 In today's complex technological environment, no one company can do everything on its own. In any event, it makes little business sense to reinvent the wheel by duplicating every link in the technology value chain, from consulting and services to business applications, middleware and hardware.
Instead of going it alone, the most successful technology companies focus on their core competencies and bring in carefully chosen strategic partners to complement these. Over the past three decades, Accenture has developed a powerful network of global alliances and partners whose strengths balance our own and drive up the collective value of our offerings. In the process, our clients benefit from unrivalled sourcing choices, speed–to-market opportunities, preferred pricing and access to the very best specialised technology. Close though these relationships are, they are not exclusive. Our strategic partners are our preferred providers of software, middleware and hardware, but we collaborate only where there is an appropriate match with our clients' business strategy and competitive position in the marketplace. We expect no special favours from each other and demand the flexibility that is necessary to help our clients become high-performance businesses and governments. Here are some of the strategic partners with whom Accenture is bringing end-to-end global business solutions to clients in South Africa and the rest of Africa. In all cases, these are global partnerships, meaning they are actively endorsed at the highest level within the partner companies internationally. Microsoft
The partnership was formalised as a global alliance in 1999, when Accenture and Microsoft formed a joint venture, Avanade, to strengthen their relationship and ensure cooperation at the most senior levels. "Accenture is the market leader in management consulting and adds a lot of value to our clients in business services and solutions," says Gordon Frazer, country managing director of Microsoft South Africa. "By combining our technology with Accenture's expertise in vertical lines such as mining, financial services and government, we offer clients the benefit of two industry leaders partnering very closely together. Essentially, we focus on what we're good at, software, and they focus on what they're good at, management consulting, to the real benefit of the customer." Microsoft South Africa was a partner with Accenture and Hewlett-Packard on the JSE Securities Exchange information technology (IT) infrastructure project and the Independent Electoral Commission's election systems, and has collaborated with Accenture on dozens of data warehousing, enterprise resource planning and systems infrastructure rebuild projects for South African business and government clients. SAP
This partnership was established in Germany in the 1980s, when Accenture became one of the first management consulting firms in the world to correctly predict the success of SAP's integrated software solutions in the market. Since the partnership was formalised in 1986, Accenture has delivered more than 1,600 SAP-based solutions to organisations around the world, invests more than $150 million a year in its SAP practice and has approximately 10,500 trained SAP consultants. The partnership has been cited as one of the most successful and durable in the global business environment. In a 2005 analysis, the International Data Corp. (IDC) attributed its longevity to the partners' shared vision of driving high performance for clients, their substantial investment in resources and knowledge sharing, their ability to adapt and evolve together, and to the effective communication between them. "As partners, we each focus on our core competencies," says Claas Kuehnemann, country managing director of SAP South Africa. "Accenture provides business transformation, technology and deep vertical industry skills and knowledge about how best to address customers' business problems through SAP technology to drive bottom line results. SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions with deep industry knowledge and technical expertise, and a focus on helping customers drive innovation and enable business change." This highly strategic global alliance enables Accenture and SAP to jointly deliver high value, innovative business solutions to customers throughout Africa. Accenture and SAP are currently leveraging each other's unique and complementary capabilities on projects in Nigeria and Angola, and have an excellent track record of successful joint delivery at a wide range of South African clients, including the City of Tshwane, City of Cape Town, Standard Bank, Absa, Impala Platinum, Xstrata Alloys, City Power, Eskom and Transnet. Hewlett-Packard
This partnership goes back 20 years and, in South Africa specifically, has seen Accenture and Hewlett-Packard South Africa (HP) collaborating on major projects such as the revitalisation of the JSE Securities Exchange's IT infrastructure and the implementation and running of the IT systems used by the Independent Electoral Commission for national and local government elections since 1994. "The alliance between HP and Accenture brings together HP's leadership in IT products and services and Accenture's world-class capabilities to deliver innovative management consulting, outsourcing, and technology solutions and services," says Thoko Mokgosi–Mwantembe, chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard South Africa. "In South Africa, we leverage this relationship and work closely together delivering a single integrated solution to our clients." To Top |