Rhodia chose Accenture because of our finance and performance management experience, as well as our deep chemicals industry knowledge and outsourcing experience. Working closely together, Rhodia and Accenture performed a knowledge transfer of unprecedented proportions moving the chemical company's disparate finance and accounting processes from more than 60 locations in seven countries into a single, new Accenture Delivery Center in Prague, Czech Republic.
Because Rhodia wanted to speed delivery, Accenture took an accelerated approach: relocating Rhodia's 15 existing ERP systems to Prague and then standardizing them, rather than standardizing first and trying to transfer the new, common system.
Rhodia was the first client of Accenture's Prague Delivery Center which now has more than 600 people providing finance and accounting services to more than 10 clients.
According to Paul Van Beveren, Rhodia's former change manager, Accenture's commitment to Prague was decisive. "They were willing to go to what was a completely Greenfield environment," he says. "No one else was."
The six-and-a-half-year contract signed by Rhodia and Accenture in March 2001 recognized the need for cooperation and flexibility. It enabled the "scaling up" of the current service to include just about every aspect of the finance function, as well as being able to share fixed costs with other center users, which would further reduce Rhodia's costs.
Services provided include: accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, credit and collection, as well as providing general accounting and tax services to Rhodia subsidiaries in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Slovakia.