Accenture: Collaboration 2.0

Collaboration 2.0 is helping Accenture professionals work together and with Accenture clients more effectively than ever before.

Related Credentials:

• Telepresence Videoconferencing: Face-to-face meetings without place-to-place travel

Related Podcasts:

• CIO 24/7: Social Networking
• CIO 24/7: Is Collaboration a Game Changer?

Global enterprises are insisting on the best of all possible worlds:

• Workforces spread across every major market, yet team members collaborating as though they are sharing the same office.
  
  
• Improved team-based interactions and innovations, but reduced travel and meeting costs.
  
  
• Upgrading and transforming user computing strategies, while making the most of technologies already in place.

In another time, one might conclude that such goals are so much wishful thinking. But this is not just any time. As Facebook, Twitter, Skype and many other examples make plain, we are living and working in an age of collaboration.

Accenture has been a strong proponent of workforce collaboration since its formation. The Accenture Global Delivery Network is the largest and most diversified group of technology, business process and outsourcing professionals in the world.

Beginning in 2007 and running through 2010, Collaboration 2.0 is aimed at making "anyone, anyplace, anytime" communication and collaboration a reality. Collaboration 2.0 was shaped by the CIO Organization in close cooperation with Accenture Technology Labs and with Accenture’s Workplace Technology and Collaboration consulting practice, bringing together Accenture’s best minds on collaboration, as well as its most advanced tools.

• Connecting with anyone, anyplace, anytime
  Office Communicator becomes the single channel for contacting everyone, breaking down the physical barriers to communication and enabling Accenture people to speedily reach colleagues anytime and anywhere.
  
  
• Be there without going there
  Telepresence videoconferencing delivers a virtual meeting experience with life-size, high-definition video and rich, pitch-perfect audio. The steadily expanding Telepresence network has more than 45 locations spread around the world, with plans to expand to 60 or more when fully complete.
  
  
• Federation breeds still greater collaboration
  Links between Accenture and client companies that also use Office Communicator are rapidly growing. Accenture people can already use Office Communicator to exchange secure, encrypted instant messages with more than 35 clients around the world.
  
  
• Networking becomes natural
  The Accenture Portal is a personalized point of entry to a world of content and contacts. It takes only seconds to comb through the global Accenture workforce to find experts in any subject area. Accenture Groups are the newest way to network across geographies and workforces to build knowledge and relationships.
  
  
• Sharing knowledge
  With Accenture Media Exchange, anyone can post the latest multimedia content. Finding pertinent information and experts on the Knowledge Exchange is easier than ever with Accenture’s enhanced Enterprise Search tool. Team Services provides a platform for teams, groups or communities to facilitate collaboration in multiple ways, including document sharing, discussion boards and workflow automation.
  
  
• Network transformation laid the foundation
  Few of these innovations would have been possible without Accenture’s Network Transformation Program. While the number of Accenture employees increased by 136 percent and revenue increased by 105 percent from 2001 to 2009, IT costs as a percentage of revenue fell by 56 percent.

The greatest power of collaboration technologies lies in supporting new ways of working and interacting that simply were not possible or feasible before.

The cost savings realized by each user of Office Communicator, once multiplied across the entire Accenture workforce, are substantial. Telepresence has proven to be equally cost-efficient. Enterprise-wide metrics on Telepresence usage are climbing rapidly.

From November 2007 through October 2009, Accenture users have participated in tens of thousands of sessions, shrinking Accenture’s travel-related carbon footprint and helping contribute to a 16 percent reduction in Accenture’s year-on-year travel costs.

As potentially sizable as these savings are, even more significant is the shift in the way the Accenture workforce interacts. “The entire concept behind Collaboration 2.0 is an anytime, anyplace, anywhere strategy for allowing people to work together, and communicate and collaborate with each other,” says Vid Byanna, executive director-Global Infrastructure.

Collaboration 2.0 is helping Accenture professionals sell smarter and deliver more effectively than ever before. When it comes to delivering work, teams are collaborating more closely with reduced communications costs; interacting more frequently with clients without the need for travel; and mobilizing the global resources of Accenture to help clients achieve high performance.