Accenture’s Automation and Industrial Solutions Puts Business Value First

Summary

Everyone in business has surely heard of Accenture; the global management consulting company with approximately 177,000 employees worldwide, clients in over 120 countries, and annual revenues of $23.4 billion, according to the company’s 2008 annual report. Accenture organizes its business of consulting, technology, and outsourcing along lines of communications and high tech, financial services, public services, products, and resources. Products such as automotive, CPG, life sciences, and industrial equipment; along with resources such as chemicals, energy, mining, metals, forest products, and utilities; are potential growth areas for Accenture. These also happen to be areas on which ARC focuses.

The Accenture You May Not Know

Accenture Automation and Industrial Solutions (AAIS) is a relatively new, and perhaps less well known, member of the Accenture family. AAIS’ mission is to deliver solutions that bring business value to its clients’ operations.

According to the recent briefing that Accenture provided for ARC, Accenture recognized the value of being able to provide solutions to customers mainly in its “Resources” and “Products” practices that could span from the business systems all the way to the plant floor. Accenture also recognized that, to do this, it needed technology, expertise to deploy the technology, and knowledge of the process applications. Based on this strategy, Accenture acquired the Brazilian-based company, ATAN. ATAN had a great reputation in Brazil for its ability to deliver a wide range of technology: automation, plant information management, alarm management, asset management, remote operations management, production optimization, and so on.

Thinking Global and Acting Local

The automation and industrial solutions service offerings are available anywhere in the world that Accenture has a presence – which is virtually anywhere. To do this, it uses a core team structure approach. For example, if a client in Eastern Europe needs an asset management solution, the local team of Accenture business and technology experts would be joined by the necessary asset management expert(s) to analyze the best approach and then implement the solution.

Accenture is also prepared to work with clients globally to determine how to best support the application throughout its lifecycle. This often includes training the local client personnel to become self-sufficient. If necessary or desired, a client can outsource the control loops monitoring and diagnostics application to Accenture. Accenture, by leveraging its network of delivery centers strategically located around the world, can perform the analysis activity remotely and interact with the client’s maintenance teams located in the plant. This would be effective, for example, in mining, where the location can be extremely remote, Accenture can use its remote monitoring and diagnostics capability to monitor the system and advise the client when something needs to be attended to locally.

Business First

As Accenture’s automation and industrial solutions group continues to grow and expand its footprint around the globe, the most important principle it adheres to is to make sure the business value is incorporated into the assessment of the client’s needs. Accenture has learned over the years that the best technology cannot overcome the lack of business value.

This is not to say that they think technology is unimportant. AAIS Accenture prides itself in being technology-agnostic; meaning that they will use the best available technology to meet the business requirements of the application. Accenture has world-class technology partners, but as explained to ARC, it is not tied to any specific technology supplier when it comes to finding the right solution. Accenture’s automation and industrial IT experts are proud of their ability to understand industries, processes and knowledge of how to apply technology to better manage those processes.

Conclusion

Accenture has recognized a need for an independent source of solutions beyond the business and IT applications. ARC knows their technical expertise and its principals and respects them for their work over many years. Now, as part of Accenture, they have adopted a business approach to delivering automation and industrial IT solutions that should serve them well.

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