Accenture portal: Personalizing communications, globally

Stakeholders from key Accenture business groups such as Geographic Services, Human Resources, Accenture Learning, Knowledge Services and Marketing + Communications came together with the global IT organization to provide input from varying perspectives on the transformation approach. This multi-stakeholder collaboration provided the necessary governance around serving different business needs and wants as the participants shaped a new people communications approach.

Through design thinking sessions, the team generated new ideas around creating a digital and personalized communications experience for each employee. They wanted to move away from overwhelming email in-boxes and move to a streamlined platform more closely mirroring the way individuals interact with information in their personal lives.

The outcome was the design and development of a new digital platform—a portfolio of several initiatives modernizing Accenture’s approach to creating, consuming and finding content across the company. The one initiative chosen for bringing about the biggest shift to Accenture’s communications culture was a revamp of the Accenture Portal.

The new Accenture Portal was shaped to address three main objectives:

1. Keep employees informed using a single, consistent way
   
   To keep Accenture people informed, the solution was to develop a common framework that provides company information and information that individuals select and subscribe to based on topics, organizations and geographies of their choosing.
   
   This approach moved communications away from web page-based content that becomes stale quickly, requires periodic emails to remind people to “see what’s new” and depends on a desktop web browser. Instead, communications moved to an article-based approach that keeps topics fresh and facilitates content syndication onto several web and mobile platforms. The change involved the streamlining of many internal websites, resulting in a reduction of more than 1,000 sites.
2. 
   
3. Be a starting navigation point for Accenture resources
   
   The Accenture Portal includes a menu system and a search capability that enable Accenture users to have a one-stop destination for finding Accenture resources and services. The menu system includes lists of all applications, capabilities and knowledge sites available at Accenture accessible in one easy-to-use location. For search, a new solution was built using open-source search technology coupled with custom extensions and tooling. The capability is also analytics driven and improves over time. The search function now delivers more relevant and accurate results, fast and cost-effectively.
4. 
   
5. Provide individual need-to-know information
   
   Another feature of the Accenture Portal is a system of alerts and notifications that every employee receives, catered to their circumstances. Examples include reminders of time report deadlines, required training and technology changes. The intent is to help every employee stay in good standing with required actions. The portal also offers a myInfo page, a personal page for every employee that pulls data from SAP and highlights key HR-related information. It also serves as an end-user destination that is accessible from Accenture applications such as Accenture’s myLearning and People Pages.

To enable this entirely new approach, the project team replaced the platform that hosted Accenture’s corporate intranet with one that was more article based. The marketing and communications teams performed a site reorganization and methodically consolidated, retired and replaced the existing intranet sites.

The team also developed a new, custom-built portal home that pulls targeted articles from a content management system, delivers navigation based on a user’s demographics and interests, and provides personalized information from line of business systems. What makes this approach innovative is that articles are syndicated from a number of publishing sources from around Accenture—including article-based text, video and blogs, and in the future, from webcasts. In addition to the Accenture Portal, articles are also syndicated to individual websites and mobile applications, such as to the Accenture NOW app, that serves up top Accenture news and actions.

With the back-end technologies in place, the global IT team overhauled the portal functionality and interface to focus on the individual employee—rather than the general population. The goal was to make the new portal a destination for Accenture people to easily get the information that is most relevant for them. The entire portal is hosted using a serverless architecture on a public cloud computing service.

The ways in which the Accenture Portal delivers a modern, personalized employee experience:

The launch of the refreshed Accenture Portal brought about a huge shift in how Accenture communicates. The company went from pushing communications out by email to creating an always-on approach that pulls people in. With the Accenture Portal, Accenture people have a single, go-to location for information that is regularly refreshed. Global and trending news from across Accenture as well as targeted news from a person’s Accenture organization, country, professional communities and local offices are easy to find. In addition, individuals can read articles on their laptops or mobile devices.

The "alerts and notifications" feature keeps important, action-oriented tasks at the forefront, so time-critical items are not lost in long email in-boxes. Responsibility is now shared with employees being proactive in checking their portal notifications to stay up to date on responsibilities. And, individuals, especially new employees, find the menu of Accenture resources and services helpful in navigating a large organization. Employees also receive regular, email summaries from Good Morning Accenture—providing a recap of the top articles and open actions needing attention.

The keys to the Accenture Portal’s success include a focus on making content consumption for employees easier; meeting Accenture employee needs around finding sites, getting news and keeping up on important to-do’s; designing with accessibility in mind coupled with a strong user experience team; and soliciting feedback to identify useful trends and potential issues.

In addition, the Accenture Portal is reducing email volumes, especially reminder- and notification-type emails, freeing up mailboxes for business and task communications. Global IT along with key stakeholders continue to evolve the Accenture Portal.

The Accenture Portal is now the go-to destination for Accenture news and information: