Time to pick up where we left off in the last post about the corporate history of Accenture, the period in which Andersen became a global player: the late 1950’s. A short recap, we ended with how Joe Glickauf came to define Andersen’s Administrative Services Division, a division which ultimately would go on to become Accenture.

Coming of Age: Global Roots
One day in 1957, an angry Forrest Mars, son of the founder of the Mars confectionary empire, came storming into Spacek’s Chicago office complaining about the service Andersen was providing his company in London. At the time, Andersen had affiliations with a few organizations to provide client service outside the United States. Spacek traveled to London to personally investigate the situation. Besides canceling Andersen’s affiliation with Turquand, Youngs, one of the oldest accounting firms in London, Spacek resolved to build Andersen’s own network of offices in Europe.
By the late 1950s, promising nationals had been recruited as the first generation of European leadership to guide the small but growing London, Paris and Madrid offices. This laid the foundation for the core value known today as One Global Network.

“We are ‘one firm,’ and that is why we are different from everyone else,” Martin Vandersteen, an early European leader, said. “Everyone has a separate British firm and an American firm and a French firm…and it struck me as being the source of enormous competitive advantage.”

Early Training and Methodology
By encouraging its people to acquire, build and advance their skills, the firm built a foundation rooted in education and standardization.

In a memo to employees in 1953, consulting practice leader John Higgins said, “In order to achieve the maximum benefit for our combined experience, it is necessary that we provide a systematic method of recoding and indexing our firm-wide experience on Administrative Services engagements…” This action created a process that enabled consultants to share knowledge and build expertise.

The increasing demand for more technical skills led the firm to start hiring significant numbers of engineers, but on-the-job training was more important than ever. Art Welby, who took over training for Administrative Services in 1964, and Joe Glickauf implemented a training course on installing and programming IBM’s new System/360 computers in 1965.

Andersen later made the “bargain of the century” in 1971 when it purchased St. Dominic College in St. Charles, Illinois for $4 million. Today, the facility continues to play a role in Accenture’s education programs.