Marketing Spotlight - Accenture
What have been the key success factors for Accenture?
One large success factor for Accenture has been its timing. "Accenture started life as the consulting arm of accounting firm Arthur Anderson
In 1989, Anderson Consulting separated from Arthur Anderson in order to position itself against its IT services competitors" (Keller & Kotler, 1994/2006, 366). Accenture was able to take advantage of its large parent company and use its massive support to concentrate on becoming an efficient and popular name in the consulting market. Leaving Arthur Anderson before the corruption with Enron became public may have saved the company the same fate of many organizations that suffered for their connections to the accounting firm.
By "piggy-backing" on Arthur Anderson at a fortunate time, Accenture was able to correctly view the tide of the consulting business and branch out into the staffing business. I doing so, Accenture has successfully filled a niche by being able to supply the staff needed to accomplish the innovative ideas it provides to its clients. Says Ian Watmore, Accenture's U.K. chief, "Unless you can provide both transformational consulting and outsourcing capability, you're not going to win" (Keller & Kotler, 1994/2006, 367).
Outsourcing simply means acquiring services from an external organization instead of using internal resources (Butler, 2000). By using outsourced resources, organizations can gain a competitive advantage by utilizing contingent staff to accomplish strategic goals without incurring the fixed overhead. By focusing on the leading edge and highly specialized skill sets, outsourcing providers can often offer higher quality services, or at a lower price than the client organization. Typical reasons for outsourcing go beyond simple contingent staffing. Outsourcing providers are able to maintain economies of scale with regard to specialization (...
The Enron Scandal escalated distrust amongst the shareholders, employees and government agencies. Thus, as a result the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed to protect the interest of all affecting parties. The Act is nearly "a mirror image of Enron: the company's perceived corporate governance failings are matched virtually point for point in the principal provisions of the Act." The Enron Scandal also revealed the unlawful practices followed by Arthur Andersen’s accounting firm. They helped Enron in altering, covering up, and destroying classified documents. The fall of Enron was due to alteration of documents by the higher authorities.
1.) Rank’s easy-to-use, analytical tool is called the intensify/downplay model, and its goal is to help you to become more critical and analytical receivers. It defines and gives examples of four major persuasive strategies and six associated tactics that are often used by persuaders today. (Larson, 2007 page 31) Ranks major strategy is to either intensify certain aspects of the product, cause or candidate. His other strategy is to downplay certain aspects of their brand, cause or candidate. (Larson, 2007 page 31) The intensification and downplay strategies include, to intensify their own good points, intensify the weak points of the opposition, downplay their own weak points, and downplay the good points of the opposition. The tactics that most persuaders use for intensification are repetition, association, and composition to intensify their own good points. Rank’s downplay tactics include omission, diversion and confusion. “Any of these tactics can be used logically or emotionally.” (Larson, 2007 pg. 31) For example commercials today don’t show the hidden meaning and try to persuad...
The Enron Corporation was committed to pushing the legal limit as far as possible. Many individuals only seeking to promote their own well-being over any legal or ethical boundaries did this. This was not only isolated with the Enron Corporation, as Arthur Andersen the outside accounting firm and Vinson & Elkins Enron’s law firm were also participants. The key players that led to the collapse of Enron was the founder Kenneth Lay, his successor
Fishman, S., 2007. Pros and Cons of Freelancing, Contracting, and Consulting. Retrieved December 11, 2008 from: http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/catId/450464AB-FA7C-4AAC-B374F1BCE305E4DB/objectId/221FE3AA-D933-4595-B0ACEAA2082BC06F/111/159/ART/
As the owner of a technology staff augmentation firm in Chicagoland, Rona Borre has a vested interest in providing her nationwide clients with professionals who have the skills to begin making an immediate difference in the client's company. Writing an article for CIO, How To Bridge The Gap Between HR And IT, Borre explains that HR professionals are not always aware of the exact skills the contract worker needs to fill a position in IT department. IT professionals are also not always the best at explaining their needs to non-technical associates either. At Borre's firm, Instant Alliance, team members are experts are determining the exact skill set that candidates need to perform the tasks that they will be contracted for, ensuring the ideal
... they will ensure that every individual who is hired trained in scientific methods and consistent. Then, with the expertise and skills they will be able to do their jobs well. Lack of staff who is experts in the field of IT in an organization will be able to be solved through IT outsourcing.
