Accenture 2010 IT Report Meet the Global Team Driving High Performance IT

Featured throughout this report are members of the Accenture CIO

Organization. Our 3,900-member IT team works with Accenture colleagues

and clients around the world to make high performance IT a reality.

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A decade of IT changeA message from Frank B. Modruson

Chief Information Officer, Accenture

Whenever the subject is IT, people tend to think about chips and terabits, computers and data centers. Companies like to list their impressive IT statistics, and we are no different (see back cover). But our people always have been and will continue to be Accenture's main asset, which is why we are featuring members of our 3,900-strong global IT team in this year’s report. Here you see some of the project team members who made our work this past year possible. We appreciate the talents of all our people and are grateful for their commitment to Accenture’s high performance.

2010 marked the end of a remarkable decade at Accenture. In the year 2000, Accenture was essentially a new company. Having inherited legacy systems from our former parent, we faced the immediate need to build separate technology capabilities. We had little idea that Accenture would today have 204,000 employees and revenues of US$21.6 billion. But we had ambitious growth strategies, and we knew we needed the IT infrastructure to support that growth. So we went to work.

Rework vs. replace debate

At the outset of the decade, and at many points throughout, we confronted the same core strategic decision. When the time comes to upgrade equipment and systems, is it better to rework what you have, patching and tweaking systems and software to keep things running, or to replace the old technology entirely and start with a clean IT slate?

This “rework vs. replace” debate is familiar to every IT executive. Many businesses today are still using production software dating from decades past. A philosophy of “it works, so don’t touch it” inevitably leads to hybrid IT environments in which multiple conflicting systems co-exist, and documentation and qualified programmers are hard to find. It always seems safer and cheaper to patch than to risk transformational change. But is it?

An accidental discovery

Although we certainly did not plan it that way, our efforts over the last decade to create a world-class IT organization effectively became an accidental test of the “rework vs. replace” debate.

Accenture’s journey to high performance IT focused first on establishing a separate IT capability. Accenture transformed IT by keeping our operational budget low and the investment budget high. After completing this foundational work (see timeline on page 5), we were then in position to introduce a spectrum of new capabilities, a process that continues to this day. For instance, we are now just finishing the process of implementing a single global platform for tracking time and expenses (see page 7).

Clean sweep wins, hands down

None of this came free. We invested heavily to change our IT. Some of this investment aimed at reducing costs. Other investments bought new capabilities.

When we started, we did not intend to replace everything. But over time, we consistently chose to jettison the old in favor of the new. We did not want to be encumbered by the conflicts between old and new technologies, which

impose massive burdens on business performance. Looking back over 10 years of work, we discovered that we changed absolutely everything.

Continuous innovation

Clear lessons emerge from our experience. The faster you leverage the latest advances in IT, the more you will benefit. The longer you retain a given technology, the more it drags down your performance, and the higher the price paid in innovations sacrificed. Accenture’s total IT investments over the period 2001-2010 have generated an ROI to date in excess of 300 percent. Better still, these innovations will keep on generating savings and returns in the years ahead by further reducing our overall cost of IT, even as Accenture’s global workforce continues to grow.

We share Accenture’s IT experience because for us and for our clients, the process of innovation is never complete. There is always another improvement to make, a new advance to implement, another opportunity to raise your game and achieve high performance.

Frank B. Modruson

Frank B. Modruson, CIO of Accenture (center) speaking with Enrique Salem, President and CEO of Symantec (right)

and Dominique Tessaro, CIO of Cegelec (left) at the Accenture Global CIO Forum held in Washington, D.C. in June of 2010.

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came away convinced that the cloud-based messaging and collaboration services are secure with the right capabilities.”

Byanna sees benefits in the migration beyond savings: “Flexibility is the real value. What we are buying is the ability to turn capacity on and off as business conditions warrant, and the flexibility to make the right choices in a rapid manner.”

Virtues of virtualization

It is far easier to deal with the cloud once an enterprise has begun the virtualization journey. “We have made tremendous progress on the virtualization front,” Byanna continues. “I think this is where we’ve differentiated ourselves.” Accenture’s virtualization initiative has four major components:

1. Server/Operating Systems: More than 60 percent of Accenture’s internal application environment – 1,353 VMs or “virtual machines” – has been virtualized.

