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Featured throughout this report are members of the Accenture CIO Organization. Our 3,900-member IT team works with Accenture colleagues and clients around the world to make high performance IT a reality.
A decade of IT change
A message from Frank B. Modruson Chief Information Officer, Accenture
Whenever the subject is IT, people tend to think about chips and terabits, computers and data centers. Companies like to list their impressive IT statistics, and we are no different (see back cover). But our people always have been and will continue to be Accenture's main asset, which is why we are featuring members of our 3,900-strong global IT team in this years report. Here you see some of the project team members who made our work this past year possible. We appreciate the talents of all our people and are grateful for their commitment to Accentures high performance. 2010 marked the end of a remarkable decade at Accenture. In the year 2000, Accenture was essentially a new company. Having inherited legacy systems from our former parent, we faced the immediate need to build separate technology capabilities. We had little idea that Accenture would today have 204,000 employees and revenues of US$21.6 billion. But we had ambitious growth strategies, and we knew we needed the IT infrastructure to support that growth. So we went to work.
Frank B. Modruson, CIO of Accenture (center) speaking with Enrique Salem, President and CEO of Symantec (right) and Dominique Tessaro, CIO of Cegelec (left) at the Accenture Global CIO Forum held in Washington, D.C. in June of 2010.
An accidental discovery
Although we certainly did not plan it that way, our efforts over the last decade to create a world-class IT organization effectively became an accidental test of the rework vs. replace debate. Accentures journey to high performance IT focused first on establishing a separate IT capability. Accenture transformed IT by keeping our operational budget low and the investment budget high. After completing this foundational work (see timeline on page 5), we were then in position to introduce a spectrum of new capabilities, a process that continues to this day. For instance, we are now just finishing the process of implementing a single global platform for tracking time and expenses (see page 7).
impose massive burdens on business performance. Looking back over 10 years of work, we discovered that we changed absolutely everything.
Continuous innovation
Clear lessons emerge from our experience. The faster you leverage the latest advances in IT, the more you will benefit. The longer you retain a given technology, the more it drags down your performance, and the higher the price paid in innovations sacrificed. Accentures total IT investments over the period 2001-2010 have generated an ROI to date in excess of 300 percent. Better still, these innovations will keep on generating savings and returns in the years ahead by further reducing our overall cost of IT, even as Accentures global workforce continues to grow. We share Accentures IT experience because for us and for our clients, the process of innovation is never complete. There is always another improvement to make, a new advance to implement, another opportunity to raise your game and achieve high performance.
Frank B. Modruson 3
Accenture's IT journey
Accentures internal IT organization has transformed itself time and againreplacing legacy infrastructure as we built new capabilities, achieving greater efficiency through consolidation and standardization, and consistently raising effectiveness with new applications across Accenture.
came away convinced that the cloud-based messaging and collaboration services are secure with the right capabilities. Byanna sees benefits in the migration beyond savings: Flexibility is the real value. What we are buying is the ability to turn capacity on and off as business conditions warrant, and the flexibility to make the right choices in a rapid manner.
significantly. These technologies allow Accenture to build farms of machines leveraging shared databases. 3. Storage: Innovative solutions now feature snapshot capabilities, cutting the space required for Accentures global SAP database to 60 TB from the 140 TB needed before. 4. Networks: Accenture is focusing on maintaining security while simplifying application access. Security architecture is being redesigned to ensure consistent standards across the network as a whole. To take advantage of public infrastructure-as-a-service cloud offerings, Accentures IT organization is also investing in automation and management tools being developed for the Accenture Technology growth platform. These cloud capabilities will position Accenture to access incremental elastic computing capacity, further reducing costs. Through platform standardization and the adoption of virtualization technologies at a rapid pace, we have driven significant cost savings, concludes Byanna, It is important to our IT organization to implement internally the same things we are urging our customers to do, and we are.
Virtues of virtualization
It is far easier to deal with the cloud once an enterprise has begun the virtualization journey. We have made tremendous progress on the virtualization front, Byanna continues. I think this is where weve differentiated ourselves. Accentures virtualization initiative has four major components: 1. Server/Operating Systems: More than 60 percent of Accentures internal application environment 1,353 VMs or virtual machines has been virtualized. 2. Databases: Accenture has used virtualization technologies to reduce database hosting and capital costs
Cloud-like flexibility
Accenture supports a hybrid environment featuring an internal cloud and external cloud-based solutions. After extensive analysis, Accenture has decided to move a significant portion of our messaging and collaboration portfolio to an external cloud provider in fiscal year 2011. "That was a big decision for us," says Vid Byanna, the senior executive responsible for Accenture's global infrastructure capabilities. We did our due diligence, and 4
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Established IT
Separate from parent Build independent technology capacity Establish IT strategy
Efficiency
Align with the business Run IT like a business Centralize, rationalize and standardize Global single-instance ERP Low cost locations
Effectiveness
Collaboration 2.0 Network Transformation Program Engagement and Contract Commercial Delivery Management
According to Cara Rehal, team lead-Change Management, The microblogging capability enables employees to reduce e-mail clutter and empowers them to rapidly tap into our best thinking. Millennials already comfortable with these technologies in their daily lives were among the first adopters, and others quickly followed.
