Greetings from Seat B19 on the Virgin train from Wolverhampton to London Euston. After my recent tardiness in updating you on my whereabouts and activities, I thought that I would compensate this week by providing two blog entries for the price of one.

As you may know from reading my previous few blogs, I am currently spending between 2 and 4 days a week at the client site in the West Midlands – the city of Wolverhampton, to be precise. Although the transition has not yet commenced (it is due to begin in earnest on Monday), the senior executive heading up our project feels that there is value in us all being together at the client site, both so that we can easily meet to discuss the remaining planning that needs to be done, but also so that we are visible to the client and available to meet with them and answer their questions. So as I travel back to London at the end of the week, I decided to use this blog entry to update you on what exactly I’ve been up to in Wolverhampton.

Things have been busy on my new project for the past few weeks, so I must begin this blog entry with an apology for the time lag since my last update. Although there have been many things that I have wanted to blog about recently, I have had very little time to sit down and put my thoughts down on paper – or on computer, in this case.

The main reason that things have been so hectic is the fact that the transition itself has not yet commenced, and there is a lot of work to do before the project can begin in earnest. This is an entirely new experience for me, as I have not previously been involved in a project at the pre-contract stage. Therefore I have been helping with activities that are entirely new to me, and working to quite stringent deadlines as we have rushed to prepare everything so that we are ready to commence work as soon as the contract is signed. So what exactly happens at the pre-contract stage of a Business Process Outsourcing deal?

What a change has taken place over the course of two weeks! When I wrote my last blog entry, I was in the process of leaving (or “rolling off” in consultant-speak) my previous project – an 18 month finance outsourcing deal for a large computer software company – and beginning to look to see what new project I might become involved with next. Though I was sad to be leaving a project that I had known for so long – in fact, the only project that I have worked on since joining Accenture in January 2007 – I also knew that it was time to gain new experience of working with a different client, different types of Business Process Outsourcing and different aspects of an outsourcing transition. As it happened, I did not have to wait for long to get my chance!

I received a call last week from my career counselor (a career counselor is a manager or senior manager who provides career and development advice, helps you to find potential projects and roles, and who represents you in the annual performance review process) telling me that my name had been mentioned in connection with a new role that was due to start this week. He told me that the position was a planning role, and would involve helping to set up the project management, governance and project plans for a new BPO deal which has just been signed. The planning phase was to last for approximately four weeks, after which time I would join the project transition team, helping to manage one of the workstreams. I had been penciled in for the role because of my previous experience working in the project management office of another large BPO transition, though my career counselor was keen to stress that I would not be simply reprising my previous role for a new client. That was an important point to make, because all junior members of the BPO Mobilisation team are encouraged to try a variety of roles in their first years with the company in order to develop as much experience as possible of the different workstreams, or activities, which make up an outsourcing transition.

Well, I must say that my first project at Accenture is coming to an end in much the same way as it started – with a bang! Those of you who have been following my blog for some time may recall that back in March 2007, when I rolled on to my project, I had to travel to our client’s headquarters in Seattle for two weeks in order to learn their financial processes along with the rest of my team (my project is a large financial outsourcing deal). This was an amazing opportunity, and helped to set the pace for a project where I have been fortunate enough to travel to several other countries including Poland, Ireland and Cyprus.

A couple of months ago, when one of the senior managers on my project called me to ask for my help arranging the logistics of our next Transition Management Team meeting, I assumed that he would just want me to ensure that a room and catering had been booked in advance. However, he went on to say that since this would be the last such meeting before the end of our project – and given the fact that our team is now very dispersed, with members on both sides of the Atlantic – our final meeting would be taking place at a mutually convenient location: New York City! This, of course, is an infinitely more glamorous venue than our usual meeting location (one of the meeting rooms in our London Fenchurch Street office), and so I did not mind being given the administrative task of arranging the logistics such as flights and hotel reservations for myself and the other members of the Transition Management Team. And so it was on Wednesday 10 September, eighteen months after I started my project by flying to Seattle, that I boarded a plane to New York.

A short entry this week, as I have just returned from my vacation in St. Louis, and so there have been no project-related events for me to blog about!

