Accenture Achieves Lead Position in “Winner's Circle” for Progressive Finance and Accounting Business Process Outsourcing, According to HfS Research Report

Accenture #News Release:

April 28, 2015

Accenture Achieves Lead Position in “Winner's Circle” for Progressive Finance and Accounting Business Process Outsourcing, According to HfS Research Report

NEW YORK; April 28, 2015 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has been named to the 'Winner's Circle' ofHfS Research's inaugural Blueprint Report for Progressive Finance and Accounting (F&A) Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Accenture is ranked as the overall leader in the report, which assessed 21 service providers based on execution and innovation.

The report emphasizes “progressive” F&A BPO, with nearly half of the Blueprint scoring being tied to proven innovation capability and performance that is “progressive” – meaning engagements go beyond transactional F&A processes. The report states that Accenture shows maturity of transformation plus BPO delivery acumen and dominates the large enterprise market.

“Accenture has created a balanced and diversified F&A BPO portfolio by investing in a number of tools, assets, and alliance relationships to drive digital innovation,” said Phil Fersht, CEO of HfS Research. “They have taken steps towards making their major engagements work effectively over the long-term, which has helped Accenture gain a strong foothold in the F&A market.”

Accenture was recognized as a business outcomes-focused global service provider with technology and transformation capabilities. Additional strengths highlighted in the report include:
  

• Vertical breadth and depth: “Has real strength and depth in F&A across key industries, such as manufacturing, consumer goods, energy, insurance and life sciences.”
• Broader focus on “operations” that encompasses BPO, transformative operational services and IT infrastructure: “With BPO being merged into a broader Accenture Operations growth platform … there are major ‘As-a-Service’ benefits of having business process and cloud-enablement teams joined at the hip, supported by consultative depth.”
• Service line resources: “… Ample resources to invest in strategic clients, make calculated risks, and benefit from increased sales, consulting, and marketing resources, such as 3,000+ business advisors analyzing and interpreting client data.”
• Sole-sourced contracts: “Many F&A BPO contracts evolve out of long-standing relationships with clients, either in the BPO area or others, such as strategy or technology. Their client-focused strategy enables deeper relationships with clients pre-sales.”
• Long-standing clients act as ambassadors in the market: “Accenture has strong, collaborative relationships with its clients, who assist in its go-to-market strategy and are proud to be associated with the Accenture brand.”
• End-to-end F&A BPO capabilities: “Market-leading Procurement BPO practice integrated into Procure?to?Pay offering.”

“We are proud to be positioned as the overall leader in this report – particularly given its emphasis on proven innovation capability and performance – which aligns with our ability to deliver business value to clients beyond just transactional F&A processing,” said Mike Salvino, group chief executive, Accenture Operations. “This is a reflection of our deep industry and functional knowledge, which has been honed during more than 20 years of F&A BPO experience, and drives our ability to support the growth and continuous improvement agendas of our clients.“

The findings of the HfS Blueprint report were based on weightages determined by more than 1,100 crowd-sourced responses from a broad range of stakeholders, including F&A enterprise BPO service buyers, F&A BPO service providers, F&A BPO industry influencers (sourcing advisors) and HfS analysts.

The HfS Research Blueprint Report for Progressive F&A BPO can be accessed here.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 323,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$30.0 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2014.  Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About HfS                                                          
HfS Research is the leading independent global analyst authority and knowledge community for the business and IT services industry. HfS serves the research and strategy needs of business and IT operations leaders across finance, supply chain, human resources, marketing, customer management, and core industry functions. HfS provides detailed and thoughtful analyst coverage of the various areas that impact successful business outcomes, namely, process automation and outsourcing, global business services frameworks, mobility, analytics, and social collaboration. HfS also focuses heavily on talent acquisition, development, and motivation strategies. HfS applies its acclaimed crowdsourced Blueprint Methodology^TM to evaluate the performance of service providers in terms of innovating and then executing against those business outcomes.
 

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