Accenture: Effectiveness Of IT Governance At Accenture

Effectiveness of IT governance at Accenture
Accenture has a global interconnected workforce to meet the needs of a multi-polar business environment characterized by multiple centers of economic power and activity, high economic integration across geographies and information and communication technologies which are unparalleled. High collaboration and productivity is fostered today in more than 60 percent of its 178,000-strong workforce by its dependence on infrastructure which is accessible anytime and anywhere. IT has an award –winning CIO organization which is charged with delivering the innovative and effective Information technology (IT) solutions which enable its internal customers to achieve high performance. Thus central to this responsibility is a coherent and universally accepted governance model which is hand in hand with the business strategies that drive business growth.
The business challenge
Top companies need to develop a strong performance anatomy which allows them to continually pursue customer-valued innovations and differentiate from the competitors. And an increasingly important component of this strong performance anatomy is the company’s IT capability which allows a business focussed on high performance to create and act on customer and business insights in real time, create new products and services and transform business models. Likewise a strong and proactive IT governance model is also important which insures that business leaders are involved in planning and aligning IT initiatives with business priorities which is well understood by Accenture. And the company’s IT governance demands are particularly heavy as well being a heavily matrixed organization with five operating groups, 17 focused industry grou...

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...posed benefits in the original business cases approved by the IT Steering Committee from fiscal years 2005 to 2007.
The new IT governance model which satisfies the call for collaboration has enabled the company to meet the demands of its clients and end users and also keep its employees on the cutting edge of technology. The numbers tell the story themselves – a leading industry analyst benchmark of the world’s largest IT organizations ranked Accenture the best in 3 key measurements: lowest IT workforce as a percentage of headcount; lowest IT expense as a percentage of net revenue; and lowest IT expense per employee. This was all possible only due to the robust IT governance which has strengthened the company’s ability to transform IT into a strategic asset. Thus it has helped ensure that it’s IT strategy is closely aligned with its business strategy from the start.