Accenture has invested heavily in empowering its hyper-scaled workforce of more than 400,000 people with digital capabilities, many of whom work directly at client sites providing professional services.
But Accenture is always looking at ways to work better. It was exploring the next evolution of collaboration—collaboration at the team level. At the same time, Microsoft was building Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace woven into the Office 365 fabric that gives team members one place to connect, access a range of third-party and custom services and engage in inherently human ways.
As long-time industry leaders and relationship partners, Accenture welcomed the opportunity to collaborate and innovate with Microsoft on Microsoft Teams.
As the Beta of Microsoft Teams took off, Accenture provided input on the types of use cases relevant in a large, multinational enterprise and the requirements needed for enterprise scale and security.
One major area of Accenture contribution was in helping Microsoft understand the necessity for more granular administration controls to help with potential information security and data privacy concerns. Due to the many third-party tabs, connectors and bots Teams can integrate with, Accenture needed the ability to selectively restrict these by application and user group to mitigate security risks of unsanctioned applications.
In some cases, other features of Teams needed to be selectively restricted by country due to potential data privacy violations. Accenture worked with Microsoft on the details of these controls feature by feature. Accenture also provided guidance on the types of controls that would be necessary for introduction of future functionality. These improvements helped make Microsoft Teams more enterprise friendly.
Accenture also participated in the early product pilot, along with other key Microsoft Beta customers and partners. Throughout this time, Accenture provided input on the product—while also pushing the envelope on its capabilities with Microsoft.
Jason Warnke
Accenture Social Enterprise LeadSUGGESTED CONTENT