Enron was formed following a merger between two natural gas companies in 1985, Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth.3 When Enron formed, it had accumulated a large sum of debt, roughly 2 billion dollars.4 As a result of deregulation, Enron no longer had the exclusive rights to its pipelines, resulting in the company hemorrhaging money. Kenneth Lay5, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Houston Natural Gas, became Enron’s CEO. Lay knew he had to quickly come up with a new innovation to keep the company afloat. Lay hired McKinsey & Company6 to help in coming up with a business strategy for Enron. McKinsey & Company assigned Jeffrey Skilling7 to Enron’s company as a consultant. Skilling, who had a background in banking, asset and liability management, came up with a solution to Enron’s financial crisis in the gas pipeline business. He said to create a “gas bank”, in which Enron would buy gas from a network of suppliers and sell it to a network of consumers, allowing them to control the supply and price of the gas. Enron’s debt was no more, and Lay was so impressed with Skilling, that he created a new d...
Enron and Arthur Anderson were both giants in their own industry. Enron, a Texas based company in the energy trading business, was expanding rapidly in both domestic and global markets. Arthur Anderson, LLC. (Anderson), based out of Chicago, was well established as one of the big five accounting firms. But the means by which they achieved this status became questionable and eventually contributed to their demise. Enron used what if often referred to as “creative” accounting methods, this resulted in them posting record breaking earnings. Anderson, who earned substantial audit and consultation fees from Enron, failed to comply with the auditing standards required in their line of work. Investigations and reports have resulted in finger pointing and placing blame, but both companies contributed to one of the most notorious accounting scandals in history. There remains much speculation as to what steps could and should have been taken to protect innocent victims and numerous investors from experiencing the enormous loses that resulted from this scandal.
[4] Gupta, Sachin. For a global software company, outsourcing began at inception . World Paper. April 19. 2004 http://www.worldpaper.com/2004/april/april4.html
Information Security (INFOSEC) consultants help client companies through strategic partnerships (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008). A short review of United States outsourcing creates a prospective baseline for outsourcing endeavors of private institutions (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008). Despite the fact that the vendor has accountability and duties (detailed in the statement of work), the client is predominantly in charge of supervising strategic partnerships (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 2008).
...ias, O. (2010). Lectures on Management Consulting, MBA Course 2010/11, University of Bradford, School of Management, 17/01/2011.
Enron was on the of the most successful and innovative companies throughout the 1990s. In October of 2001, Enron admitted that its income had been vastly overstated; and its equity value was actually a couple of billion dollars less than was stated on its income statement (The Fall of Enron, 2016). Enron was forced to declare bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. The primary reasons behind the scandal at Enron was the negligence of Enron’s auditing group Arthur Andersen who helped the company to continually perpetrate the fraud (The Fall of Enron, 2016). The Enron collapse had a huge effect on present accounting regulations and rules.
has to be able to afford it, they may think price is an indication of
The Marriott Company is a successful lodging and hospitality company. It is a company that is internationally recognized and has nearly 3,700 properties, 18 brands in 72 countries and territories worldwide (Marriott, 2012). With such success and worldwide prominence, it is no mistake that it operates with a winning formula that includes market research. "Our relentless focus on innovation and action fuel the way we do business" (Marriott, 2012). Organizations, like Marriott, not only have to compete in a rapidly changing technological environment and a highly diverse global environment, it must consider the importance and role that marketing research plays. Operating in such a competitive industry, the Marriott Company has realized that to be successful and survive for the long term, it incorporates market research in its business practices. This paper will define market research; identify the types, and the importance of marketing research that the Marriott Company uses.