Marketing Spotlight - Accenture
What have been the key success factors for Accenture?
One large success factor for Accenture has been its timing. "Accenture started life as the consulting arm of accounting firm Arthur Anderson
In 1989, Anderson Consulting separated from Arthur Anderson in order to position itself against its IT services competitors" (Keller & Kotler, 1994/2006, 366). Accenture was able to take advantage of its large parent company and use its massive support to concentrate on becoming an efficient and popular name in the consulting market. Leaving Arthur Anderson before the corruption with Enron became public may have saved the company the same fate of many organizations that suffered for their connections to the accounting firm.
By "piggy-backing" on Arthur Anderson at a fortunate time, Accenture was able to correctly view the tide of the consulting business and branch out into the staffing business. I doing so, Accenture has successfully filled a niche by being able to supply the staff needed to accomplish the innovative ideas it provides to its clients. Says Ian Watmore, Accenture's U.K. chief, "Unless you can provide both transformational consulting and outsourcing capability, you're not going to win" (Keller & Kotler, 1994/2006, 367).
Thirteen years ago, the biggest energy company in the world experienced the biggest accounting scandal of the century. The company was called Enron and was doing very well in business but unfortunately, after many bad decisions were made by the executives of the company, Enron went bankrupt. The executives of Enron were essentially gamblers in the stock market. They took terrible risks and misreported their financial standings in order to encourage people to invest in their stocks. When the stocks crashed in 2001, these people fell victim to the lies and misleading information that Enron reported. Finally, Enron had reached the point of no return and was bankrupt. Arthur Andersen was a company that had a significant role in Enron’s collapse.
In order to solve our research problem, we used a descriptive research design with two types of sample surveys that estimated the strength of competition, what attributes students value most in a haircut, and the potential effect of promotional tools on demand. The answers to our experiment will ultimately give us a general idea of how promotional tools will affect the demand of our target market, what our target market wants, and an overall sense of competition intensity.
Companies use marketing research to identify problems or opportunities that they might encounter. Organizations may also use marketing research to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and certain trends that are forming in their market. H&R Block is a tax service company that prepares state and federal taxes for individual customers and small to mid-size companies (H&R Block, 2010). This company has defined their marketing research and has different types of marketing research techniques it uses. Furthermore, there are other types of H&R Block’s marketing research techniques that would be beneficial to if they were implemented correctly.
This company in the late 1990s and the beginning of the year 2000, it's a successful electricity and natural gas company. They are also one of the leaders in the field of telecommunications. The company made billions of dollars and employed thousands of people. Their stock skyrocketed and everyone wanted a piece of this "phenomenon". In the year 2001, the false image that Enron conveyed, began to crumble and was discovered that the mass amount of dollars reported as earned on the company's financial statement were all fake. Once the world learned of the scandal, the company collapsed and investors lost millions. After the crash of Enron, the Securities and Exchange Commission started looking into Enron’s complex finances and Andersen (the audit firm) put in practice a policy calling for destroying unneeded documentation. According to NBC news "At trial, Andersen argued that employees who shredded tons of documents followed the policy and there was no intent to thwart the SEC investigation" ("Enron auditor's verdict revise", 2005). The impact that investors felt, created influence for the government leaders to implement the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In order to cut down on the incidence of corporate fraud, Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley drafted the Sarbanes-Oxley
As the owner of a technology staff augmentation firm in Chicagoland, Rona Borre has a vested interest in providing her nationwide clients with professionals who have the skills to begin making an immediate difference in the client's company. Writing an article for CIO, How To Bridge The Gap Between HR And IT, Borre explains that HR professionals are not always aware of the exact skills the contract worker needs to fill a position in IT department. IT professionals are also not always the best at explaining their needs to non-technical associates either. At Borre's firm, Instant Alliance, team members are experts are determining the exact skill set that candidates need to perform the tasks that they will be contracted for, ensuring the ideal
Fishman, S., 2007. Pros and Cons of Freelancing, Contracting, and Consulting. Retrieved December 11, 2008 from: http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/catId/450464AB-FA7C-4AAC-B374F1BCE305E4DB/objectId/221FE3AA-D933-4595-B0ACEAA2082BC06F/111/159/ART/
... they will ensure that every individual who is hired trained in scientific methods and consistent. Then, with the expertise and skills they will be able to do their jobs well. Lack of staff who is experts in the field of IT in an organization will be able to be solved through IT outsourcing.