Today, the next generation of OC provides desktop sharing and supports inbound/outbound phone calls from land lines and mobile phones. A new capability in 2010 further enhanced efficiency by making it simple to schedule OC conference calls in advance. The net effect is improved connectivity and convenience for Accenture and for our clients who share this technology.
Even though Accentures global workforce grew by 166 percent over the last 10 years, IT spending per person fell by 69 percent. Every other IT metric fell in similar fashion, except one: the percentage of satisfied sponsors rose.
who led the CIO team, its a new way to think about setting up and managing engagements. For the first time, capabilities for Work & Time, Contracts, Financials and Resources management are integrated in a single-instance global application. Instead of spreadsheets, the solution gives executives common tools to break down complex work, source and manage resources, view metrics, monitor finances, and track costs. Manage myEngagements replaces tedious procedures with automatic processes. Previously, executives had to enter data manually. The new solution pulls accurate data directly from Accentures master repository. Manage myEngagements is integrated with all the tools Accenture executives currently use for engagement management. Engagements once had work plans, forecasts and charge codes that were not linked, making it hard to see metrics across solutions. Manage myEngagements lets executives set up the work in the way they want to manage it, and then uses the same structures for budgeting and
financial reporting. The new solution saves time and frees executives to focus on value creation by integrating with myTimeandExpenses (see page 7) and Manage myContract.
2001 Employees Revenue % of satisfied sponsors IT spend in $ IT spend as % of revenue IT spend per person 75,000 US$11.44 billion 67% Baseline Baseline Baseline
2010 204,000 US$21.6 billion 89% Down 22% Down 59% Down 69% Sourced IT staff Global applications Local applications Technology platforms Benefits realized
user interface, customized to support legal and tax regulations in each geography and internal policies specific to Accenture business units and levels. To support tax requirements related to expenses, Accenture developed an interpretive language to capture data elements. myTimeandExpenses provides real-time validation of charge codes and interfaces with Accentures global single-instance Enterprise Resource Planning system, running on SAP. This robust application accommodates the needs of many stakeholders. Customized features let the tool capture accurate data even if currency information varies. The result is a smart system that can tell the yuan from the euro and a religious holiday in Algeria from a bank holiday in the United Kingdom. myTimeandExpenses dramatically improves the way the average Accenture professional tracks time and expenses, says Vince DeGiulio, Accenture senior executive and the initiative lead. The Web-based application is accessible
from any computer with an Internet connection, and employees report that it is easier and faster than our old systems. To further increase the ease of use and data entry accuracy, myTimeandExpenses provides employees and their supervisors with time entry and frequent trip expense templates, corporate credit card billing integration and improved reviewer capabilities.
Global deployment
myTimeandExpenses is deployed in all 57 countries where Accenture has employees. So far, the new system has processed more than 3.4 million time and expense reports, and is averaging more than 360,000 reports each month. Phil Calcutt, Accentures global geographic services managing director, says, This is a prime example of how we used IT to tackle our organizations strategic priorities. The system helps Accenture become leaner, more agile and better at using our resources. 7
Aggressive investments in transformational initiatives from 2001 through 2010 enabled Accenture to rebuild our IT systems, applications and infrastructure from top to bottom. What return did we realize? Savings worth more than three times our investment, plus a high performance IT operation powering Accenture colleagues and clients.
activities. Payrolls could not be processed, hedging activities would be crimped, and the myriad other daily transactions required to keep companies funded and functioning might grind to a halt. Exposure to this systemic risk was compounded by the proprietary technology systems linking bank and customer. These proprietary platforms made it difficult, if not impossible, for corporations to switch banks swiftly or smoothly in a crunch. Companies now recognize the value of being able to change banks quickly and of being less dependent on banking partners for daily cash needs. Addressing these priorities, the Accenture Treasury Transformation project aims to do four things: 1. Replace bank plumbing the proprietary platforms that enable transactions with more flexible solutions, so that companies can work with more banks more easily, and change banks quickly by moving to SWIFT: the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.
2. Move more transactions off proprietary banking platforms and onto the companys own financial systems, so that if a company uses SAP as its primary financial platform, vital treasury processes also leverage the same solution. 3. Move analytical tools, trading platforms and foreign exchange hedging capabilities inside the treasury function, so that corporate treasurers can execute these valuable strategies without the support of banks. 4. Move to a streamlined settlement process among the various entities found in a typical global enterprise.
High-performance businesses regard IT as a source of both operational excellence and competitive advantage.High performers experiment with more technologies than their less tech-savvy competitors.Through repeated assessment, experimentation and adoption of new technologies, these organizations are able to eliminate technologies that dont work.
