Accenture has over 170k employees in 49 countries. Over two-thirds of their client base is comprised of Fortune 500 companies. Accenture’s marketing campaign with Tiger Woods, “High Performance Delivered” encompasses the companies overall vision for success - Provide high-quality, consistent results to clients. . Almost 80% of Accenture’s clients have worked with the firm for over 10 years. For Accenture, high performance is definable, quantifiable and achievable.
Outsourcing
Accenture focuses on three distinct areas of outsourcing: Infrastructure, Application and Business Process. Using a Global Delivery Network (GDN) comprised of over 40 Delivery Centers, Accenture is able to provide clients low-cost, high performance outsourcing solutions. Delivery centers are technology or business process focused.
Accenture has received numerous awards related to Outsourcing operations, including:
Fortune – America’s Most Admired Company (2005)
Information Week - #1 Outsourcing IT Service Providers (2006)
Business Week – #49 Best Global Brands (2006)
Accenture’s top competitor in the Outsourcing / IT market is IBM Consulting.
Curitiba Delivery Center Operations
The Accenture office in Curitiba focuses on Global Management Consulting and Outsourcing operations in the areas of Business Process Optimization and Application Management. A part of the BRIC Contact Center group (Brazil, Russian, India, China), this delivery center is working hard to distinguish its capabilities and strengths from its India counterpart. Clients for this delivery center are primarily Brazilian companies and 60% of revenue is derived from domestic markets.
The Curitiba Delivery Center employs 500 agents and supports 7 BPO clients, including 4 domestic and 3 global clients. Agents handle 150,000 calls/year meeting an ASA of 10 seconds. Agents working at this delivery center must have a college-level education, and almost 1/3 speaks English at a business-level aptitude. Agents are tests for language proficiencies in Portuguese, English and Spanish.
Future
For Accenture, outsourcing opportunities in the future may include countries such as Vietnam, Laos, East Europe and expanded operations in S America and Asia. Brazil is quickly becoming a cost-competitive and effective alternative to countries such as India and China.
Issues for outsourcing operations in Brazil include:
- High Attrition and Agent Turnover
- Competing in global market with China, India and Russia
- Maintaining profitable operations while providing cost-effective solutions
Findings
It was interesting to note that a majority of the call center agents were women, including supervisor and manager roles. Accenture is focused on expanding operations and un-seating long-time rival IBM in the global marketplace.