Applying artificial intelligence at enterprise scale
Accenture is transforming into an intelligent enterprise that embeds analytics into the core of its operations. A cutting-edge Accenture Intelligent Enterprise Platform and capability are enabling this transformation and providing the technology foundation for innovative possibilities. Whereas Accenture used to operate on siloed data, disconnected online and offline reports, and past-looking information, it is now driving new use case-based digital products that integrate across business units and generate actionable insights in real time. Each product is another advancement in becoming an enterprise that is automated, intelligent and insight-driven.
Each digital product is another advancement in becoming an enterprise that is automated, intelligent and insight-driven.
Accenture’s internal IT organization’s Enterprise Insight team collaborates with Accenture business owners to build and realize digital assets, leveraging the Accenture Intelligent Enterprise Platform. These joint teams examine a specific area’s business drivers and needs, apply design thinking and user-centric approaches to design the new solutions, and iteratively develop and deploy new products.
Accenture’s Manage mySales solution provides a “one-stop shop” for Accenture to build and manage key client relationships. Built on the Salesforce platform, Manage mySales uses Einstein Data Discovery, Salesforce’s artificial intelligence offering, which allows Accenture to use predictive analytics powered by artificial intelligence. Accenture capitalized on these capabilities and the key integration points with Manage mySales to enable a Win Probability tool across Accenture’s global pipeline. Leveraging predictive analytics techniques, the models provide automatic scoring of potential business opportunities, predicting loss potential with nearly 90 percent accuracy. The tool also provides the key drivers attributing to a score. Advanced artificial intelligence analytics generate management metrics, such as sales projections and portfolio-level monthly and quarterly activity reflections.
Manage myBusiness is a self-service analytics dashboard enabling Accenture business unit and client account leads real-time, easy and secure access to the vital information they need to manage business performance. It provides an intuitive, cohesive and interactive experience that allows business leads to analyze key performance indicators, connect to a wide suite of diagnostics and drill down to transaction systems. Manage myBusiness changes the game by highlighting possibilities for driving profitable growth, fostering consistent leadership dialogue, and providing detailed information for driving actions and improving outcomes. With a crisp experience blending information and artificial intelligence (AI), it draws leaders online and transforms how Accenture teams manage, sell and deliver Accenture’s services to clients.
The Consulting Metrics Scorecard answers the Accenture Consulting business need to have a one-stop shop for priority metrics. An Enterprise Insight team engaged with business representatives to design the new scorecard. The team used an agile development approach leveraging a liquid team in Dalian to build the scorecard, performing weekly prototype and design reviews with the business team. With the digitized Consulting Metrics Scorecard, Accenture Consulting leadership can more quickly and clearly drive actions to meet their targets and help grow the business. The scorecard is regularly enhanced, including the development of a direct integration with Manage myBusiness to create a single entry point for all Accenture Consulting metrics.
The Travel Expense Compliance Detection product addresses a high-priority area for Accenture as appropriate expensing drives billing accuracy and supports the company’s compliance posture. Accenture processes 900,000 time and expense reports each month, with a high-volume travel workforce that supports clients. This is a very large data volume to assess and created highly distributed, reactive workload across Accenture’s corporate and client account teams. Enterprise Insight built, and is further training, an AI to augment and increasingly automate compliance processes to detect out-of-policy expense charges.
Two dashboards were developed to address two key needs in Accenture’s workplace: technical device utilization and space utilization.
The Technical Device Utilization dashboard is an automated tool that provides Accenture workplace and geographic leads at-a-glance status of Accenture’s video technology solutions globally—strategic investments that need to be managed wisely. The dashboard displays solution utilization trends by location, with the ability to drill down to device-level utilization. The Technical Device Utilization dashboard is essential to equip Accenture leadership with analytics to determine the most effective placement of devices, guide adoption activities, and address customer and support training needs.
The Space Utilization dashboard is a single, automated digital tool that gives status of Accenture’s use of space and real estate globally. The dashboard shows the use of seats and meeting rooms in Accenture offices and delivery centers drawing on nine data sources refreshed monthly. The Space Utilization Dashboard is essential to provide a technology-based, comprehensive assessment of utilization for all Accenture locations, thus allowing Accenture leadership to make real estate decisions that will maximize return on investment.
Accenture’s commitment to Inclusion & Diversity includes a goal of reaching 50-50 gender parity by 2025 as well as to have 25 percent of the female workforce in leadership positions. To gauge progress toward these goals, Human Resources (HR) reached out to Enterprise Insight for a solution to easily see and understand the gender mix balance. The resulting Gender Diversity Tool performs analytics modeling through two functionalities: present modeling and forecast modeling. It is enabling an Accenture Inclusion & Diversity test group to perform what-if scenarios to test out gender-mix hiring impacts and forecasts using different inputs. Its intuitive interface allows users to create and share modeling scenarios, both short- and long-term, online, fast and efficiently. Currently in beta mode, the final tool is intended to guide HR and other relevant Accenture groups to grow Accenture’s workforce long term with the right focus to address future goals.
Accenture’s analytics products are advancing the company’s transformation journey to becoming an enterprise that is automated, intelligent and insight-driven. Accenture envisions this future digital-insight culture as one that delivers new value in many ways. Accenture’s reporting landscape will become simplified as more clarity on what to use is gained. There will be broader insights into business performance as all business dimensions will be supported with digital insights—anywhere.
Accenture data scientists will continue to incubate cutting-edge capabilities and apply predictive models, AI and machine learning to products to bring greater insights to the business. Lastly, a thriving analytics ecosphere will encourage innovation and promote winning ideas. These advanced digital capabilities will deliver business value at speed to transform the way Accenture does business.
