Abstract
Introduction
The case is based on Accenture, known as a one of the leading organizations in the world, providing management consulting, technology and outsourcing services. They had offices and operations in more than 200 cities in 56 countries and clients in more than 120 countries with approximately 358,000 employees. It earned net revenues of US$31 billion for fiscal year 2015. Accenture promised to provide end-to-end solutions for banking and non-banking financial institutions, fast moving consumer goods companies, pharmaceuticals and other telecommunication companies. In 2015, they focused on an operational strategy consisting of five major trends: The Internet of Me, Outcome Economy, Platform Revolution, Intelligence Enterprise and Workforce Re-imagined.
Brief SWOT Analysis
Accenture had established itself as a leader in global marketplace. Moreover, taking control of the Bangladeshi market was more convincingly done by the management team inherited from GPIT. It had selective partnerships with international IT giants such as Huawei, Oracle, Dell, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft to insert the international standard product and service offerings for all of its deliverables.
Since its inception, Accenture Bangladesh has been struggling to develop its value propositions. The growth of IT-dependent businesses (10 new financial institutions every year), de-pricing of internet cost and penetration of Internet connectivity forced the company to undertake development initiatives through rigorous marketing of IT solutions. Operating at local market was a necessity for the company’s initial stages of survival.
Accenture has the competence to offer modern services and have own network and market to provide digital services jointly. By this, it can also find new investment avenues in the ICT and telecom sectors. With increasing labour costs in India, and the decreasing cost of capital in Bangladesh, the country was on the verge of becoming a popular outsourcing destination. The company was initiated to capture international contracts and acted as a system integrator for local industry.
While internet penetration rates were rising with growing number of users in the last decade, Bangladesh lagged behind in facing dreadful challenges in the IT sector. Absence of proper operational practices and guidelines for data standardization and security made the overall procedure lengthy and difficult. The major obstacles in its path of creating digital society were full utilization of capacity and scope at a time of upgrading ICT infrastructure.
Right Moves
Accenture was well known for its offerings and capitalizing on evolving management trends and technologies to benefit its clients. The new management of Accenture Bangladesh was composed of former Grameenphone and GPIT employees, foreign graduates and local IT experts. It engaged in setting key performance indicators that would focus on effective stakeholder management by adopting very specific and efficient operating strategy. The main strategic step was geared towards positioning Accenture in a way that would identify its core competitive advantages through specialized products/solutions and service excellence and expertise, not on price. Integration of departments was attained by asking department heads to take ownership of all the projects. It enabled all teams to work coordinately in completing commercial target. The company was also focusing on relatively less developed international markets such as Nepal and Bhutan, and offered its services as an original equipment manufacturer vendor to foreign clients. It served clients in over 15 countries and had partnership with the local government towards developing the IT infrastructure in Bangladesh. Accenture also inaugurated training and employee exchange programmes with many fortune 500 companies worldwide to facilitate knowledge transfer and acquisition.
Wrong Moves
Within short span of time, the company had experienced frequent changes in management. Therefore, every time a CEO or a CCO had been changed, strategic priority and cultural aspects were also altered accordingly. In addition, it caused a very rapid conversion of existing management team as well as subordinates, pushed the company in creating job insecurity and caused delay in applied operational activities. GPIT had confronted an identity problem from the very beginning when it was inaugurated. However, the issue was resolved when Accenture acquired the sole control of ownership as it already had earned reputation of becoming global leader in its industry. So, Accenture could be able to come out from the shadow of Grameenphone to articulate its fortune with own image. Accenture Bangladesh faced the challenges of delivering structured message of its vision through proper promotional campaigns. Moreover, it lacked a planned marketing team while operating in the fastest growing and most competitive arena in the country. Accenture only did its marketing through IT seminars, fairs and sponsorship of some local software expos, which could barely highlight its full potentiality.
Recommendations
Accenture’s first step towards the future began with an analysis of current growth barriers. Those barriers were included global competitors, sales cycles, investment and risk averseness for long-term growth, narrow casting international markets, grey practices in local markets and other IT firms and venture capital investors. As far as internal factors were involved, the company set out to investigate its shortcomings in terms of bureaucracy, lack of efficiency in product design, pre-sales, pricing and processes, and lack of experience in the BPO industry.
However, poor infrastructure including frequent power crises and slow and unreliable Internet connections are the most immediate problems for the software industry of Bangladesh. At the same time, IT businesses most often could not secure their financial access in local financial institutions due to the intangible nature of ICT products. Moreover, there was quite consequential gap between the existing education system and the industry practices. A serious communication gap was evident between government representatives and the ICT sector as government officials had deficient knowledge on fundamentals of information technology.
Bangladesh Government has taken initiatives to overcome the barriers of ICT-based companies. All Software and ICT-based companies, including those under foreign ownership exempt from income tax until 2015. Both a government sponsored long-term equity fund and short-term working capital financing are offered to ICT companies. A special hi-technology and software technology park is being built by the Government to facilitate the development of the entire infrastructure needed by companies. However, Accenture can take some initiatives to make stronger position in ICT industry of Bangladesh. Accenture should specialize in particular product or service ranges in order to create more reliable and unique sales propositions. Accenture should create a quality controlled match-making platform. Accenture should develop specialized training facilities and motivational programmes for talented ICT employees and coordinate interaction between industry participants, supporting associations and educational bodies.