2. Databases: Accenture has used virtualization technologies to reduce database hosting and capital costs

significantly. These technologies allow Accenture to build farms of machines leveraging shared databases.

3. Storage: Innovative solutions now feature “snapshot” capabilities, cutting the space required for Accenture’s global SAP database to 60 TB from the 140 TB needed before.

4. Networks: Accenture is focusing on maintaining security while simplifying application access. Security architecture is being redesigned to ensure consistent standards across the network as a whole.

To take advantage of public “infrastructure-as-a-service” cloud offerings, Accenture’s IT organization is also investing in automation and management tools being developed for the Accenture Technology growth platform. These cloud capabilities will position Accenture to access incremental elastic computing capacity, further reducing costs.

“Through platform standardization and the adoption of virtualization technologies at a rapid pace, we have driven significant cost savings,” concludes Byanna, “It is important to our IT organization to implement internally the same things we are urging our customers to do, and we are.”

Tomorrow's IT shop: Flexible, virtual, economical

Accenture's IT journey

Accenture’s internal IT team continually pursues new ways in which technology can redefine IT operations. The case for cloud computing is compelling, although judgment remains vital in discerning the best path forward. Virtualization can set the stage with immediate benefits. What emerges is a new kind of IT operation – flexible, virtual where possible, and highly economical.

Cloud-like flexibility

Accenture supports a hybrid environment featuring an internal cloud and external cloud-based solutions. After extensive analysis, Accenture has decided to move a significant portion of our messaging and collaboration portfolio to an external cloud provider in fiscal year 2011. "That was a big decision for us," says Vid Byanna, the senior executive responsible for Accenture's global infrastructure capabilities. “We did our due diligence, and

Accenture’s internal IT organiza- tion has transformed itself time and again…replacing legacy infrastructure as we built new capabilities, achieving greater efficiency through consolidation and standardization, and consis-tently raising effectiveness with new applications across Accenture.

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• Separatefromparent• Buildindependenttechnologycapacity• EstablishITstrategy

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

• Alignwiththebusiness• RunITlikeabusiness• Centralize,rationalizeandstandardize• Globalsingle-instanceERP• Lowcostlocations

• Collaboration2.0• NetworkTransformationProgram• EngagementandContractCommercial

Delivery Management

EstablishedIT Efficiency Effectiveness

According to Cara Rehal, team lead-Change Management, “The microblogging capability enables employees to reduce e-mail clutter and empowers them to rapidly tap into our best thinking. Millennials already comfortable with these technologies in their daily lives were among the first adopters, and others quickly followed.”

AccentureGroupsaregrowingrapidly

Another addition this year was Accenture Groups, online communities of colleagues who share a personal or professional interest, connect across geographies, and gain from everyone’s thinking. More than 1,800 such communities have already been created. Members benefit from a range of collaborative tools, including discussions, bookmarks, blogs and newsfeeds, making it easy to break down silos and build relationships.

Improved connectivity and convenience

Office Communicator (OC) has enabled swift and seamless communication across the enterprise. A desktop application, OC initially enabled employees to indicate availability and conduct audio and conference calls from Accenture laptops.

Today, the next generation of OC provides desktop sharing and supports inbound/outbound phone calls from land lines and mobile phones. A new capability in 2010 further enhanced efficiency by making it simple to schedule OC conference calls in advance. The net effect is improved connectivity and convenience for Accenture and for our clients who share this technology.

The next best thing to being there

In recognition of the value Telepresence has already brought to Accenture, CIO leadership expanded this lifelike videoconferencing capability. Business-to-business video meetings with clients, webcasts and mobile sessions are among the latest enhancements. Ideal for long-distance team coordination and client communication, Telepresence is now available at 65 sites across Accenture’s global network, with others opening soon.

The Collaboration 2.0 program continues to be a prime mover for Accenture’s business, helping to foster the swift and seamless communication and collaboration so key to high performance.

Collaboration 2.0: Critical to high performanceCollaboration 2.0 was launched in fiscal year 2007 to promote communications and sharing across Accenture’s enterprise. Today the program delivers a holistic set of solutions enabling Accenture’s workforce to drive high performance through every area of our company.

Businessnetworkingdeliversvalue

Recognizing the impact social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter are having among consumers, Accenture’s IT organization has added comparable business networking technologies to the Collaboration 2.0 toolkit, with one vital addition: security. Accenture’s workers can now microblog securely with colleagues and communities across geographies to exchange ideas, trade technology tips, and give fast feedback.

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Inside Accenture's IT, less is more EventhoughAccenture’sglobalworkforce grew by 166 percent over the last 10 years, IT spending per person fell by 69 percent.

EveryotherITmetricfell in similar fashion, except one: the percentage of satisfied sponsors rose.

who led the CIO team, “it’s a new way to think about setting up and managing engagements.” For the first time, capabilities for Work & Time, Contracts, Financials and Resources management are integrated in a single-instance global application. Instead of spreadsheets, the solution gives executives common tools to break down complex work, source and manage resources, view metrics, monitor finances, and track costs.

Manage myEngagements replaces tedious procedures with automatic processes. Previously, executives had to enter data manually. The new solution pulls accurate data directly from Accenture’s master repository. Manage myEngagements is integrated with all the tools Accenture executives currently use for engagement management.

Engagements once had work plans, forecasts and charge codes that were not linked, making it hard to see metrics across solutions. Manage myEngagements lets executives set up the work in the way they want to manage it, and then uses the same structures for budgeting and

financial reporting. The new solution saves time and frees executives to focus on value creation by integrating with myTimeandExpenses (see page 7) and Manage myContract.

Benefitsforall

Everyone wins with this new approach:

• ClientsareseeingnewlevelsofaccountabilityasAccenture teams more accurately track commitments. The new solution also lets Accenture report financial data the way clients need it.

• Accentureprofessionalsgainfromreducedadministrativechores, meaning more people can deliver greater value.

• Accenture’scorporateperformanceisaidedbymoreaccurate financial reporting, better business intelligence, and enhanced risk management.

Klee sums up the multiple benefits: “By moving to a more systematic, consistent approach, we gain greater transparency in all our engagements, and can focus on the work our clients want us to do.”

ManagemyEngagements: Smart made simpleAccenture has just won a new engagement, and your client expects successful implementation within budget. The clock is ticking as teams and projects need to be set in motion, but where to begin?

In the past, complex engagements depended on the skills of experienced Accenture executives, who often had tools that did not always match the task. Thanks to the skills of Accenture’s CIO Organization, a new tool – Manage myEngagements – is being deployed to help Accenture executives launch engagements more rapidly, and manage them with consistency and predictability.

A new way to manage engagements

“Manage myEngagements is more than just new technology,” explains Elizabeth Klee, the Accenture senior executive

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user interface, customized to support legal and tax regulations in each geography and internal policies specific to Accenture business units and levels. To support tax requirements related to expenses, Accenture developed an interpretive language to capture data elements. myTimeandExpenses provides real-time validation of charge codes and interfaces with Accenture’s global single-instance Enterprise Resource Planning system, running on SAP.

This robust application accommodates the needs of many stakeholders. Customized features let the tool capture accurate data even if currency information varies. The result is a smart system that can tell the yuan from the euro and a religious holiday in Algeria from a bank holiday in the United Kingdom.

“myTimeandExpenses dramatically improves the way the average Accenture professional tracks time and expenses,” says Vince DeGiulio, Accenture senior executive and the initiative lead. “The Web-based application is accessible

from any computer with an Internet connection, and employees report that it is easier and faster than our old systems.”

To further increase the ease of use and data entry accuracy, myTimeandExpenses provides employees and their supervisors with time entry and frequent trip expense templates, corporate credit card billing integration and improved reviewer capabilities.

Globaldeployment

myTimeandExpenses is deployed in all 57 countries where Accenture has employees. So far, the new system has processed more than 3.4 million time and expense reports, and is averaging more than 360,000 reports each month.

