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Operating model & organization design

Reimagining businesses and organizations to drive growth.

Our passion is to design great organizations

To deliver on ambitious business strategies, our clients come to us with challenges of:

  • Spurring growth and innovation
  • Reducing complexity and cost
  • Integrating acquisitions and managing divestments
  • Retaining enterprise agility, while scaling and leveraging assets
  • Gaining the benefits of digital transformation
  • Delivering on sustainability commitments

Our work is the foundation of Total Enterprise Reinvention. We work with companies who are industry leaders and changers. Our human-centered approach ensures that we design aligned, healthy, and dynamic organizations that create the environment for talent to thrive.

Accenture’s Operating Model & Organization Design practice was expanded by the acquisition of Kates Kesler, developers of the leading methodology in the field. Together, our frameworks and tools are the global standard and are backed by our deep analytics capability and industry expertise. Our global team is uniquely positioned to co-create clients’ future organizations.

Talent & Organization

The tech-powered operating model

Find out how to use data and technology as a strategic asset.

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Capabilities

Enterprise Operating Models

We take a strategy-led and data-driven systems approach to enterprise design. Our work delivers the right balance of agility and scale, and growth and efficiency required by today’s complex business strategies.

Functions and Shared Services

We have the experts and benchmarks to guide design of a single function as well as complete global business services architecture. We bring technology and operations insights to provide a full suite of structure, location, staffing, and automation options.​

Activation

The design work isn’t complete until leaders are making decisions that lead to new outcomes. We ensure the right connections and conversations are wired into the organization and leaders are practicing and modeling new ways of work.​

Optimization and Innovation

We can help you build the mechanisms to measure design impacts and monitor the health of the organization. Proactive adjustments, based on robust data-based insights, allows for continuous evolution and avoids disruptive restructuring events.

Digitally powered business models require organizations that can deliver better decision-making at the center and the edge. Today's organization models must deliver both agility and scale. An investment in organization design is as foundational as an investment in technology.​

By the numbers

69%

of executives believe their operating model is unable to continuously adapt to disruptive forces.

73%

of executives see at least some risk to growth and performance if they don’t rethink their operating model.

 

16%

The long-term EBITDA growth for truly agile organizations compared with 6% on average for non-agile organizations

What we think

Talent & Organization

Networked, Scaled, and Agile

Balance global and local tensions. Integrate assets to create market-leading solutions. Empower your employees. Build leaders able to manage strategic complexity.

Competitive Agility

Move fast to thrive: Intelligent operating model

Accenture’s report outlines five characteristics for an intelligent, agile operating model: Human, Liquid, Enhanced, Living and Modular.

Strategy & Consulting

Total Enterprise Reinvention

Accenture outlines how organizations can achieve higher levels of performance through technology & innovation we call Total Enterprise Reinvention.

Case studies

Banking BPS

Reinventing operations to trigger growth

Automation, analytics and top talent help a leading European bank cut operating costs by 20-30%—freeing up resources to reinvest in business.

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Accenture Strategy

Heeding the digital call to action in oil and gas

A new digital strategy transforms a national oil company’s operations—and its bottom line.

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Talent and HR BPS

Employee-centric operations unlocks $1M in savings

Global food manufacturer digitizes its Talent and HR operations and reshapes the employee experience to meet customer needs.

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The Kates Kesler methodology

Accenture’s Operating Model & Organization Design practice is built on Kates Kesler’s industry-leading methodology and proven approach for designing and activating organizations to deliver complex business strategies.

Accenture acquired the Kates Kesler boutique to serve as the foundation for building the world’s leading organization design practice.

Founders Amy Kates and Greg Kesler have developed a tested and proven methodology, based on the pioneering work of Jay Galbraith and refined in over 20 years of application.

Kates Kesler served as consultants to Accenture CEO, Julie Sweet, to support the design and activation of the Accenture Next Generation Growth Model:

“To get the organizational design right, I turned to some of the strongest leaders in the field—Greg, Amy, and Michele at Kates Kesler. It became apparent that not only would they be critical to achieving our goal, but their specialized skills would be an increasing need for our clients’ transformations.” said Sweet.

The Kates Kesler methodology is now enhanced by the analytics capability, industry expertise, and deep experience of Accenture practitioners who, together, form Accenture’s Operating Model and Organizational Design practice.

Greg Kesler and Amy Kates’ books serve as guides to C-Suite leaders, HR professionals, and as textbooks in dozens of MBA and graduate programs around the world. They document Kates Kesler’s frameworks and methods including:

  • A strategy-led, systems (Star Model) approach to designing human behavior at scale.
  • Matching organization to the business model (closely and loosely related portfolios).
  • Designing the vertical and horizontal organization for an effective matrix.
  • Process, metrics, and governance to drive faster, better decisions.
  • Activation of connections, conversations, and leader behaviors to bring organizational intentions to life.

The practice continues to invest in research to create practical insights and tools for clients to meet evolving business challenges. Their process ensures that leadership teams deeply understand the choices they are making and are aligned in how they will manage through change.

EXPLORE THE BOOKS

Our leaders

Greg Kesler

Senior Managing Director – Talent & Organization, Operating Model & Organizational Design, Global Lead
LinkedIn

Amy Kates

Senior Managing Director – Talent & Organization, Operating Model & Organizational Design
LinkedIn

Kent McMillan

Managing Director – Talent & Organization, Operating Model & Organizational Design
LinkedIn

Paul Jeruchimowitz

Senior Managing Director Talent & Organization, Operating Model & Organizational Design, North America Lead
LinkedIn

Sam Holmes

Managing Director – Talent & Organization, Operating Model & Organizational Design, Europe Lead
LinkedIn

Steve Giles

Managing Director – Talent & Organization, Operating Model & Organizational Design, Growth Markets Lead
LinkedIn