One of the most popular business bankruptcies and collapses known to date is that of the Enron Corporation. Enron, once known as "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune Magazine six straight years from 1996 to 2001. Enron seemed to be doing very well until the summer of 2001 generating a lot of cash and new businesses, but in October of 2001 Enron was forced to disclose that their accounting practices had been very creative, and failed to follow generally accepted accounting principles. Profits that had been soaring sky high were wiped away and replaced with enormous losses and charges that were never recorded properly. Unfortunately, Enron executives who were responsible for the shady accounting practices, were able to escape this debt by selling off most or all of their shares in the company (valued at over 10 million dollars) before the stock price fell greatly. They also froze employee's pension plans, and many people lost their jobs in the wake of the collapse and found out their retirement was history (Anonymous, 2002).
Enron and Arthur Anderson were both giants in their own industry. Enron, a Texas based company in the energy trading business, was expanding rapidly in both domestic and global markets. Arthur Anderson, LLC. (Anderson), based out of Chicago, was well established as one of the big five accounting firms. But the means by which they achieved this status became questionable and eventually contributed to their demise. Enron used what if often referred to as “creative” accounting methods, this resulted in them posting record breaking earnings. Anderson, who earned substantial audit and consultation fees from Enron, failed to comply with the auditing standards required in their line of work. Investigations and reports have resulted in finger pointing and placing blame, but both companies contributed to one of the most notorious accounting scandals in history. There remains much speculation as to what steps could and should have been taken to protect innocent victims and numerous investors from experiencing the enormous loses that resulted from this scandal.
To fully take advantage, the company needs to better understand its expectations on the subject, its obligations, along with its constraints and desires. It is therefore proper diagnosis of its needs can be acheived by asking the right questions. Many outsourcing operations prove to be a failure (Barthelemy, 2003; Bryce & Useem, 1998; Embleton & Wright, 1998). Many organisations are barely aware of the process that they initiate when they decide to outsource (van Engelen, 2005). Internal HR staff devotes only a fraction of its available time to the management of external relations and the monitoring of providers (Lepak & Snell,
[4] Gupta, Sachin. For a global software company, outsourcing began at inception . World Paper. April 19. 2004 http://www.worldpaper.com/2004/april/april4.html
As a trouble-shooter, the consultant should be ready to improvise the problem solving process and work towards providing greater access for the teams working towards complex problems. Working as a consultant, it is crucial to stay on the leading edge of business and technologies. It is equally important to train employees of the organization who are unaware or lack access to such trainings. Apart from projects of urgency, it is the role of consultant to research the data and recommend cutting edge solutions to the client. Most times, organization will never meet crises or demand attention but there could be hidden profit opportunities uncovered due to lack of resources to investigate them. Continuing the discussion to implementer, the consultant should also be in position to implement the ideas and evaluate the recommendations given by others. Consultant must perceive an organization as an integrated system but not as a fractioned collection of departments. He is also responsible to facilitate cohesion by serving as a line of communication for the various
Information Security (INFOSEC) consultants help client companies through strategic partnerships (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008). A short review of United States outsourcing creates a prospective baseline for outsourcing endeavors of private institutions (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008). Despite the fact that the vendor has accountability and duties (detailed in the statement of work), the client is predominantly in charge of supervising strategic partnerships (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008).
Management Consulting is an ‘intangible service’. Most of the consultant’s time is spent on preparing and forming possible solutions. Clients and customers buys skills, knowledge and services of the consultants as opposed to buying a physical good. Client do this as they do not have or want to themselves invest their time into these areas. It is thought among the profession that clients do this to retain their focus on their primary core functions and business. Most often what is bought is a solution to an evident problem or some technical knowledge of the consultant which is needed to achieve change. The consultant begins with examining the organisation’s present situation and in particular the problem
Enron was on the of the most successful and innovative companies throughout the 1990s. In October of 2001, Enron admitted that its income had been vastly overstated; and its equity value was actually a couple of billion dollars less than was stated on its income statement (The Fall of Enron, 2016). Enron was forced to declare bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. The primary reasons behind the scandal at Enron was the negligence of Enron’s auditing group Arthur Andersen who helped the company to continually perpetrate the fraud (The Fall of Enron, 2016). The Enron collapse had a huge effect on present accounting regulations and rules.