Accenture wins Procurement Transformation Contract from City of London Corporation

LONDON; March 2, 2011 – The City of London Corporation today awarded Accenture (NYSE: ACN) a five-year contract to help it reduce its procurement costs by creating a new, world-class procurement shared service center.

Under this new, value-based arrangement, Accenture will have a proportion of its fees directly tied to the savings achieved to demonstrate its commitment and confidence in its ability to deliver savings. Accenture will initially focus on delivering strategic sourcing -- savings from across the City’s diverse base of suppliers -- and by transforming the way that the City manages its procurement operations.

A new central City of London Procurement Service will be created to undertake all procurement and procure- to-pay functions. This service will be delivered by a joint team from the City and Accenture for the duration of the contract.

“The City is seeking to achieve savings and drive efficiencies through the way in which it conducts its procurement and procure-to-pay functions,” said Chris Bilsland, the City of London Corporation’s financial director. “We selected Accenture because of its proven success in delivering procurement services to organizations across the world, although, of course, this new contract will complement our commitment to local procurement. The City of London Corporation will continue to enjoy the legacy of both the financial and non-financial benefits after the contract period.”

Change management will be central to this transformation program and Accenture will provide training for both the City staff that will be involved with the transformation as well as those who will take over the ongoing management of the centralized procurement service after Accenture.

“The aim is to save the City of London Corporation more than £30 million over five years,” said Mark Lyons, Accenture’s United Kingdom and Ireland managing director for Health and Public Service. “This innovative, value-based arrangement will ensure that both Accenture and the City of London Corporation are committed to delivering these savings. Accenture will bring its deep industry skills and insight across its global network to drive continuous improvement for the City.”

New technology will be deployed through the implementation of an eMarketplace and a buyer portal to assist departments in requisitioning and using the new service. This unified procurement function will help the City fully exploit the latest procurement techniques, such as category and demand management, and more effectively balance quality, price and operational costs.

Source: Accenture Newsroom

Accenture report IDs 3 primary models for electric vehicle charging infrastructure

By Heather Clancy | February 23, 2011, 6:35am PST

Summary

Which came first, the electric charger or the electric vehicle?
A new Accenture analysis about electric vehicle charger infrastructure pilots and business models suggests that the availability of public electric vehicle charging technology remains a sticking point when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. There are three factors that the consulting firm is watching closely this [...]

Which came first, the electric charger or the electric vehicle?

A new Accenture analysis about electric vehicle charger infrastructure pilots and business models suggests that the availability of public electric vehicle charging technology remains a sticking point when it comes to electric vehicle adoption. There are three factors that the consulting firm is watching closely this year, since many analysts and firms have held up 2011 as a potential break-through year for mainstream electric vehicle adoption: the investment cost and uncertain potential for returns, the unpredictability of charging habits, and the relative scarcity of vehicles, which means we don’t know what technical challenges away.

Accenture’s report, called “Changing the game: Plug-in electric vehicle pilots,” offers perspective into a number of public electric vehicle charging trials that are going on around the world. So far, there are three clear models for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, Accenture finds:

1. Public infrastructure (primarily driven by municipalities and local governments, which aren’t necessarily expecting a return on their investment other than covering basic costs)
2. Private infrastructure (this is the technology you might find at a mall or at a parking garage, which will be charged at a premium than public infrastructure)
3. End-to-end (this is like a service model, where the consumer will be charged some sort of fee under a long-term contract, which covers battery swapping and charging)

There are also some early “lessons” summarized in the report that should be considered by anyone who is considering investment or involvement in electric vehicle infrastructure. Those insights include:

• The impact on the electric grid needs to be considered more closely, but so far so good: Early pilots have show minimal impact on the grid.
• Early on, at least, consumers seem to prefer charging in the privacy of their own home.
• More standards are necessary for a true public charging infrastructure to emerge.
• Most electric-vehicle drivers (so far) are males in their early 30s and 40s, who own a second vehicle.
• Early indications are that electric vehicles don’t necessarily need to be charged daily.

Says Accenture analyst Melissa Stark, one of the report’s authors:

“The consumer is the most important factor in determining which business models will succeed. The capabilities needed to deliver these models will be the same across the world, but the players that choose to develop them will vary. This means that standardization of technologies is urgently needed to support the varied involvement of service providers. And greater efforts will be required to improve understanding of consumer preferences.”

