What do a Frankfurt-based global financial services company and an electrical utility in the southwestern United States have in common? On many important levels, very little. Which is why any meaningful evaluation of performance will approach each of these companies very differently.
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At the heart of Accenture's High Performance Business initiative—an ongoing research project that is identifying and documenting those attributes that characterize superior companies—is industry-specific analysis. It is this industry focus that differentiates our program from other efforts to define the drivers of high performance. To date, we have applied our high-performance business methodology across 18 of today's largest industries. (see box at right).
As we've discussed in detail in Outlook over the past nine months, Accenture's standard for high performance is a company's ability to create value as measured by total return to shareholders. Clearly, varying dynamics within specific industries affect the creation of long-term shareholder value in particular ways.
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As a consequence, the screens we use to identify high performers accurately are derived from industry-specific peer group comparisons. For some industries, where a number of fundamentally different operating models can coexist, we have taken peer comparison to the appropriate subsector level. And as we have pursued our industry-by-industry analysis, we have modified our basic methodology to account for regulatory, capital requirement, strategic, structural and other differences.
This issue of Outlook showcases the first two of Accenture's high-performance business industry reports—on banking and utilities. The striking differences between the two—utilities, with its welter of regulatory regimes and business models; banking, with its remarkably homogeneous global market environment—illustrate why our industry-specific analysis is the soundest way to frame high performance.
These two reports do have one important aspect in common, however—their analytic and method-ological rigor. Readers can look forward to additional reports in future issues of Outlook.
David Cudaback
Editor-in-Chief, Outlook
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