Phil Calcutt, Accenture’s global geographic services managing director, says, “This is a prime example of how we used IT to tackle our organization’s strategic priorities. The system helps Accenture become leaner, more agile and better at using our resources.”

myTimeandExpenses: An award-winning solutionAccenture’s new myTimeandExpenses system provides a global platform for the collection of time and expense data from all Accenture professionals. The world is taking note: Accenture was awarded the prestigious CIO 100 award for 2010 in part on the strength of this elegant solution.

Accenture had used more than 50 systems to gather project time and expense data and to track more than one million hours of work daily. These systems were complex and less than flexible in adapting to changing business needs. But no off-the-shelf system could handle Accenture’s huge volumes of data, country coverage and legal and statutory requirements.

Proprietarylanguageinvented

So Accenture’s IT organization engineered a new, highly sophisticated global solution. At its heart is a configurable

75,000

US$11.44 billion

67%

Baseline

Baseline

Baseline

Employees

Revenue

% of satisfied sponsors

IT spend in $

IT spend as % of revenue

IT spend per person

204,000

US$21.6 billion

89%

Down 22%

Down 59%

Down 69%

2001 2010

0

600

1,500

Multiple

Not measured

Sourced IT staff

Globalapplications

Localapplications

Technology platforms

Benefitsrealized

2,900

267

255

One

124%

2001 2010

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Accenture’s investments in high performance IT have delivered a 300 percent ROI

Aggressive investments in trans-formational initiatives from 2001 through 2010 enabled Accenture to rebuild our IT systems, applications and infrastructure from top to bottom. What return did we realize? Savings worth more than three times our investment, plus a high performance IT operation powering Accenture colleagues and clients.

activities. Payrolls could not be processed, hedging activities would be crimped, and the myriad other daily transactions required to keep companies funded and functioning might grind to a halt.

Exposure to this systemic risk was compounded by the proprietary technology systems linking bank and customer. These proprietary platforms made it difficult, if not impossible, for corporations to switch banks swiftly or smoothly in a crunch.

Companies now recognize the value of being able to change banks quickly and of being less dependent on banking partners for daily cash needs. Addressing these priorities, the Accenture Treasury Transformation project aims to do four things:

1. Replace bank “plumbing” – the proprietary platforms that enable transactions – with more flexible solutions, so that companies can work with more banks more easily, and change banks quickly by moving to SWIFT: the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

2. Move more transactions off proprietary banking platforms and onto the company’s own financial systems, so that if a company uses SAP as its primary financial platform, vital treasury processes also leverage the same solution.

3. Move analytical tools, trading platforms and foreign exchange hedging capabilities inside the treasury function, so that corporate treasurers can execute these valuable strategies without the support of banks.

4. Move to a streamlined settlement process among the various entities found in a typical global enterprise.

Attracting client interest

Accenture’s John Blasi, who heads up a team of about 50 IT and Treasury business specialists, is working closely with Accenture’s Treasury function on the project. “We started this for our own business,” Blasi reports, “but we know that many clients are following what we are doing with considerable interest.”

Treasury transformation: Moving to the next levelFor many corporations, the global financial crisis has highlighted the importance of banks to operational survival. The crisis re-prioritized the CFO’s focus to avoid balance sheet risk created by bank exposure. Interest in bank-agnostic solutions and greater business flexibility was a natural outcome. A new initiative spearheaded by Accenture’s Corporate Treasury function took immediate steps to respond to the C-suite’s challenge by redefining banking relationships and supporting technology.

Solution signals new era

Bankers were not the only ones suffering through sleepless nights as the financial sector threatened to implode in 2008-2009. Corporate executives suddenly woke to the fact that banking relationships could turn into liabilities if their principal banks were unable to sustain normal

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‘Send me a quote’

There was a time when projects began with a phone call. Today’s new business process begins with voluminous requests for information under a dizzying array of variables. The goal – shaping the most compelling value proposition – hasn’t changed, but the methods are far more sophisticated.

“The process of shaping a value proposition begins long before a proposal is finalized,” explains senior executive Scott Laughner, who led the development initiative under the sponsorship of Accenture’s Chief Operating Officer Jo Deblaere and senior executive Patricia Kern. “We needed tools to understand a prospective engagement at a much more granular level.”

