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VIRTUAL MANAGEMENT AT ACCENTURE

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company, with over 129,000 employees in 48 countries. It specializes in helping businesses and governments improve their performance. Its information systems and business processes are designed so that consultants can work from virtually any location.

Accenture has no operational headquarters and no formal branches. Its chief financial officer lives in Silicon Valley, California, while the head of human resources is in Chicago and its chief technology officer is based in Germany. Accenture’s thousands of management and technology consultants are constantly on the move, on site with clients or working temporarily in offices that the company leases in more than 100 locations around the world.

When a new consultant is hired, Accenture’s system automatically sets up an e-mail account and instructions on where to pick up a laptop. Managers rely heavily on telephone and e-mail to keep up with their staff, and many of them are constantly in motion.

Everyday, Accenture employees log on the company’s internal web site, which they can access from anywhere in the world. They use this system to record where they are working, and to access email, phone messages and their files. The system enables them to share documents and other data with Accenture colleagues and to conduct videoconferences when more face-to-face interaction is needed. If a consultant or manager is about to travel to London, Chicago or Beijing, he or she uses the system to find a cubicle with a desk in that location. Clients who call a manager whose home is Los Angeles are automatically routed t his or her current working location, even if it is several time zones away.

To print a document, a person uses the Accenuture internal web site to click on the country where he or she is currently working. This action brings up a list of offices. After selecting an office, the employee selects a floor, which brings up a floor plan of the building and displays all of the printer, it automatically prints the employee’s documents.
Employees can’t pop into co-workers’ officers for informal meetings. Participants in a specific project may be working from many different locations and time zones around the world, so scheduling phone conferences may require a few to give up some sleep. For global conferences, the best time appears to be around 1pm London time which is 9pm in Beijing, midnight in Australia and 5 am in California.

For executives who are constantly on the go, jet lag adds to the problem.

Accenture outsources about 82 percent of the IT it uses. It hires other companies to manage its network, computer centres and helpdesk as well as technologies used at specific locations. External vendors provide the support for Accenture’s PCs and conference call technology.

Accenture also outsources other parts of its business such as the management of employee travel. Its travel vendors are able to tract employee movements. When a major client in Copenhagen asked to see Accenture’s chief operating officer Steve Rohleder just as his plane was landing in Nice, France, en route from New York to India. Rohleder was able to change planes and head directly to Copenhagen.

Some problems, however, require Accenture managers and clients to “be there in person”. When London-based Adrian Lajyja, who heads Accenture’s financial services group, learned that a project team in the United States felt bogged down, he made an impromptu visit to their work site and staged a three-hour meeting. Personal contact is especially useful when a sensitive personnel matters must be addressed or when employees need extra motivation and encouragement during hard times. That means more travel and conferences around the clock for Accenture virtual executives. During the last economic slowdown, for example, Lajtha held 280 meetings in 18 months with groups of the 12,000 employees he oversees.

Despite these challenges, Accenture believes virtual management works. The company doesn’t have to maintain overhead costs for large headquarters, which it believes would amount to much more than its extensive travel expenses. Managers see many benefits to spending time in the field where clients are located. Managers meeting with lower-level employees who work with the clients obtain information that would not be available if they remained at headquarters. And their presence helps cement client relationships. Almost 85 percent of Accenture’s one hundred largest accounts have been its clients for 10 years or more.