Christine Tandy

Christine Tandy, who joined Accenture in 1996, is responsible for the successful scoping and delivery of large-scale SAP projects.

She says that she was drawn to Accenture because of its "integrated approach to systems implementation and its respected branding in the market."

She expresses a sense of fulfillment in the growth and achievements she has witnessed in her time at Accenture in South Africa. From a handful of people, the Systems Integration & Technology SAP group has burgeoned—it currently has no fewer than 300 SAP professionals, specialising within the different SAP modules.

Tandy has seen Accenture move beyond simply replacing accounting systems into areas of strategic intent. “There’s great scope in the SAP arena,” she says. Apart from implementing and maintaining SAP systems, other new dimensions such as strategic sourcing, end-to-end supply chain and human capital management also have opened up.

Tandy is upbeat about Accenture’s role, not just in helping clients weather the global financial storm, but also in propelling them along their journey to high performance. She points out that Accenture operates at both strategic and operational levels, so it is well-positioned to help clients refine their competitive and cost-cutting strategies during the current crisis—but also to help position them to take advantage of the eventual upturn.

Not least of these strategies is global consolidation. “As a way of increasing efficiency, companies want to run a single IT process and instance across all their countries of operation. Our challenge is to look at more cost-effective ways of tightening up, thereby helping companies adjust to the lower growth rate. Accenture is in the business of innovation, which means new strategies for new circumstances,” Tandy says.

With Accenture’s support, many large companies already have positioned themselves to achieve high performance by consolidating their systems to manage their operations globally off a single instance of SAP.

Growth prospects are not confined to South Africa or even Southern Africa. Major SAP implementations have recently been completed in Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Namibia, Madagascar and Mozambique. “Accenture in South Africa has a big focus on growth in Africa and we see ourselves as broadly African in our reach,” Tandy says.

Born in Johannesburg, Tandy has a Bachelor of Commerce, with an Honours degree in information systems from the University of the Witwatersrand. She’s a physically active person who enjoys tennis and practises yoga. Along with her husband she is also a keen spectator of tennis, cricket and rugby, and they enjoy wildlife viewing. On 10 November 2008, just three days after her own birthday, Tandy became the mother of her first child, Victoria.