Business Systems

1. Accenture
A COMPANY OVERVIEW
Business Systems (Mr. Bill Sowinki)
BISM-201-909
By: Aadhar Patil (N01204475)

2. Executive Summary
We dive into Accenture, a global head in consulting services, reviewing:
 Financial Performance
 Competitive Advantage (SWOT Analysis)
 Integration Of Technology
 Supply Chain Management
 Past & Future
 Organizational & Management Structure

3. Mission Statement
helping our clients create their future
The fortune 500 mammoth focuses on
improving their client’s businesses and creating
a future which will help them prosper. The firm
offers consultation services to companies
looking to advance their business using
business strategies, advanced system
integration and outsourcing services. Over the
years, the firm has worked alongside other
fortune 500 companies to bring their mission
statement to life.

4. Vision
Statement
“to become one of the world’s leading
companies, bringing innovations to
improve the way the world works and
lives”
The company focuses on improving its position
globally by promoting innovations to change the way
the world functions. Accenture has found itself at the
top of the ranks as the leading HR operations
provider, business analytics services and systems
integrator. The success of Accenture has made it one
of the best companies to work for worldwide.

5. CODE OF CONDUCT
MAKE YOUR
CONDUCT COUNT
COMPLY WITH
LAWS
HOW TO RAISE
CONCERNS
DELIVER FOR OUR
CLIENTS
PROTECT PEOPLE,
INFORMATION
AND OUR
BUSINESS
RUN OUR
BUSINESS
RESPONSIBLY
BE A GOOD
CORPORATE
CITIZEN
six business ethics principles that fundamentally apply to everyone, regardless of rank.

6. SPEAKING UP AND ZERO TOLERANCE
FOR RETALIATION
Encouragement
Accenture encourages its employees
to speak up against disrespectful,
inappropriate, fraudulent, unethical
or illegal behavior. The company has
a zero tolerance for retaliation rule,
allowing their employees to escalate
their concern without the fear of
retaliation.
Available Help
• Supervisor
• Career counselor
• Any Accenture Leader
• Human Resources
• Legal
• Accenture Business Ethics
Helpline
MERITOCRACY AND NON-
DISCRIMINATION
Accenture takes a solid stance
against discrimination against any
individual based on race, religion,
color, sex, marital or family status,
age and etc.

7. ANTICORRUPTION
“We do not give or accept bribes—including inappropriate
gifts, meals, entertainment or travel—and we get approval
before offering any gifts, meals, entertainment or travel to
Public Officials.”
The company has taken a firm stance against corruption,
because it is against the law and they do not want to be
associated with such matters. Accenture complies with anti-
corruption laws without exception, even if they are offered
bribes from their clients. The company believes in full disclosure
and considers anything of value a bribe if not fully disclosed.
Accenture also does not form partnerships with any third-party
company that they believe may make questionable payments,
they believe that all companies or individuals that they interact
with can represent Accenture before a government body. The
company believes in carefully reviewing business intermediaries
before they enter into business with them, since they can be
held liable for their partners misconduct.

8. HISTORY
Accenture is a consultation firm which specializes in providing clients with management consulting, technology services and
outsourcing companies. The company has been active since the early 1950s and went public on the NYSE in 2001. The name
“Accenture” derives from the statement “Accent of the future”, which was submitted to the company by an employee, who believed
that the name should reflect the company’s goal to become a global leader and high performer. Accenture believes in making a
difference in the industries their clients partake in by reducing costs and outsourcing the technology functions.
 Initially known as Anderson Consulting, the firm severed ties from its parent company Arthur Anderson the same year it went public.
In 1998, a major dispute between Anderson Consulting and Arthur Anderson came to light, which resulted in the separation of Arthur
Anderson and Anderson Consulting, and as part of the arbitration settlement, the firm was required to change its name, resulting in the
new firm name “Accenture”.
The company has become a global leader in technology consulting and systems integration, currently having over 513,000
employees in over 120 countries worldwide. The company reported a revenue of $43.20 billion for the year of 2019, which is a 4%
increase from the previous year. The company has also nearly doubled their employee from year 2013 (275,000 employees) to 2019
(505,000 employees).
Through years of hard work and well-deserved progress, the company has equipped nearly a million people with the skills to get a
job or build a business, and their new goal is to triple that number by the end of 2020. The company has consecutively found itself at
the top in various indexes such as FTSE4GOOD Global Index, Ethisphere World’s Most Ethical Companies, Corporate Responsibility
Magazine 100 Best Corporate Citizens, Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index and FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work
For.

9. ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
In an organization as massive as Accenture, which specializes in various
areas of several industries, the organizational structure can be difficult to
understand. New hires at Accenture begin their careers as Analysts, who are
placed into projects where they are stationed for the foreseeable future.
The company uses a structure called “DTE”, which stands for Deployed To
Entity. DTE’s can be portrayed as a mini company within Accenture, which is
responsible for its own projects, budgets, training and progression.
The DTE is the specialized area in which an analyst begins their journey.
The term “ACG” stands for Analyst Consulting Group, where all analysts
belong until they are promoted to a different DTE. ACG’s are then broken
down into CSG’s (Client Service Group) which are subcategories focused on
more specializations such as finance, resources, health and public services
and technology.

10. MANAGEMENT
STRUCTURE
Analyst
Consultant
Manager
Senior Manager
Senior Executive

11. MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE
THE PROFESSIONAL HIERARCHY IN ACCENTURE IS BASICALLY FIVE MAJOR LEVELS WITH SOME SUBLEVELS IN
BETWEEN. THE COMPANY MAINLY HIRES INDIVIDUALS AS ANALYSTS, WHO ARE THEN ASSIGNED ON PROJECTS
WITH TEAMS CONSISTING OF SENIOR MANAGERS, MANAGERS, CONSULTANTS AND OTHER ANALYSTS.
THE TEAM WORKS ON PROJECTS DEPENDING ON THEIR SPECIALIZATION, GIVING THE ANALYSTS A FULL VIEW
OF HOW A PROJECT PROGRESSES AND SUCCEEDS. FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, THE ANALYST IS GIVEN A TASTE
OF HOW EACH MEMBER OF THE TEAM BASED ON THEIR RANK FUNCTIONS.
ACCENTURE HAS FOUR KEY SERVICE AREAS; STRATEGY AND CONSULTING, INTERACTIVE, TECHNOLOGY AND
OPERATIONS. THESE FOUR AREAS ARE DIVIDED INTO SEVERAL INDUSTRIES, SUCH AS BANKING, HEALTH, LIFE
SCIENCES, TRAVEL, NATURAL RESOURCES, PUBLIC SERVICES, ETC. IN ORDER CAPITALIZE THE MARKETS IN ALL
VIABLE COUNTRIES, ACCENTURE HAS SET UP HEAD OFFICES DESIGNATED TO SERVE FOR GEOGRAPHICAL AREAS:
NORTH AMERICAN MARKET, ASIA PACIFIC MARKET, EUROPEAN MARKET AND GROWTH MARKETS.
ACCENTURE ANALYSTS ARE GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE PROMOTED TO THE CONSULTANT LEVEL, WHERE
THEY ARE NOW CONSIDERED BILLABLE.
CONSULTANTS HAVE THE OPTION TO PICK AND CHOOSE WHICH PROJECTS THEY WISH TO BE A PART OF, AS
SOMETIMES PROJECTS CAN LEAD UP TO 3 YEARS OR MORE. IT IS ALSO NORMAL FOR CONSULTANTS AND THEIR
TEAMS TO TRAVEL TO THE CLIENTS WHO CAN BE DIFFERENT CITIES, PROVINCES OR COUNTRIES. CONSULTANTS
MOVE UP TO BECOME MANAGERS, WHO ARE GENERALLY TEAM LEADS ON PROJECTS.
A MANAGER LEADS THE PROJECT BY ENSURING ALL OF THE DEADLINES ARE MET WHILE DELEGATING WORK
ASSIGNMENTS TO HIS TEAM AND FOLLOWING UP WITH THE RESULTS.
MANAGERS ARE PROMOTED TO SENIOR MANAGERS, WHO ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR PROJECTS AS WELL AS SALES,
BRINGING IN BUSINESS AND MAINTAINING IT AT THE SAME TIME.
SENIOR EXECUTIVES ARE MARKET AND COUNTRY LEADS, REPRESENTING ACCENTURE’S GLOBAL MARKET.