Source: ZDNet

Accenture Maps Eight Trends That Will Drive Future of IT

Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, has identified eight emerging trends that will drive the future of information technology.

These eight trends are expected to challenge long-held assumptions about IT and will redefine the business landscape, according to Accenture .

“We took a look around the corner and saw a world of IT that barely resembles what enterprise computing looks like today,” said Gavin Michael, managing director of R&D and alliances, Accenture, in a statement.

“The role of technology is changing; it is no longer in a support role. Instead, it is front and center driving business performance and enriching people’s lives like never before,” Michael added.

According to the “Accenture Technology Vision 2011,” report, the most significant trend is that the age of viewing everything through an application lens is ending. Platform architectures will be selected primarily to cope with data volumes and the complexity of data management, not for their ability to support applications.

The relational database will make way for other types of databases like streaming databases, according to Accenture.

IT and other businesses will view application services as utilities that can be procured off the shelf. The role of application and data will be reversed, with data becoming the platform that supports application services.

Accenture predicts that there will be an evolution of social media into social platforms. Company websites may longer be the first port of call for customers. Social identities will become valuable to businesses than the traditional and isolated information they get when an individual registers on their corporate website.

Conversation, which is emerging around cloud computing, will become pervasive that the term itself becomes superfluous. Software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) in combination with internal applications will cement IT’s role as a driver of business growth, according to Accenture.

The role of people in data security will decline, and will be replaced by automated capabilities that detect, assess, and respond immediately.

Individual privacy will take center stage as a result of increased government regulation and policy enforcement.

Companies that continue to view analytics as a simple extension of business intelligence will be underestimating analytics’ potential to move the needles on the business, according to the report.

IT is evolving from a world that is server-centric to one that is service-centric.

The Accenture report also says business process design is driven by the need for optimization and cost reduction. Tomorrow it will be driven by the need to create superior user experiences.

In December last year, Accenture announced that Magneti Marelli selected the company for the design and development of the company’s in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), telematics and embedded software initiatives.

Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf

Source: InfoTech Spotlight

IT firms likely to see good Q1

July 1: With the first quarter of FY11 just over, markets have now started looking ahead to Q1 results. Technology major Infosys will be the first major player off the mark as usual, on July 13. There are some positive expectations from the Indian IT biggies this time, as results of US firms indicate that tech spending is recovering. The negative impact of the Eurozone crisis is expected to be limited.

Accenture and Oracle have reported strong May end quarter results, says HSBC. “Strong management and technology consulting is a robust indicator of companies investing for future growth,” says the brokerage. This should be positive for Indian IT, according to the research house. Infosys and HCL Tech are the preferred picks of the broker amongst the larger Indian firms.

Accenture’s Q3 results show a broad based recovery, says Macquarie. The company has reported a 6-8 per cent growth across all major segments. This kind of growth hasn’t been seen since August 2008, the brokerage says. Accenture has also bagged five deals of over $100 million, which indicates that spending is returning to the sector. Similar announcements could be expected for Indian firms. One segment that has done particularly well is financial sector services. Amongst Indian firms, TCS has a large exposure to this category, which Macquarie says is the top pick in the segment. HCL is another favoured name.

One worry for the tech sector so far has been expected weakness in the British pound and the Euro. However, the fall in the rupee has helped mitigate the near term concerns.

Source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com

Accenture Wins Electrolux Deal

After entering into a technical collaboration with Korean conglomerate Hanwha S&C, technology and management consulting company Accenture Plc (ACN: 42.83 -0.32 -0.74%) recently entered into a global multi-year outsourcing agreement with Electrolux IT Solutions AB.

The tech giant will be shouldering the responsibility of developing and managing a designated portion of Electrolux’s enterprise applications, which consist of JD Edwards, Congos and Lotus Notes. The whole service will be delivered through a global delivery model, and the company expects this to catalyze the information technology restructuring process, resulting in a reduction of cost and enhancing efficiency.

This is the continuation of a series of contract wins that the company has witnessed in recent times. A few days back, Accenture won a five-year application outsourcing contract from Nordea, a leading banking and financial services group. The company did not disclose the monetary value of the contract, which is expected to generate recurring revenue for the company for the next several years.

This apart, in March, Accenture was awarded a $200 million contract byStarwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (HOT: 47.79 -0.50 -1.04%). Under the contract, which will span over a number of years, Accenture will provide a range of IT services, including application outsourcing and infrastructure outsourcing. We expect the revival in business activity to help the company improve numbers in the upcoming quarters.