It was terrific to take 10 days of vacation time and head out to the States to enjoy some decent weather and the wonderful American hospitality and service. I always make a point of using my full allocation of vacation days each year (in Mobilisation this is 25 days for a new graduate recruit, with the option to accrue a further 5 days through having overtime paid as vacation hours) as I feel that it is important to take time out to recharge the batteries from time to time, particularly after a period of working particularly hard. And coming as it did after I finally discharged many of my responsibilities as Remote Knowledge Transfer Lead for my project, it was the ideal time to go away.

I have been working from home a fair amount recently, as several of my team members (including my manager) have been away on vacation. Although it is still good to come to the office to catch up with colleagues assigned to different projects, at times it can be convenient to work from home in these situations and avoid the daily commute. When so much work can be accomplished remotely via email or conference call, being physically present in a particular location is oftentimes not necessary. Last Thursday, however, I had some expenses to submit and a couple of faxes to send, so I had to venture out to our London – Fenchurch Street office (my home office).

There are advantages to working from home beyond avoiding the daily commute – for example, not being in the office means a reduced chance being asked to help out with various people’s pet projects or random activities! I don’t mean to suggest that I shirk my responsibilities or dislike helping my colleagues – not at all. But when things are very busy on ones project, working from home can sometimes offer the best prospect of an uninterrupted days work. Last Thursday, however, no sooner had I sat down and plugged in my laptop when a colleague of mine tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could have a quick word. “Uh-oh”, I thought.

As you may know from browsing our graduate recruitment site, all Accenture UK employees are entitled to three days of paid leave per year to spend working on charitable activities. The beneficiary must be a UK-registered charity, but apart from that there are no restrictions placed on the type of organization or on the work that we can do for them. Some Accenture people choose to provide their consulting skills free of charge to their chosen charity, working on small mini-projects either individually or in collaboration with other Accenture employees. Other people undertake tasks as diverse as providing career advice and mentoring to younger people, building community parks and gardens or running marathons in support of their preferred organizations.

People can take part in these “charity days” either individually or with a group of other willing employees. This latter approach can be a very good way to make a bigger positive impact, have some fun and do some teambuilding. And it was for these reasons that 30 of my colleagues from BPO Mobilisation and I found ourselves in east London on a rainy August morning.

This week I have good news to report from my project! After a very hectic previous week, we were able to sign off the knowledge transfer for all 3 client subsidiaries for which I have been responsible – Iceland, Morocco and French-speaking Africa. As the Remote KT Lead for my project, this is very satisfying as it means that my phase of the transition has completed successfully, and I can now focus my energies on other activities.

Well, not quite…

Last Friday afternoon, just as I was about to close down my laptop at the end of the day, I received an instant message from one of my colleagues, asking me to take a look at an email that he had received from a prospective graduate joiner. This individual had met my colleague at one of our recruitment events at the Savoy Hotel in London, and had followed up with an email containing some additional questions about working in Outsourcing and life at Accenture. My colleague wanted me to respond to the email, as I am a more recent joiner (having started with Accenture in January 2007), and have more recent experience of the application and induction process, and the typical work required of a new Analyst.

Overcoming my fairly strong desire to leave the office and begin my weekend, I decided to spend twenty minutes responding to this email straight away, rather than waiting until after the weekend. The questions asked by the prospective graduate joiner were very good, and so I tried to provide detailed answers as best I could, based on my own experiences.

This week has been exceedingly busy for my project – specifically, for the part of the project that I am responsible for – so my apologies that this latest blog entry is rather brief!

When I speak to students and recent graduates who are considering joining Accenture, I am often asked how stressful the job can be, and how long the hours really are. I have to give them the slightly formulaic – but true – response that there really are no standard hours or difficulty of tasks that one might be expected to do. This will depend entirely on the nature of the project, and the phase of the project lifecycle in which you are working.

Last Monday, I received an email reminder in my inbox, inviting me to take part in an upcoming training session. I have blogged before about some of the training opportunities that I have had since joining Accenture, but this particular course was a little different. The session was one of a series run by an external training company who provide a number of training opportunities to Accenture employees. This company runs a number of 90-minute so-called “mind workouts” on a number of topics, including people management, delegation, goal setting, time management and so on.

And the topic of the session last Friday: Getting Things Done.

In my last entry, I promised to use this post to tell you about an interesting “mini project” that I was given last week as part of my project. However, events conspired and this week I have had a number of other miscellaneous tasks to do, outside of my normal project duties. For this reason, my blog entry this week will be somewhat shorter than usual, and will focus on a couple of the unplanned activities which have been taking up my time and attention.

