By 2002 Forehand knew he had to do more than just cut costs and ride out the recession. To do so would leave an opening for a rival to take market share from Accenture or otherwise redefine the business. That wasn’t the Accenture way. He knew it was time for the company to once again embrace change and reflect the new reality in the marketplace for its clients. Accenture continued to stare change in the face every day and continue to challenge ourselves with: ‘What do we have to do to remain relevant to our clients?’. That’s what we’ve done over the last years during the downturn.

“We transformed our business model to blend consulting and systems integration services—areas in which we have had broad experience for decades—with outsourcing services,” Forehand noted in his 2002 letter to Accenture stakeholders. Accenture’s existing outsourcing expertise focused on managing business processes, applications and technology infrastructure. The company also began adding outsourcing capabilities in customer information, billing systems, information technology services, supply chain management and human resources administration.

The outsourcing business took off, both on the applications side and business process side. Accenture needed to have a delivery model that was cost effective and very efficient. and introduced Global Delivery Network to put all that in place. All while we were in the middle of fighting the toughest economic environment ever. It wasn’t just fighting the good fight in the marketplace, it was positioning the firm for the future.

Outsized Outsourcing Growth
The timing of the shift toward outsourcing couldn’t have been better. In key ways it echoed the firm’s ability to capitalize on large systems installations in the 1970s following the standardization of approach and implementation pushed through by Vic Millar and his team. Accenture once again was a leader in rapidly adapting to changing technologies and client needs. The number of client engagements mushroomed, with a 37 percent jump in outsourcing revenues in fiscal 2003 compared to just a 2 percent increase in net revenues. During that year alone, Accenture’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solution units collected for instance billions of customer debt for clients, handled more than 100 million incoming customer calls and were responsible for more than 29 million electricity and natural gas meter readings. Only 18 months old by the end of fiscal 2003, the unit was providing services to more than 6 million customers, more than any utility in North America.

Many clients have thought that outsourcing is primarily about cutting costs. They may have given outsourcing a try, only to see initial savings diminish as their organization reverted to status quo behaviors. Accenture CEO Bill Green described outsourcing Accenture-style as “transformational”. “When people come to Accenture for outsourcing services, it’s not just about getting the costs lower. It’s about getting capability. Our differentiator in outsourcing is all about capability and flexibility. What they’re looking for is capability, not cost. And they see we’re able to take that operation, evolve it, and continue to improve it over time and make it relevant to their customer base”.