From the Accenture High Performance Business Strategic Research Initiative
Send me a quote
There was a time when projects began with a phone call. Todays new business process begins with voluminous requests for information under a dizzying array of variables. The goal shaping the most compelling value proposition hasnt changed, but the methods are far more sophisticated. The process of shaping a value proposition begins long before a proposal is finalized, explains senior executive Scott Laughner, who led the development initiative under the sponsorship of Accentures Chief Operating Officer Jo Deblaere and senior executive Patricia Kern. We needed tools to understand a prospective engagement at a much more granular level. Laughners team discovered an existing toolset that could be customized for the special requirements of a professional services firm like Accenture. Over the next 18 months, a CIO Organization team refined the solution prototype to reflect the unique characteristics of Accentures business.
One critical innovation is the use of market data on a very large scale. The new tool can analyze data from as many as 40,000 Accenture deals, reports Erik J. Sullivan, who leads the change management effort for the project, and can integrate external data on prevailing market rates to arrive at baseline estimates. We know there are multiple ways to deliver on any project, Laughner adds. The new solution gives us a better analysis of all the alternatives, so that our teams can identify the best value proposition for the client.
Win-win engagements
By definition, a successful engagement needs to be one where the client receives the value contracted for, while the provider receives fair compensation for services. Accentures solution helps project teams arrive at that mutually beneficial destination faster. Accentures clients get the solutions and value required, and Accenture optimizes the value of our people and the work they deliver.
Ken Corless
On the consumerization of IT
Bob Kress: One of the topics that has been getting a lot of attention in the press and among our leadership is the whole area of consumerization of technology. Why dont we spend a little time exploring how we think that might play into our internal IT plans. Vid Byanna: Consumerization is a very broad area that has to do with all the social networking tools that are starting to be leveraged for business purposes, the mobile technologies that are available with iPads and other devices, and all the ways that people can access information and do their work. Part of the challenge that we have is how to allow the use of those capabilities, but to do it in a way thats secure. Ken Corless: Historically, we grew up in a world where you were either using technology and that was a task unto itself, or you were doing something that didnt require
technology. Consumerization integrates these things. You are at dinner in a restaurant, checking in on Foursquare, or posting a picture from a ball game to your Facebook account. Youre not doing a task that requires technology. Youre just using technology to do your life. Scott Laughner: Theres a trend to more applications and more mobility. As we see more and more of our senior leadership become next generation, so to speak, I think they will start to place more emphasis on mobile capabilities, regardless of whether there are hard benefits or not, because theyll perceive it as a way of life. If Im out talking to a client and I want to make notes, I dont want to have to wait till Im back on my laptop to make an entry on our meeting. Ken Corless: Another big effort that weve started earlier this year is our next-generation portal. Besides the normal portal functionality centered around content that is produced and consumed by our employees, we are focusing
on customizable widgets that will surface discrete tasks and transaction data important for an individuals job similar to a myYahoo. So rather than weather and stock quotes and sports scores, think about it as your engagements current financial picture, or your upcoming flight schedules, or the fact that you have an action item assigned to you coming from your last quality assurance review. Scott Laughner: We are taking Accentures Outlook magazine thats already on the Kindle and putting it on the iPhone and the iPad. Theres a prototype of it up and running. The plans are to distribute that. Vid Byanna: On the infrastructure side, we are planning to do pilots and define standards for network-based storage of files that are traditionally kept on laptops, and for virtual desktop capabilities to enable device agnosticism. Security will also drive it. Our clients are demanding lockdown environments, and virtual desktops can be a better solution than implementing multiple controls.
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Bob Kress
Vid Byanna
Scott Laughner
Ken Corless: I think the end state that we all expect is well see some internal cloud-like stuff and external cloudlike stuff. And hopefully, very few people will notice or care. Thats part of the payback from virtualizationyou dont have to know which physical machines belong to an application, but instead focus on ensuring the right capacity and resources are available when needed. I think over the next three to five years what well have is a great flexibility in moving applications around. As a matter of fact, weve talked about one of our growing core competencies as moving applications around effectively and efficiently in order to take advantage of what will be a continually changing, economic picture.
Vid Byanna: One of the questions weve been asking ourselves is when will clients start asking us why are people traveling to my location? Why cant technologies be used to do more virtual work? Just like we had the shift from everyone at the client site now moving to distributive, working with delivery centers. We think that theres a next set of trends happening there. Ken Corless: Dont be afraid. Remember why you got into IT in the first place. Technology is fun. Change is exciting. Even a little bit of risk can get the blood flowing. The landscape will always change. Embrace IT and let IT help you do your job.
Kush K. Jhawar Daniel P. Kirner Elizabeth C. Klee Robert E. Kress J. Scott Laughner Ana Lpez Daz Todd D. Marquardt Frank B. Modruson Richard A. Palumbo Tom Parisi Michael J. Reiter Sony M. Rusteberg
Copyright 2010 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 204,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.