Laughner’s team discovered an existing toolset that could be customized for the special requirements of a professional services firm like Accenture. Over the next 18 months, a CIO Organization team refined the solution prototype to reflect the unique characteristics of Accenture’s business.

One critical innovation is the use of market data on a very large scale. “The new tool can analyze data from as many as 40,000 Accenture deals,” reports Erik J. Sullivan, who leads the change management effort for the project, “and can integrate external data on prevailing market rates to arrive at baseline estimates.”

“We know there are multiple ways to deliver on any project,” Laughner adds. “The new solution gives us a better analysis of all the alternatives, so that our teams can identify the best value proposition for the client.”

Win-win engagements

By definition, a successful engagement needs to be one where the client receives the value contracted for, while the provider receives fair compensation for services. Accenture’s solution helps project teams arrive at that mutually beneficial destination faster. Accenture’s clients get the solutions and value required, and Accenture optimizes the value of our people and the work they deliver.

Shaping value propositions: Wins for clients and AccentureAccenture pursues thousands of opportunities across our global enterprise each year. Not every proposal matures into a formal engagement, but every proposal typically requires many hours of work before we put a value proposition on the table.

How precisely does Accenture manage “new business” for maximum effectiveness? This question, posed by an Accenture strategy team, sparked construction of a robust, data-based method for shaping winning value propositions. Unveiled in fiscal year 2010, the solution is already helping Accenture do a better job of scoping and estimating the solutions clients expect.

“High-performance businesses regard IT as a source of both operational excellence and competitive advantage….High performers experiment with more technologies than their less tech-savvy competitors….Through repeated assessment, experimentation and adoption of new technologies, these organizations are able to eliminate technologies that don’t work.”

From the Accenture High Performance Business Strategic Research Initiative

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On the forward edge: Today’s major IT issues, tomorrow’s opportunities

FourseniorexecutivesfromAccenture’sCIOOrganization–VidByanna, KenCorless,BobKressandScottLaughner–conductedavirtual roundtable discussion via Telepresence videoconference on August 23, 2010 to explore the major issues and opportunities facing IT today. Following are excerpts from the wide-ranging conversation.

On the consumerization of IT

BobKress: One of the topics that has been getting a lot of attention in the press and among our leadership is the whole area of consumerization of technology. Why don’t we spend a little time exploring how we think that might play into our internal IT plans.

VidByanna: Consumerization is a very broad area that has to do with all the social networking tools that are starting to be leveraged for business purposes, the mobile technologies that are available with iPads and other devices, and all the ways that people can access information and do their work. Part of the challenge that we have is how to allow the use of those capabilities, but to do it in a way that’s secure.

Ken Corless: Historically, we grew up in a world where you were either using technology and that was a task unto itself, or you were doing something that didn’t require

technology. Consumerization integrates these things. You are at dinner in a restaurant, checking in on Foursquare, or posting a picture from a ball game to your Facebook account. You’re not doing a task that requires technology. You’re just using technology to ‘do’ your life.

ScottLaughner:There’s a trend to more applications and more mobility. As we see more and more of our senior leadership become “next generation,” so to speak, I think they will start to place more emphasis on mobile capabilities, regardless of whether there are hard benefits or not, because they’ll perceive it as a way of life. If I’m out talking to a client and I want to make notes, I don’t want to have to wait till I’m back on my laptop to make an entry on our meeting.

Ken Corless: Another big effort that we’ve started earlier this year is our next-generation portal. Besides the normal portal functionality centered around content that is produced and consumed by our employees, we are focusing

on customizable widgets that will surface discrete tasks and transaction data important for an individual’s job – similar to a myYahoo. So rather than weather and stock quotes and sports scores, think about it as your engagement’s current financial picture, or your upcoming flight schedules, or the fact that you have an action item assigned to you coming from your last quality assurance review.

ScottLaughner: We are taking Accenture’s Outlook magazine that’s already on the Kindle and putting it on the iPhone and the iPad. There’s a prototype of it up and running. The plans are to distribute that.

VidByanna: On the infrastructure side, we are planning to do pilots and define standards for network-based storage of files that are traditionally kept on laptops, and for virtual desktop capabilities to enable “device agnosticism.” Security will also drive it. Our clients are demanding lockdown environments, and virtual desktops can be a better solution than implementing multiple controls.