This idea is reinforced by the optimistic IT spending forecast made by Gartner Inc. (IT: 23.11 -0.09 -0.39%). The technology research firm recently revealed it’s IT spending forecast for 2010. Gartner is bullish on the revival in sentiment across the globe and expects spending on technology products and services to reach $3.4 trillion, registering a growth rate of 5.3% compared to the year-ago quarter.

After the year-long recession, most of the tech companies are witnessing a revival in business volumes and investor sentiment, and Accenture is no exception. So 2010 is expected to be a sunrise year for this sector, but it will definitely take some time for performance to reach 2008 levels.

Source: Daily Markets

Accenture Named Top Outsourcing Provider by International Association of Outsourcing Professionals

IAOP’s Global Outsourcing 100® List ranks Accenture No. 1 for third consecutive year

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has been ranked No. 1 on the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals’ (IAOP®) Global Outsourcing 100list, marking the third consecutive year that Accenture has topped this ranking of the world’s best outsourcing providers.

“Identifying and recognizing the industry's best is what IAOP's Global Outsourcing 100 is all about and for Accenture to lead this list for three years running is an exceptional accomplishment.”

The Global Outsourcing 100 is designed to help companies compare and select service providers using an objective methodology. Providers are ranked on quality following a rigorously judged application process that examines 18 criteria. The final rankings are based on a weighted average of the judges’ scores on demonstrated competencies, size, growth, management capabilities and customer references.

"As the adoption of outsourcing accelerates around the globe, expanding the capabilities and commitment to excellence of outsourcing service providers is key," says Michael Corbett, Chairman, IAOP. "Identifying and recognizing the industry's best is what IAOP's Global Outsourcing 100 is all about and for Accenture to lead this list for three years running is an exceptional accomplishment."

Mike Salvino, Accenture’s group chief executive–Business Process Outsourcing, said, “For the third consecutive year, Accenture is honored to be recognized by the IAOP as the best outsourcing provider in the world. This ranking is a testament to the expertise and professionalism of the thousands of Accenture people around the world who are dedicated to delivering a broad range of outsourcing services to our clients – and to our clients who are realizing business improvement and true business value through outsourcing.”

Accenture provides application, infrastructure and business processing outsourcing services to more than 650 private- and public-sector clients across more than 30 industries.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 181,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About IAOP

The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) is the global, standard-setting organization and advocate for the outsourcing profession. With more than 100,000 customer, advisor and provider members worldwide, IAOP helps companies increase their outsourcing success rate, improve their outsourcing ROI, and expand the opportunities for outsourcing across their businesses. To learn more, visit http://www.iaop.org.

Nordea Awards Accenture Five-Year Application Outsourcing Contract

COPENHAGEN; April 7, 2010 - Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has signed a five-year application outsourcing contract with Nordea, a leading financial services group in the Nordic and Baltic Sea region, to develop and maintain applications that will support the bank’s customer websites. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

The agreement is designed to help Nordea improve customer service and increase cost efficiencies. With 30 websites and more than 7 million monthly visitors, Nordea’s online channel is one of the most important access points for its customers and an increasingly vital channel for sales and service.

Under the terms of the agreement, Accenture will assume responsibility for maintaining and developing Nordea’s Web content management platform for its customer websites. The platform is based on Microsoft .NET technology. Accenture will provide the services through local facilities in Denmark and through its Global Delivery Network using centers in Bangalore, India.

“This agreement gives us access to skilled resources and the benefits of international expertise in Web application development and maintenance,” said Henrik Korch, Business Chief Information Officer for Marketing at Nordea. “It will also ensure that we have the flexibility to ramp up and down according to our demand and changing business needs.”

“In selecting a reliable business partner to help us, we focused on track records of innovation, creativity and new ideas,” said Juha Toivari, Vice-president and head of digital marketing at Nordea. “Accenture’s knowledge of our business and proven ability to provide enhancement and management services for Microsoft applications make it an ideal business partner.”

“As consumers become increasingly Internet-centric, providing them with a unique online experience is critical to organic growth,” said Bent Dalager, executive director of Accenture’s Financial Service group in Denmark. “Through this agreement, Accenture will support Nordea in pursuing new levels of customer interaction and business efficiency enabled by offshore capacity and deep technology insight.”

Accenture will deliver the services in collaboration with Avanade, a business technology services provider that connects insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft technologies to help customers realize results. Avanade is majority owned by Accenture.

