The Business Benefits of Federating With Accenture 

Federation allows people within client companies to communicate with Accenture people easily and securely over a common communication platform such as Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Office Communicator.

With shared instant messaging and other tools, collaboration becomes seamless. Presence indicators simplify contacts and scheduling. Videoconferencing is a one-click process, and desktop sharing of programs, PowerPoint and documents make audio and video calls more productive.

The process of establishing federation is simple and secure, which explains why 179 client companies are already federated with Accenture.

There are several tangible business advantages in federating your company’s employees with Accenture professionals:

• Collaboration. Users from your organization can add Accenture colleagues to contact lists, send them instant messages, as well as have audio, video and desktop sharing sessions instantly through Lync/Office Communicator. Accenture professionals can do the same with contacts inside your company. Federation allows you to see titles/positions and available/busy information. Users can choose the best way to communicate for the task at hand— voice, video, and more—and can easily escalate person-to-person sessions to multi-person conferences. (Note: Communications features must be the same for your company and for Accenture. If only one company has a particular feature — for example, desktop sharing — that feature is not included in the federation.)

• Cost savings. Federated communications use the Internet, not the public phone network, helping to reduce money spent on phone bills and third-party conferencing services.

Establishing Lync/Office Communicator federation is simple, and requires only the sharing of server configuration information. The messages exchanged between Accenture and client people will be encrypted to ensure security. While the federation process is free of cost, clients should be aware of the bandwidth recommendations contained in the fact sheet.