Accenture: SAP HR Implementation

Attracting, developing, managing, deploying and compensating our employees are, therefore, essential. Accenture realized that our legacy human resource (HR) systems, which had been built during a period of rapid global expansion in the 1990s and were highly customized and localized, could hinder the company's efforts to achieve high performance in managing our human resources going forward. Accenture recognized we needed a new technology platform to enable a highly effective, global HR capability.

By tapping the industry-leading skills of our own professionals around the world and by collaborating with our strategic business partners, Accenture developed an integrated HR IT system using SAP Human Capital Management. After months of intensive design, record cleansing and testing, the new system was rolled out without disruption in service to employees or clients and across 57 countries during a six-day window of opportunity. During this time, 10 deployment teams converted the entire core HR system. One week later, the team followed this immense effort with the conversion of an SAP Business Intelligence Warehouse. The conversion took place successfully, with no interruption to benefits or services.

In implementing the new SAP IT system, the team used Microsoft technologies, including Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Server. Accenture already had migrated core technologies to a Microsoft environment as part of larger migration of mission-critical business applications. Accenture had selected Microsoft as the standard IT platform on which to run our business as part of an overall infrastructure transformation program. This was aimed at reducing IT costs and improving the flexibility of the underlying technology platform to better align with the company's business strategy. As with other Accenture and SAP/Microsoft solutions, Avanade, a joint venture company of Microsoft and Accenture, participated by providing deep technical architecture and development skills on the Microsoft platform.

The new SAP HR system is maximizing the value of business information for the company, reducing maintenance costs by leveraging a less expensive database platform and improving productivity by enabling greater HR efficiencies across the company. In addition, the new system provides a global, flexible and scalable personnel administration capability that not only answers Accenture's need for geographic specificity but also supports the company's plans for growth. More importantly, the solution integrates HR and finance data giving Accenture access to consistent, highly accurate and global information that drives decision making and employee services across the enterprise. Today, Accenture has an HR system that not only will support our future growth for years to come, but also serve as a strong foundation for making faster, better decisions that drive high performance.