Source: Accenture

Accenture: ERP, systems integration deals coming back

Accenture said that big technology projects—such as enterprise resource planning implementations and systems integration efforts—are starting to come back.

Accenture executives outlined their outlook in an analyst powwow on Thursday. A bevy of analysts reported Friday that Accenture seemed more upbeat than it was just a few weeks earlier when it reported fiscal second quarter earnings.

Stifel Nicolaus analyst George Price recapped said that consulting, systems integration and application outsourcing were held out as Accenture’s growth pillars. The company expects to deliver growth of 7 percent to 10 percent in fiscal 2011. Price noted:

“Growth” and “transformation” initiatives are “back on the table”, and while large, multi-year deals are not yet back in general, discretionary demand is certainly better. Accenture is also starting to see ERP work come back – clients slowed or stopped ERP work in the downturn, but now want accelerated deployments.

Cowen analyst Peter Goldmacher said in a research note that Accenture’s comments about pent up ERP demand is likely to translate into solid license growth for Oracle and SAP. Specifically, a 10 percent growth rate at Accenture translates into 8 percent to 12 percent license growth at Oracle in SAP. Goldmacher added:

It’s also important to keep in mind that not all Accenture ERP related projects come from new license sales. Large companies often do large enterprise license agreements where they buy everything up front in exchange for a bigger discount, and deploy the software over time. So, for many reasons, the correlation isn t perfect. But the math is interesting and the Oracle and SAP models don t appear to be wildly out of sync.

Accenture’s conference call transcript had a bevy of notable points. CEO Bill Green riffed on the following:

Indian rivals—Tata, Wipro etc.—are landing bigger deals, but not necessarily moving up the food chain to higher value projects. Green said:

Moving up the food chain is incredibly hard to do because people are betting their business. There’s tons of business moving meat. I mean just straight up — putting resources in places, putting bodies in places — there’s lots of businesses there.

When you’re about delivering outcomes, it’s a different sort of thing. It’s a different collection of skills you need and a different outcome focus you need. And the skin-in-the-game focus — one of the things in consulting that — since the last time we did this, we looked at how many of our deals are value-based, skin-in-the-game — it’s gone up dramatically.

On analytics, Green noted:

I think when you stand back from it — the analytics thing is interesting because a lot of companies are focused on that. The software guys will talk a lot about it — and SAP’s business-objects thing, and, then, how all that’s going to work — obviously, IBM will talk a great deal about it.

There’s garden-variety analytics, and then there’s the stuff that matters. And what we have chosen to do is to put our focus on the predictive analytics, because we think that’s where the value is. And the de facto, standard, best guys on the planet have been, are today, and always will be SAS. And that’s why our alliance with them is so distinctive and important.

The jury is still out on the Feds stimulus and a direct impact on infrastructure spending. Green said:

I think, by and large, anyone who says stimulus is going to save their day is nuts, because in the system, the stuff is held up. And a lot of the stimulus money, quite frankly, has been used just to top up budgets that used to be there, that disappeared because of low revenues and things like that.

But there are things that matter — certainly, the Smart Grid thing. The stimulus thing actually slowed down Smart Grid initiatives as people waited to see if they could get stimulus money to spend that, instead of their own money. And so there’s just some interesting phenomenas. The health thing really hasn’t hit yet. How the money transfers into education hasn’t hit yet — and in other public services.

And then I think the people’s great disappointment in North America was how it transferred into the infrastructure build-out, whereas China, on Friday — they said they were going to stimulate. And, on Monday, they started building bridges. And so if you look at it around the world, it’s impacted in a very different way.

I think what the thing is — maybe what’s more important is — isn’t the stimulus per say. It’s the focus on what we need to be investing in. And one of the things we’ve done is — we believe there is a wave of infrastructure spending across the globe.

Accenture No. 22 on DiversityInc Top 50 Companies List

NEW YORK, Mar 10, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Accenture /quotes/comstock/13*!acn/quotes/nls/acn (ACN 42.01, +0.00, +0.00%) has been named to the DiversityInc list of Top 50 Companies for Diversity for the fourth consecutive year, appearing at No. 22, up from No. 23 last year. DiversityInc also awarded Accenture the No. 3 position, up from No. 10 last year, on the DiversityInc Top Ten Global Diversity Companies list.

DiversityInc, the leading publication on diversity and business, annually recognizes companies that exemplify meaningful diversity management through their corporate practice. To qualify for the DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, participating companies must have more than 1,000 employees and must fill out a detailed questionnaire. Instrumental factors include companies' policies, diversity programs and initiatives and workforce demographics. The list, now in its 10th year, is metrics-driven and companies doing business with DiversityInc receive no advantage.

"Accenture is a very smart company run by astute people who clearly recognize how critical their diversity efforts are to their global and domestic success. When CEO and Chairman Bill Green spoke at our event last November, his real passion for the subject was inspirational for everyone," said Luke Visconti, Chief Executive Officer of DiversityInc. (Watch the video of Mr. Green's speech at http://www.diversityinc.com/article/7138/DiversityInc-Top-Company-for-Generational-Communications-VIDEO/)

According to DiversityInc, Accenture has demonstrated strength in the four areas measured: CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Corporate and Organizational Communications and Supplier Diversity.

"We are honored to be recognized once again by DiversityInc," said LaMae Allen deJongh, managing director of U.S. Human Capital & Diversity at Accenture. "We are focused on fully integrating inclusion and diversity across Accenture's approach to talent management. It is among our top priorities, no matter what the economic environment, and is essential to our people, the communities where we live and work and, ultimately, to maximizing our ability to deliver high performance to our clients."

Accenture's training programs around the globe illustrate the company's ongoing commitment to inclusion and diversity. In addition to offering a variety of live and online diversity training sessions, the company provides customized training and education programs that include "Developing High Performing Women" and "Minority Leadership Development." Additionally, more than 2,500 executives have participated in its "Leading a Diverse Workforce" program since its inception in 2005, and the company recently launched a new training program, "Developing Client Centric Women," to women in multiple locations in South America, Asia Pacific and North America.

Ms. deJongh spoke today on "Inclusion & Diversity Learning" at DiversityInc's event, "EEO to Effective Diversity Management: A Primer for Federal Agencies and Those Who do Business with Them."

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 176,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About DiversityInc

Launched in 1997, DiversityInc is the leading business publication connecting diversity and the bottom line, with 1 million unique monthly visitors. DiversityInc.com includes the largest diversity job board in the nation. DiversityInc also produces events and conducts benchmarking, custom research and consulting.

SOURCE: Accenture

Strategy on the Morph

In 1966, Time magazine published a cover article posing the question, "Is God Dead?" Asked about the possibility, former President Eisenhower reportedly responded, "That's funny. I was just talking with Him this morning." Some of us are beginning to feel the same way about trendy assertions that strategy is dead.

You may have read one such proclamation in the Jan. 25 Wall Street Journal. "Strategy, as we knew it, is dead," argued Walt Shill, who leads Accenture's North American consulting practice. An article titled "Strategic Plans Lose Favor" goes on to quote him saying, "Corporate clients decided that increased flexibility and accelerated decision making are much more important than simply predicting the future."

If you believe strategy consists of predicting the future, or making plans, please feel free to take a chair next to Mr. Shill in the front row of mourners. On your seat you'll find a copy of Henry Mintzberg's 1994 book, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, which should completely disabuse you of any residual hope you may have held out for the corporate planning process.

Meanwhile, a few of us who didn't get the sad news will be sitting around the roaring hearth, sipping wine and talking, not about strategy's death but about its future. Or so we did one evening last week in Manhattan under the auspices of the Association of Management Consulting Firms, sans hearth actually, but not sans wine. The conclusion there was that strategy was going to need to be faster of foot, smarter about picking its shots, and in general more "adaptive," to use my favorite new descriptor (which of course I cribbed from people smarter than myself, some of whom were at the event).

But it was not going to be dead. Darrell Rigby, a longtime partner at Bain & Co. and author of Winning in Turbulence, pointed out that we've gone through periods before when people said the world was moving so fast that companies didn't have the need for, or time to do, strategy. Like in the late 1990s. Something like 90% of the high-tech outfits from that era that thought they could do without the big S are no more. Rigby, who has been surveying companies on their use of management tools since 1994, also reported that strategic planning has ranked first or second on the list every year since then. (Maybe they didn't get the memo on the difference between planning and strategy, either, but it's also true that "have a strategy" isn't by itself a choice on the survey.)

As moderator of the discussion, without wine glass, let me try to distill what I heard into a few calls to action. By way of context I'd note that Accenture's Shill isn't wrong about companies wanting increased flexibility and accelerated decision making. Part of what these experts are wrestling with is how to root both of those in strategy, or, looked at from the other direction, how to rethink strategy to make it quicker and more dexterous.