I started this week with a clear mental picture of what I wanted to accomplish before Friday. I also had a physical list of these goals – since joining Accenture, I have increasingly come to rely on “to-do lists” written in my notebook or Filofax (or, if I’m honest, often a Post-It note stuck to my laptop) to manage my workload and remind myself of what I should be doing at any time. The list for this week included the following activities:

Looking back over my last few blog posts, I notice that I have discussed topics such as travel, performance reviews, people management and office life here at Accenture. However, it has been some time since I last talked about what I actually do here on my current project! My role has changed quite substantially since I last wrote about it, reflecting the length of time that I have served on my current project, and my increasing level of experience. Hopefully this blog entry will give you an idea of the type of roles and responsibilities that you may expect when (as in my case) you have been with Accenture between one and two years.

I am still working on the same project, a large for a multinational high-tech company. The deal involves our client outsourcing their finance and accounting processes in all of their local country subsidiaries to Accenture, where we will then provide these services back to the client from our outsourcing Delivery Centres in Buenos Aires, Chennai, Dalian and Warsaw. The deal involves hiring nearly 500 people across the four Delivery Centres, providing finance, accounting and procurement services to the client’s regional offices in more than 90 countries.

If you are reading this blog, you probably linked to it from the Accenture UK careers website. Our website contains a lot of useful information for anyone considering joining Accenture’s Outsourcing – Mobilisation team, as well as all other areas of the firm. Before I interviewed with Accenture in the summer of 2006, I used the site to familiarise myself with the company, the Mobilisation team and the typical work that a new joiner to the team might be expected to do.

Sometimes, though, there may be a question that is not addressed by the website. If you do have further questions about a career in Accenture’s Outsourcing practice, specifically the Mobilisation team (the consulting arm of Outsourcing), these can be e-mailed to me at samuel.j.hooper@accenture.com.

Having spent the past few weeks thinking about and documenting everything that I have done over the past twelve months as part of the performance review process, I want to use this blog entry to focus on a period in March/April this year, when I had a new analyst supporting me during a particularly busy time on my role.

People management is a very prevalent part of working for Accenture at all levels within the company, and the Outsourcing – Mobilisation team is no exception. In order to do your job well it is necessary to ‘manage’ a potentially quite large network of stakeholders, all of whom have an impact on and/or are affected by the work that you do. This people management can be ‘upward’ (managing the expectations and activities of people that are of a higher grade or more senior within the project) or ‘lateral’ (coordinating with colleagues and team members of a similar level or seniority) in addition to the more traditional ‘superior-subordinate’ relationship. In fact, one of the things that was impressed upon us all at Core Analyst School in Chicago back in January ’07 was the importance of ‘managing your manager’ in order to correctly set their expectations, prioritise activities and to appear proactive.

Last Friday, after most people had left the office, I spent a rather painful couple of hours sitting at my desk, hunched over my computer when of course what I really wanted to do was go to the pub. This sorry state of affairs was entirely my own fault – the deadline for submitting performance self-assessments was due that day, and the dual distractions of project work and various ‘extracurricular’ activities meant that I had neglected to give the self assessment much thought until the deadline was upon me.

Let me explain a little about how performance management works at Accenture. As with any company, regular performance reviews are important for a number of reasons, from helping to shape personal and professional development to influencing more tangible outcomes such as promotions and pay rises. The performance review period at Accenture runs from June to May, with a full-year review taking place in the summer and a mid-year review in the winter.

On Tuesday morning we arrived at our meeting room in the Hilton Cyprus, and met the client team with whom we would be working closely for the next two weeks. It was good to meet the client team, having already spoken to them several times during various conference calls and training sessions. The nature of my current role (Project Management Office Support and Remote Knowledge Transfer Tools Lead) means that it is not often necessary for me to be in the same location as the client, and so it is always a bonus for me to meet the client face-to-face.

As I explained in my previous blog entry, the purpose of this visit to Cyprus was to learn and document the client’s various accounting processes for their subsidiaries in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Pakistan, Malta and Cyprus. This would involve watching the client team members explain (and in some cases demonstrate) the various activities, and producing written Desktop Procedures (DTPs) that provide our Accenture Operations Team members with step-by-step instructions for performing the processes.