How we’re putting analytics power in the hands of Accenture people
January 4, 2021
Not only is “with great power comes great responsibility” a great movie quote, but it is also true of data.
Most organizations recognize that data is powerful, if not the lifeblood of running a global organization. However, not all appreciate the challenge of managing that data in order to realize it’s potential. With hundreds of thousands of employees spanning the globe, Accenture had our share of siloed data, multiple versions of data and value trapped in spreadsheets. As technology advanced in recent years, our global IT teams applied their ingenuity to turn this opportunity into insights and intelligence with analytics at the core.
It’s what we call Applied Intelligence. We have been on a multi-year journey of harnessing the power of analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to help empower Accenture people to make data-driven decisions.
It has been fulfilling and exciting to be a part of the transformation taking place in the way Accenture operates through more intelligent decisions driven by the confidence in our data.
Here’s what we did:
- Created a foundation. Our global IT teams came together to define and develop an Applied Intelligence capability to serve Accenture. We set a foundation by developing a cutting-edge analytics platform and an innovative way to enable quick but also secure access to data. We built a business advisory function around this technology to help build core use case solutions, enable processes, and offer operational support.
- Developed a new approach. Moving from point-in-time reports to real-time digitized capabilities required a whole new mindset and approach. We created a centralized service model where our business functions and users have a single point of contact. From there, we collaborate across our teams of IT professionals, data scientists, software engineers, user experience experts, and change specialists to build digital products that deliver value.
- Industrialized our service model. We took our service model and industrialized it so that we could deliver more analytics solutions to more of Accenture more quickly. Today, we operate at enterprise scale. Our teams still collaborate on building analytics solutions, but we’ve also shifted to focusing on advising business teams on how to build their own as they expand their analytics skills. With self-service analytic capabilities growing, our Applied Intelligence teams will shift focus to incubate new analytics capabilities, AI and automation to bring new innovation to the business.
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Here’s what we’re continuing to do:
Our Applied Intelligence organization continues to embrace change and transform Accenture’s reporting and intelligence landscape. We have set a bold goal: We are driving toward a data-driven culture where every process and person is enabled with applied intelligence. Our industrialized service model is designed to get us to that outcome.
But putting this intelligence in the hands of our people is more than our teams simply building and advising on dashboards and AI models. It also requires proper data governance, the right technology, core analytics and datasets, automation, innovation and adoption. We’re busy doing all those things as well.
One notable initiative right now is transforming our legacy analytics data platform to a new one, powered by Google Cloud. Our team, partnering with Google, designed a modernized platform with the ability to deploy services faster and realize improved performance and stability for the applications powered by our data lake.
Here’s the value we’re delivering:
Our Applied Intelligence program is moving Accenture leaders and teams away from using rapidly outdated reports and past performance to real-time information. They spend less time on report administration and preparation and more on real-time evaluation and conversation. They increasingly have the ability to personalize views of data, perform various analyses, create projections and more. We are creating a better experience and one that is data driven.
Ultimately, people can get to decisions and outcomes more efficiently. This is the business value our transformation is delivering.
To learn more about our journey, read our story here.