1. Consider distributing the right to make strategy more widely throughout your organization. Martin Reeves, head of the Boston Consulting Group's Strategy Institute, had a wonderful phrase for what strategy will increasingly consist of: iterative empiricism. You learn something about a fast-changing market, reflect it in the actions you take, learn from how the market responds to that, boil that into your next steps, and so on. "But we've been saying that for years," partisans of the emergent, or learn-from-doing school of strategy may complain. True, but nowadays the action on the front-lines is moving so fast that you probably have to entrust the people there with decisions that heretofore would have been sent back to the company H.Q., where the great strategic wisdom supposedly was stored.

2. Understand that one process does not fit all decisions. Uta Werner, in a past life a partner at Marakon, now head of strategy at Xerox, noted that some strategy calls are of a scale that they can be left with folks out there in the organization. Others are so big, long term, and momentous in their potential implications that top management has to be involved. Knowing which is which, and having that knowledge widespread throughout the company, is critical to making strategy "adaptive." Such wisdom also does wonders for your flexibility.

3. Resources — corporate money and talent — will need to move as fast as decision making. Tom Stewart, chief marketing and knowledge officer for Booz & Co. — and a former editor of Harvard Business Review — has the banner inscription for this imperative: Fluidity. Don't think hydraulics. Think rather of the relentless, ever-morphing villains of the Terminator movies, the cinematic series where James Cameron made his bones (you should pardon the expression) as a director. Cameron may have lost out in the Oscar race this week, but his earlier creation could provide an image of what adaptive strategy — comin' at ya — will look like.

Walter Kiechel III is the former Editorial Director of Harvard Business Publishing, former Managing Editor at Fortune magazine, and author of The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World. He is based in New York City and Boston.

Source: Harvard Business Publishing

Accenture launches mobile money management service

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has announced a new secure, high-speed, high-volume mobile financial transaction software solution for telecommunications service providers and large banks. The mobile money management solution allows firms to reach customers through existing mobile operator networks, web and Internet channels and mobile devices, regardless of the device their customers prefer to use.

It also allows customers to conduct traditional banking transactions, automatically adjusts to fluctuations in network traffic, such as sudden peaks of traffic at the beginning of a business day, and can facilitate thousands of simultaneous transactions. Since it uses "cloud-like" technology, the solution can be launched quickly and economically and scales easily. Customers can be segmented by brand, product or language. The solution is now available worldwide, and is a key element in Accenture's focus on mobility services.

"Mobile operators and banks are facing increasing pressure to provide mobile money services on mobile phones to all users," said Andy Zimmerman, global managing director of Mobility Services at Accenture. "If they do not provide these services they risk losing subscribers and being eliminated from the payment process. Accenture's communications industry experience uniquely positions us to support businesses that want to get into the kind of high-volume mobile money applications that can contribute significantly to their customer service and help generate new revenue streams."

The mobile money management solution makes it possible to process micropayments in real time, which helps companies take advantage of new business models, while potentially opening new streams of revenue. Micropayments are used to process small transaction amounts that would otherwise severely limit profit, or even cost more than the actual product if processed as traditional card transactions.

This type of payment is typically used by Internet merchants who sell content - or other intangible goods - that cost between a few cents and a few dollars each, such as music, pay-per-play games, newspapers, articles, reports, small computer programs, tickets and postcards.

The mobile money management solution incorporates the Fundamo Enterprise Mobile Financial Services (EMFS) platform and combines it with Accenture's Service Delivery Platform (SDP). Mobile money management is available from Accenture Mobility Operated Services, an Accenture business unit which provides services for mobile operators, financial institutions and large retailers to help enable new, revenue-generating services delivered through mobile channels, such as ticketing, loyalty, mobile marketing and mobile money.

Fundamo is the world's largest specialist mobile financial services provider. Fundamo's EMFS platform is powered by technology that already delivers secure mobile financial services to consumers around the globe.

"Mobile money management is about businesses facilitating financial services," said Zimmerman. "Because it involves elements such as financial regulations, as well as customers' money, and personal details, mobile money must meet extremely high standards in terms of performance and security.

"By installing the Fundamo solution onto our industry-leading SDP, Accenture helps provide businesses with an industry-tested way to deliver reliable, secure, mobile services to their diverse customer segments. This is an important advancement for the mobile financial services industry."

