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Accenture puts the accent on effective project delivery
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ACCENTURE has reinvented its service offering in Australia to help client companies take a lead and gain new economies in project development, such as gas plants, mines and manufacturing facilities.
Accenture Australia managing director, Jack Percy said for the organisation it was all about going where their clients needed them to go. Much of the momentum behind the formation of the Accenture Australia Operational Efficiency Centre of Excellence has been driven by the experience of the Global Recession, where new efficiencies and getting to market faster were priorities for survival, let alone profitability.
So far, the main call for the new Accenture service has been from resources organisations, but Mr Percy said the new Accenture system can drive savings for “any client that has a capital project”. 
The new Accenture Australia Operational Efficiency Centre of Excellence is located in Brisbane and began operations in late 2013. Mr Percy said the centre offers business services and industrialised delivery capabilities to help organisations operating in Australia achieve measurable improvements in cost control, productivity and compliance.
“We found many of clients involved in capital programs needed start-up capability,” Mr Percy said. “This is speed driven.
“Today’s challenging global economic climate is driving all Australian organisations, and particularly those in the resources sector, to look for new service models that deliver improved effectiveness, predictability, efficiency and productivity.
“The Accenture Australia Operational Efficiency Centre of Excellence allows clients to quickly access skilled resources and industrialised solutions that can deliver real business value. Our experience shows we can help clients reduce the cost to run some of these services by 20-30 percent,” Mr Percy said.
Mr Percy said the Accenture Australia Operational Efficiency Centre of Excellence was scalable with a long term plan to recruit 200 people. The centre provides local clients with services including capital project management, sourcing and procurement, supply chain management, talent management and other business support services.
Arrow Energy, an integrated coal seam gas company, was the first client to utilise the Accenture Australia Delivery Centre for sourcing, procurement and supply chain services.
“Our contract with Accenture quickly expanded our transactional contracting and procurement capability,” Arrow Energy vice president for corporate services, Paul D’Arcy said.
“They were able to efficiently mobilise resources to support our SAP business system rollout – three months from when we developed the concept to when we had people on the floor doing the work.
“Accenture now works with our Contracts and Procurements team, handling the transactional activities of SAP requests from across the business, and managing our material replenishment planning function.
“Their procurement support allows us to focus on our core strategic activities.”
Accenture is distinctive in the way it incorporates consulting and business services, Mr Percy said, so progress is made more rapidly by allocating resources to tasks more rapidly. It usually starts with Accenture adding specialised back office services to support capital programs, using experienced people and implementing financial management systems tailored to that project.
Accenture aims for the centre to be fully integrated with each client’s system, so teams are connected to client systems and data in a secure arrangement, based on specific client needs and security requirements.
Mr Percy said Contact between the client and the Centre of Excellence is based on client and project needs.
“We have the facilities to host onsite meetings, collaborate via video conference or other digital means as required,” he said.
Mr Percy said examples of processes being managed out of the centre include Requisition to Purchase (RTP) order processing and Spot Buy processing.
“RTP involves generating purchase orders from customers requisitions,” Mr Percy said. “Spot Buying involves buying one-off materials and services on a client’s behalf, leveraging specific Accenture buying expertise.
“The benefit is in (clients) getting high value and low value transactions off their plate so they can be focused on driving the project and being strategic,” Mr Percy said. “It’s about speed and low cost and accountability. Cost is important and we need to prove a cost benefit.”
Mr Percy said for a start-up venture, the ability to immediately bring in Accenture’s global networks and IP was a significant advantage.
“So you do not have to design processes from scratch and there would be benefits for global (development),” Mr Percy said.
Ventures are systematised with the benefit of Accenture’s Global Knowledge Exchange, the company’s online information resource which has now been augmented with wikis and blogs, providing a daily live global information exchange for Accenture operations. About 4500 Accenture employees use Knowledge Exchange every day, downloading close to 9,000 documents daily, and drawing on the knowledge generated by Accenture’s 281,000 staff globally.
“We are seeking to do more … and we’ve found ourselves on fertile ground,” Mr Percy said.
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POSTED MAY 2014.