Ken Corless

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Vid Byanna

On cloud computing and virtualization

VidByanna: Over the past year, we made a tremendous amount of progress on the virtualization front. First, with respect to virtualizing our servers and operating systems. A second area is virtualization of databases, where nearly all of our databases now are virtual. And then the third, which is new for us and also on the forefront, is storage virtualization. So virtualization from my perspective is something that is here to stay. It not only drives significant cost benefits, but allows IT to be more nimble to support the business.

On the cloud front, we do believe that cloud offerings can be secure with the right structure and capabilities in place. We’ve also looked at the economics. In one area in particular, around our e-mail and SharePoint team services capabilities, we’ve made a big commitment to move that to an external public cloud provider.

Ken Corless: I think the end state that we all expect is we’ll see some internal cloud-like stuff and external cloud-like stuff. And hopefully, very few people will notice or care. That’s part of the payback from virtualization…you don’t have to know which physical machines belong to an application, but instead focus on ensuring the right capacity and resources are available when needed. I think over the next three to five years what we’ll have is a great flexibility in moving applications around. As a matter of fact, we’ve talked about one of our growing core competencies as moving applications around effectively and efficiently in order to take advantage of what will be a continually changing, economic picture.

On new opportunities for cost take-out

BobKress: One of the things that I see that is continuing and will be getting even more emphasis as we go forward, is what can technology do within Accenture to make the business more efficient, make the business more productive. Take cost out of running Accenture’s business and continue to take cost out of our own internal IT operation.

VidByanna: One of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves is when will clients start asking us why are people traveling to my location? Why can’t technologies be used to do more virtual work? Just like we had the shift from everyone at the client site now moving to distributive, working with delivery centers. We think that there’s a next set of trends happening there.

Ken Corless: Don’t be afraid. Remember why you got into IT in the first place. Technology is fun. Change is exciting. Even a little bit of risk can get the blood flowing. The landscape will always change. Embrace IT and let IT help you do your job.

Scott LaughnerBob Kress

Copyright © 2010 Accenture All rights reserved.

Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.

Accenture’s internal IT senior executives

Accenture is supported by exceptional leaders from the IT Organization, Infrastructure Outsourcing and the Accenture Global Delivery Network.

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 204,000 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$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

For more information about Accenture’s CIO Organization, visit www.accenture.com/internalit.

CIO Organization Chris W. BjornsonJohn J. BlasiKristian BurkhardtEileen Burns Vidya S. Byanna Darrin J. Caramonta Joseph Chung Steven J. Collins Kenneth Corless Chris Crawford Eugene T. Dolan Sean E. Freeburger

Kush K. Jhawar Daniel P. Kirner Elizabeth C. Klee Robert E. Kress J. Scott Laughner Ana López Díaz Todd D. Marquardt Frank B. Modruson Richard A. Palumbo Tom Parisi Michael J. Reiter Sony M. Rusteberg

Infrastructure Outsourcing Anthony M. Leraris Bradley Nyers Ignacio Horcajo John Van Kemp Paul M. Larson

GlobalDelivery Network Ronald P. Cruz Sanjay Podder Winston O. Cruz Flavio Squillacioti

A snapshot of the IT driving Accenture's high performance

Hardware and Network• 196,000+ workstations deployed

• 6,013 devices monitored• 4,372 servers managed•15,050 megabytes network bandwidth managed

Websites•44,000 unique visitors to Accenture Portal per day

•27,000 unique visitors to accenture.com per day

•42,000 unique search queries per day

Applications•267 global applications•255 local applications supported

•Global single-instance ERP on SAP

Support•1,283,298 resolved incidents per year through help desk, self-service, Web chat, local support

•1,265,158 self-service contacts

Collaboration•208,000 e-mail accounts•5,400,000 e-mail messages per day

•27,000,000 spam messages blocked per day

•4,500 Telepresence hours per month

•11,000 SharePoint sites•54,000 mobile devices (iPhone/BlackBerry/Windows)

•45,000,000 audio conferencing minutes per month