Accenture is offering the mobile money management solution as a non-branded, "white label" capability, which allows businesses to retain their brand with their customers. The solution is offered under a transaction-based pricing model, which means businesses pay only for the number of customers who use the capability.

Accenture offers mobile money management as a managed service, hosted at Accenture data centers around the world. As a result, businesses do not have to invest in additional infrastructure, which reduces start-up costs.

"In the wake of the financial crisis, mobile finance has become a critical frontier for bank industry growth," said Noel Gordon, global managing director of Accenture's banking practice. "Consumers are looking for more convenience, simplicity and manageability in their financial lives. The banks that will win customer loyalty will be those with the technologies needed to deliver world-class financial services over mobile devices."

Source: Accenture, 09 March, 2010

Accenture launches cyber security office in San Antonio

Accenture has opened a threat analysis center in San Antonio to tap into the growing demand for security services.

The Accenture center will help federal, state and local government and commercial clients comply with security regulations, protect data and make informed decisions about their information security networks. Accenture will also use the center to assist clients with technology infrastructure, identity management, malmare analysis, cyber forensics, mission resilience, business continuity planning and federal desktop core configuration compliance.

Accenture opened the center inside the company's existing San Antonio Delivery Center at 7050 Fairgrounds Parkway. Of the 500 Accenture employees that work in San Antonio, the center will directly employ about 50. Currently, there are still more than 20 positions that need to be filled locally.

“In this era of elusive and determined cyber adversaries, information technology systems need to be trusted, secure and flexible enough to combat threats in an increasingly hostile environment while maintaining their functional requirements,” says Henry “Bud” Horton, chief technology officer of Accenture’s cyber security practice.

Accenture PLC (NYSE: ACN) is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. It has more than 176,000 employees worldwide and it ended fiscal year 2009 with revenues of $21.58 billion. Its U.S. headquarters are located in New York.

Source: San Antonio Business Journal

IT Outsourcing in 2010: Smaller Deals, Higher volume

by: Outsourcing Insider February 26, 2010

Last year the economic downturn caused some organizations to temporarily scale back on IT outsourcing efforts while they tackled more fundamental issues like keeping the company afloat.

This year, IT outsourcing is making a comeback... in Asia.

Dell Services (DELL) Chairman Jim Champy predicts the Asian IT outsourcing market will grow much faster in 2010. “IT outsourcing is set to rise in Asia as the region's companies begin to modernize business processes and technology systems in a build-out that could last decades. We see, as most providers do, the Asian markets growing faster - clearly more than Europe, and certainly faster than the US,” explains Mr. Champy.

Offshore service providers who made significant investments in technology-related matters may have made the right move at the right time. As firms are already taking steps to outsource some information technology functions. One of them is U.S.-based commercial aircraft equipment manufacturer, Spirit AeroSystems (SPR), where some of its employees affected by the outsourcing plan will be offered jobs with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) or Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) –the providers taking over Spirit’s IT work, both of which have operations in Asia. Spirit spokesperson Ken Evans admits to not ruling out additional work that may be sourced out to offshore providers in the future.

A report from KPMG and the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry forecasts that Asia will account for 26.3% of the total consumption of IT and BPO services in the next 10 years. In the last quarter of 2009, Accenture (ACN) and Capgemini expanded their presence in Asia particularly in the IT services segment. This proves that clients and partners remain attracted to the abundance of technical skills at a low cost.

KPMG’s forecast may happen in the long-run but for the time being service providers are feeling the recovery at smaller proportions but at a higher volume of job requests. According to IBM and Accenture executives, “IT consultants are probably already feeling it: the start of a rebound in business. But there's a difference this time. The rebound is coming mostly in smaller deals rather than in gigantic ones... customers are contracting for a higher volume of smaller jobs.”

Small deals comprise a significant fraction of IBM's and Accenture’s total revenue stream. So it no longer came as a surprise when Accenture acquired RiskControl, a privately held IT consulting company. The acquisition is expected to improve Accenture’s set of risk management services as it tries to gain a strong foothold in the IT offshoring market.

Interestingly, technology vendors acquired technology consulting firms at a quick pace in 2009. Others who made similar acquisitions were Affiliated Computer Services or ACS (ACS), now a Xerox (XRX) company, and Perot Systems (PER). I guess they may all be getting ready to grab a chunk of the incoming deals.

Source: Seeking Alpha