Application Outsourcing Services Overview

Accenture believes application outsourcing isn’t about what you can subtract from a business. It’s about what you can add. Like a partner completely synchronized with your overall business objectives. Or process excellence that exceeds what you can do on your own.

Balancing cost cutting with business growth
Through Application Outsourcing, we industrialize application development, maintenance and support to align IT investments with a client’s strategic imperatives and can reduce costs by as much as 50 percent.

And we provide “more.” Application Outsourcing can create new business value through optimization of application portfolios, improved ROI and decreased total cost of ownership – all while improving quality by 50 percent or more and increasing productivity by more than 40 percent.

For more than 20 years, Accenture has worked with more than 600 organizations around the world to enable high performance through application outsourcing. Our services are multi-dimensional to meet your every business need:

Services: We take fresh approaches to application development and application management and offer a flexible spectrum of application outsourcing solutions. You can choose production support and application maintenance services or broaden the scope to include application testing, enhancements, upgrades, comprehensive application development or legacy modernization.

Breadth of applications: We can focus on a single application, a group of applications or an entire portfolio of software applications. And we have deep skills and experience in all leading business packaged applications as well as custom and industry applications.

Business model: We tailor our outsourcing engagements to meet your specific needs, carefully considering size and complexity. Whether providing one skilled IT professional to supplement your staff or engaging in a strategic partnership to drive business outcomes, we can support your full range of IT needs.

Download our brochure
To learn more about our capabilities, download our brochure Achieving High Performance through Application Outsourcing [PDF, 761KB].
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View our video
John Maguire, managing director—Application Outsourcing Sales for Accenture, explains what differentiates Accenture in the marketplace.

What the analysts say
“[Among Application Management service providers] Accenture holds the number 2 position both worldwide and in the United States, with shares of 16.2 percent and 19.2 percent, respectively.”
© Copyright IDC. Source: [IDC, Worldwide and U.S. Application Management Services Vendor Shares, 2005: IDC's Top 10 Vendors, Doc #203995, Oct 2006]

“Accenture’s growth in the market has been nothing less than extraordinary, and it now occupies the number 2 position in U.S. AO revenue. Indeed, Accenture’s growth path has been so strong compared with the number 1 vendor by revenue in the U.S. market (IBM), that we believe Accenture has a real chance of taking the number 1 spot in the next few years.”
© Copyright IDC. Source: [IDC, U.S. Application Outsourcing Services 2006 Vendor Analysis: Competitive Landscape and IDC Leadership Grid, Doc #204179, November 2006]

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Accenture is an application outsourcing (AO) market leader. With a proven track record of 20 years, Accenture brings unparalleled focus on helping its clients achieve high performance and become high-performance businesses. In these challenging economic times, you need more than advice. You need solutions that can help you achieve rapid and sustainable cost management while allowing your organization to focus on growth and competitive positioning for the future. And Accenture’s application outsourcing solutions are not only proven and pragmatic, they provide the best combination of capabilities found anywhere around the globe. Consider this:

• Innovation leader: Accenture has a long history of innovation including the bundling of every type of service and capability. And, we can demonstrate our expertise in industry-specific innovations through our industry centers around the world.

• Superior global delivery: We can deliver solutions from our global delivery network…we satisfy our clients’ needs for geographic diversity while providing 24/7 development and language support.

• Reliable business partner: Our brand has been built on maintaining mutually beneficial, long-term relationships. We don’t show up just because a client has money and we don’t leave because a client has problems. Our clients trust Accenture and it shows—they renew with us again and again. All of our top 100 clients in fiscal 2007, based on revenue, have been clients for at least five years, and 85 have been clients for at least 10 years.

• Integrated multi-tower solutions: Industry analysts agree, and our pipeline indicates, that AO bundled deals (both combining towers and serial outsourcing) are back on the rise. This is a competitive advantage for Accenture—we have a comprehensive and integrated outsourcing portfolio, primed to offer bundled outsourcing services and a solid track record with 35 clients today tapping into our delivery excellence.

• Obsessed with performance: We are constantly looking for new ways to help our clients achieve high performance, and we do this through a constant focus on how we can improve our performance as the same time.

Whatever your needs—large or small, complex or simple—Accenture is the proven and dependable choice as your application outsourcing provider if you need to:

• Increase the value from your IT investments.
• Lower your total cost of IT ownership.
• Improve your management control and flexibility.
• Improve your organizational performance.

Accenture can help you achieve your goals more quickly and with lower risk. For Application Outsourcing, the choice is clear—Accenture.

Accenture takes application outsourcing to the next level, helping to increase value derived from limited IT investments. Some of the application outsourcing solutions Accenture offers includes:

• Application management – ongoing support of an existing set of applications.

• Application development and maintenance – full scope of development, implementation and ongoing management services for new and existing applications.

• SAP application outsourcing – enhancement and ongoing management services for SAP applications.

• Oracle application outsourcing – enhancement and ongoing management services for Oracle applications.

• Microsoft application outsourcing – enhancement and ongoing management services for Microsoft applications.

• Transformational application outsourcing – detailed focus on the “transformation” of an organization’s IT capability to more effectively enable strategic business objectives.

• Design, build, run – managing a new custom or packaged application beyond the initial implementation.

We also offer niche solutions aligned to our clients' specific business needs:

• Application testing – application testing execution and management services by providing the right mix of testing processes, assets and dedicated testing professionals.

• Capacity services – provision of IT professionals to support development, testing and/or maintenance activities.

• Captive services – provision of IT professionals to support clients in the set-up and/or ongoing management of their own offshore units or “Captive Centers”.

• Legacy modernization – maximizing business value while minimizing total cost of ownership through optimization and consolidation of target application portfolio.

• Contractor consolidation – managing and “rationalizing” the various technology vendors and contractors within an application outsourcing function.