12. System Technologies
Given Accenture’s
massive global
presence, it needs to
utilize various
technological platform
to ensure that their
operations run in an
uninterrupted manner.
Apart from providing
services to its own
team, Accenture also
has the capability to
offer business process
outsourcing to its
Apart from the
windows applications
that most companies
use, Accenture also
utilizes other
corporate applications
to support its HR,
Finance and IT offices.
Because Accenture is
an IT company, it
understands the
offerings of various
industry players and
employs the best

13. HUMAN
RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
SYSTEMS
 Accenture uses Workday. It is a multifaceted resource
planning tool that allows Accenture to forecast its HR
needs and incorporate them into sales management.
 Workday was one of the first software companies to offer
ERP tools in an intuitive manner. Their platform uses user-
friendly UX that can easily integrate into a business’
operations.
 They use AI and agile deployment framework to ensure
that its clients are getting the latest updates in a seamless
manner. Additionally, Workday’s design is meant to be
elastic and scalable.
 Accenture uses this technology to fulfil all its end-to-end
HR needs. Workday is uses as its application portal to
gather information on prospective employees. It retains
this information and uses advanced analytics to procure
the right number of hires based on forecast.
 It also allows an easy integration with Accenture’s
downstream applications to ensure data flows seamless
between systems.

14. I.T. SYSTEMS
 Accenture uses Service-NOW (SNOW). It is
a platform that allows users to log tickets
when they face any IT related issues.
 For instance, when employees face
technical issues like a login error, they
contact the service desk, who initiates a
ticket in SNOW.
 This allows the helpdesk to track their
progress and provide analytics on things
such as SLAs, performance stability etc.
SNOW also integrates an auto-reporting
that initiates a ticket creation through
virtual chats.
 This increases the ticket turnaround and
ensures that Accenture employees are
always connected.

15. FINANCIAL
SYSTEMS
 For all its financial needs, Accenture uses SAP. SAP
has been an industry leader in ERP software. It was
one of the first ERP tools that delivered data
integration across all facets of the company. It made
financial reporting easier for multinational
companies.
 Over the years Accenture has acquired many
companies on the IT space to gain a competitive
advantage.
 SAP has made data integration easier for such a
complex organization. SAP has embedded AI
capabilities along with RPA functionalities and
industry standards.
 Recently SAP also ventured into the cloud space to
compete with giant such as Amazon AWS,
Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Accenture
relies on S4/HANA in order to allow data
transmission across the globe and increase agility
for superior performance.

16. GENERAL
BUSINESS
SYSTEMS
 For day to day activities Accenture employees use
Microsoft 365, a SAAS platform offered by
Microsoft. The ability for 365 to be connected from
anywhere in the world is important for a company
like Accenture.
 Its employees travel across the globe to various
client office. Hence Accenture needs to ensure that
they can access data securely from anywhere in
the world.
 Through Microsoft Azure, 365 office suite provides
Accenture the security and the ability access the
software without physical tokens. Additionally,
Accenture uses many other collaboration tools
such as Atlassian JIRA and Confluence, and
Microsoft Teams.
 JIRA and confluence remove the need for teams to
send constant emails to each other. Members can
make live edits on the pages and ensure
information is shared across all teams via its
sharing capabilities.
 Teams allows employees to connect remotely by
providing conferencing and file sharing capabilities

17. SUPPLY CHAIN
MANAGEMENT
 Accenture is a leading multinational professional
services company, which delivers a wide range of
services in strategy and consulting, interactive,
technology and operations. It has incorporated
digital and IT capabilities across all these
services.
 Accenture provides these services by combining
its skilled labor force with expert capabilities
across 40 industries – powered by the largest IT
and operations centers.
 Accenture employs over 513,000 people in more
than 120 countries to bring continuous
innovation and help clients improve their
performance and create lasting value across
their enterprises.

18. CASE STUDY – WALGREENS TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY
 Accenture recently helped Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) undergo a digital transformation journey that involved moving
that on-premise IT resources and business application onto Microsoft Azure’s cloud platform.
 In their delivery journey, Accenture started with understating the client needs and gaining their input. Once an overall
strategy was identified, Accenture started planning aspect of supply chain management. Accenture service delivery inputs
comprise of two main factors – human capital and technological capabilities.
 Via custom tools, Accenture then forecasted the input requirements. It uses custom SAP and workday applications to
perform HR procurement activities.
 In order to plan its IT capabilities Accenture uses Microsoft cloud platform to compile necessary application for deployment.
After the ‘supplies’ are gathered for WBA, Accenture uses its various global location to deploy specific resources.
 In the WBA project, Accenture used a 60-40 onshore offshore model. In this model, majority of development was
conducted i offshore delivery centers, and relationship management was maintained by onshore teams. As mentioned
before Accenture owns more than 50 delivery centers.
 It systemically decided which center will be used for developing the code and which onshore teams will deploy it. During
this journey Accenture engages in constant client-facing interactions to ensure the service delivered meets client
expectations.

19. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
 Accenture has consistently performed well and generated positive
revenue YOY. Since its IPO in early 2000’s Accenture’s stock has risen by
more than 300% in value. Below is the three year analysis of Accenture’s
financial performance between the years 2017 to 2019.

20. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
YEAR ONE (2017)
 In 2017, Accenture earned a total of $35 billion,
a 6% increase from the year prior. Additionally,
their EPS increased by 11% in 2017 at $5.91.
Accenture has consistently operated at a
margin of 13% and were also able to generate
positive cashflow of $4.5 billion, out of which
$4.2 billion was distributed to shareholders.
Most of its growth came from understanding
the evolution technology. It has consistently
adopted IT transformation and transferred its
value to the client ensuring that their clients
keep them as a trusted partner.

21. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
YEAR TWO (2018)
 In 2018 Accenture delivered outstanding
financial results as well. It shows that
Accenture is great at understanding its
clients’ needs and delivering unique solutions
that help them grow and sustain competition
as well. This is reflected in Accenture’s client
bookings. In 2018, Accenture gained new
client booking $ 42.8 billion – a 12% growth
from the year prior. Additionally, in 2018,
Accenture earned $39.6 billion in net
revenues, which grew by 10.5 percent. As a
result, Accenture was able to add value to its
shareholders as well. it delivered a diluted
earnings per share of $6.34, compared with
$5.44 in fiscal 2017, which indicates a growth
of 14%. When comparing to 2017, their
operating margin was 14.8 percent,
indicating similar operations efficiency. Once
again, Accenture created very strong free
cash flow at $5.4 billion and returned $4.3
billion in dividends to its shareholder.
 Accenture consistently innovates its
capabilities and ensures that a differentiated
solution is provided to its client. It
continuously promotes its employees and
ensures that capabilities are built within its
human resources. This has guaranteed that
Accenture stays relevant and generates
similar revenue year over year.

22. FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
YEAR THREE (2019)
 In 2019, Accenture reported another round excellent financial result. Their
team of more than 500000 employees, delivered exceptional value to
their clients and shareholders. Accenture showed a influx of new bookings
and increase in revenue, more than market predictions. Accenture gained
$45 billion in new bookings and $43.2 in revenues, a growth of 8%.
Accenture also delivered an EPS of $7.36, with an operating margin of
about 15%. Accenture also generated excellent free cash flow of $6.0
billion and returned a $4.6 billion in dividends to shareholders.
 Overall, Accenture has shown reliable performance and has outgrown its
target every year. As a company they have met market expectation year
over year. They prove their capabilities by constantly gaining new
bookings, delivering growth in revenue and providing dividends to its
stakeholders. Their phenomenal results across various industries and
global markets demonstrate to the longevity of their business, the talent
of their team, the need for their offerings, and the significant growth
opportunities ahead.

23. SWOT ANALYSIS
Strengths
 GLOBAL BRAND AND LEADER
 HIGH INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
 STRONG CUSTOMER RELATIONS
 HIGH PRODUCT QUALITY
 STABLE MARKET SHARE
 TALENTED EMPLOYEES
 GROWING SERVICE LINE
Weakness
 DEMAND FOR SERVICES NOT GUARANTEED
 HIGH OPERATING COSTS
 AVERAGE PRICE ABOVE MARKET PRICE
 RND INVESTMENT BELOW AVERAGE
Opportunities
 ACQUISITIONs
 EXPANSION OF BUSINESS
 GOVERNMENT PROJECTS
 NEW TRENDS (CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR)
Threats
 COMPETITION (IBM, INFOSYS)
 SHORTAGE OF SKILLED WORKFORCE
 GLOBAL CURRENCY FLUCTUATIONS
 RISING PAY LEVELS