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Ict Director

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Submitted By saad200
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Introduction
Accenture is a global consulting & outsourcing firm established back in 2001 (or so called 01/01/01) after it has been separated from Arthur Anderson firms. Accenture has 257,000 people working in more than 120 countries. The firms generated net revenue of USD27.9 billion in the last fiscal year which makes it the largest consulting organization.
IT Philosophy at Accenture
In 2001, Accenture has offices in 50 different locations around the world. So the firm’s systems has to be connected and integrated to each other in order to make the information available any time and accessible anywhere. The company has been given only one year to use Anderson’s systems and build its internal infrastructure. This is a challenge by its own in addition to other challenges like (1) the applications was legacy and obsolete which make it very difficult to integrate them and make them accessible from anywhere (2) each office implanted their own customized applications which make it complex to generate reports and reconcile it with other offices.
After long discussion between the IT systems stakeholders and steering committee, below strategies have been adopted:
1. Run the IT as products and services not as cost center
Previously the IT was treated as a cost center with a yearly approved fixed budget. This means each stakeholder should fight for his needs and the loudest party will win. Accenture adopted a completely different approach. Each IT output should be productized with price and priority approved by the steering committee. The stakeholder has the choice to select the product he wants and pay for it and he has to justify his needs and the expected ROI (Return of Investment). These products are benchmarked with other equal organization in terms of price and service level.

2. One platform vs. Muti-vendor solution
The company was having the option to either select one vendor to provide all needed application or go with the best vendor for each application which will end up having multiple vendors. Each option has its own pros and cons. For instance, the first option will reduce the cost to acquire the needed application as the company will get a packaged price instead of individual offers and also will reduce the head count that is going to operate the platform. On the other hand, going with multivendor guarantee that the company will have the best application for each field, but the big disadvantage is the increase in the cost acquiring the application and maintaining it.

Accenture went with the first option and they have selected Microsoft.

Infrastructure
The infrastructure was an essential item in Accenture philosophy and one of the biggest challenge as mentioned before. The legacy systems inherited from Anderson firm were not flexible enough to be in line with Accenture strategy. The system was not integrated, not accessible and not user friendly. So in order to come up with a friendly platform that can serve Accenture offices worldwide, the company has to rebuild its infrastructure in a unified way by contracting one vendor who is going to provide all the applications under one platform.
This will enable the company to get the best offer as it will get a packaged price from the vendor. In addition, the company will not need multiple specialized staff in different technology (which means training cost and too much head count). The company needs only few staff who is expert in the whole platform and they will be able to run all applications.
Enterprise Applications
Accenture chose SAP to run its financial application using Microsoft technologies. The company decided to have one global instance of the application and migrate all local applications to this single instance. The advantage is that the operation cost will be reduced (day to day operation and system maintenance); the data integrity will be improved (one source of data).
Other Key Initiatives
1. Managed services
IT engineers became product manager and they are responsible for enhancing the product, maintain the service level agreement, and reduce its cost.
2. Outsource vs. Insource
The company reduced the number of IT direct employees (only 14% was permanent employees) and outsourced some IT tasks that fall under contain category taking into account multiple factors like:
1. Confidentiality
2. Onetime vs. repetitive tasks.

This approach enables the company to have a taskforce who is working around the clock (onsite and offshore) and deliver the IT solutions faster.
IT at Accenture beyond 2009
Beyond 2009, the company formed a new IT structure which supported its initiatives on running transformed enterprise IT architecture. The outputs were obvious on the company’s results:
1. The number of employees increased by 140% (from 75,000 to 180,000)
2. The revenue has been almost doubled (from $11.6b to $21.6b)
3. The % of satisfaction has been improved from 67% to 86%
4. The cost has been reduced drastically.
How the Process should be improved?
I think the company is following the right direction. They only need to focus more on the following factors:
1. Consider outsourcing or even delegate some function to an outside entity and focus on the SLA (Service Level Agreement)
2. Adopt Cloud Computing concept and virtualization as much as possible
3. Implement strict IT policy & procedure and frequently enhance it to govern the internal operation and make sure the environment is aligned with highest security best practice. In addition, the company has to conduct frequent internal and external audit and address any issue might arise
With the above factors, the environment will become more controlled and the cost will be further reduced.

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