Advisors, Byte Prophecy, Clarity Insights, Mudano, and Sentelis.
Also Read: Tata Consultancy Services – Inside One Of The World’s Largest IT Company
Marketing and Branding Strategy of Accenture
Accenture’s brand line is “High Performance Delivered”. This alone shows that it is a company that is focused on performance and turnover and hence, the strategy it follows is to increase them both – directly or indirectly.
Accenture is also a research and analysis company. Its strategy is founded after years of study of those of similar businesses.
Accenture is following the global trend of establishing itself in growing economies. Also, Accenture is volume and efficiency-focused. As a result of this, the number of employees in Accenture has increased a lot and is increasing largely too.
Look forward, not backward: To make new corporate decisions, rely on the predictions for the future based on the present. Do not assume that the scenario of yesterday stands so today as well since it is a very dynamic domain.
Focus relentlessly on key-value levers: The ability to deliver future value depends on performance drivers. High-quality due diligence identifies the key drivers of competitive success. Correlations with past performance, market insights, known competitor actions, and operational context provide a reality check on management forecasts.
Stay scrupulously objective: High-quality advice should be free from commercial interests.
Insist on deep industry, technical and operational expertise: Experts in the process should always be employed/recruited to scrutinize the process.
Sustainability: Accenture seeks to maximize the influence it has on the world around it and minimize its detrimental effects on it. This concern about economic and environmental conditions demonstrates its commitment to sustainability. This, in turn, leads to high performance and long-term success. Sustainability is both an outcome and a driver.
Sustainability through green strategy
Accenture is committed to integrating leading environmental practices into its business strategy and operations and encourages environmental awareness and responsibility among their workers, customers, suppliers, and other interested parties within the context of their business.
It encourages environmental awareness among its staff and supplies environmental learning opportunities. It develops programs to harness worker enthusiasm and provide opportunities for workers to collaborate on our journey to enhance environmental performance.
It maintains international certification to ISO 14001, the international standard for Environment Management Systems, in order to enhance environmental performance and demonstrate continual improvement. In alignment with the Environmental Management System, it tends to area unit committed to the bar of pollution, considering a life cycle perspective.
The company engages with its clients to consider the environmental impact of how they deliver their work and support them in addressing their own environmental impacts.
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