 It is my pleasure to share with you this review of Accenture's operations in South Africa, Botswana and Nigeria, and to highlight some of the milestones reached in helping our clients in these countries become high-performance businesses and governments.
Although it is a challenge to stand out in an international company where high performance is the norm, our operations in South Africa have been growing substantially above Accenture's global growth rate. Since 2001, our growth has averaged 19 percent year on year in terms of revenue, return on capital, profitability and headcount, which means we've practically doubled the size of the business over the past four years. I believe we can do it again over the next four. Two important factors contributing to our current ranking as the 12th largest of Accenture's 48 practices are the steady expansion and resilience of the South African economy and the growing awareness among business and government of the benefits of consulting and outsourcing. Unlike much of the rest of the world, South Africa has not been through a recession, largely because of its resource-led economy, solid macroeconomic fundamentals and confidence in the currency. By the same token, the strength of the rand has put pressure on resource-based industries and manufacturers reliant on exports to manage their costs down. Accenture is well positioned to assist these industries in the face of weaker export earnings and rising input costs. South African businesses and government organisations are catching up with global trends in outsourcing, not just in information technology (IT) but also in business process outsourcing (BPO) and back-office outsourcing. This trend is expected to gain momentum as South Africa starts to compete on the global BPO stage. With more and more international companies moving to lower cost geographies, South Africa is likely to be a beneficiary of the BPO market, a core strength of Accenture's. In IT outsourcing, we have grown market share, partly due to increased local enthusiasm for outsourcing and partly through the impact of consolidation in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) marketplace. Our competitors today are not what they were three to four years ago. Some big players have withdrawn from the market or scaled down their presence, resulting in the reframing of the competitive landscape. A unique factor of doing business in South Africa is support for Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and Accenture has been highly successful across all seven dimensions of the BEE charter being set for the ICT sector. We are fully compliant with equity ownership requirements following our recent 30 percent equity deal that has introduced profit-sharing for black employees. In terms of management control, full-time black executive directors make up 56 percent of our decision-making structure, the Board. As for employment equity, we crossed the 50 percent threshold for black representation in 2005. We are now 55 percent black, a major achievement given the highly skilled composition of our workforce. In addition, we are fully compliant on the procurement, corporate social investment and enterprise development requirements and, of course, on the skills development dimension. Accenture's whole business is built around training and our investment is well above the current requirement of investing at least 3 percent of payroll back into training. If there is one major challenge we face moving forward, I'd say it was the retention of talent, particularly in middle management. Skills loss is an inherent risk in the consulting and outsourcing environment, where our peoples' proficiency is so visibly displayed while they work with clients to help them become high-performing businesses and governments. However, rather than see staff losses as a threat, we prefer to see it as skills-transfer that is contributing to the development of South Africa's broader skills base. For this reason, we will continue investing as intensively in our people's skills as we have always done, while reinforcing our retention strategy through innovations such as profit-sharing. We do not, and cannot, operate in isolation to the broader market, and so our alliance strategy and our associated relationships with our alliance partners are pivotal to our continued success. We are focused on building assets together that drive up the collective value of our client offerings. Finally, many of our clients in South Africa are investing in the broader African market. We are required to support them, just as we are required to support our global clients wherever they choose to do business. We have a growing network of clients in Africa and have established operations in Nigeria, Angola, Botswana and Mauritius. We also do work in many other African countries for global and South African clients as they extend their African presence. These countries include Egypt, Namibia, Ghana, Mozambique and Tunisia. Looking forward, I would like to reaffirm my team's commitment to continue redefining ourselves so as to remain relevant to our clients and partners amid the challenges of a changing marketplace. Our success depends on your success. Wayne Furphy
Country Managing Director (2000 - 31 August 2006) To Top |