MCCB Accenture

8/10/2019 MCCB Accenture

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CHAPTER - 3

INTRODUCTION

Accenture Private Ltd is a multinational management consulting, technology services, and

outsourcing company. Its incorporated headquarters are in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the

world's largest consulting firm as measured by revenues and is a Fortune Global 500 company.

As of 2013, the company reported net revenues of $28.6 billion with approximately 280,000

employees, serving clients in more than 200 cities in 56 countries. Accenture has more

employees in India than any other country; in the US, it has about 40,000 employees and 35,000

located in the Philippines. Accenture's current clients include 91 of the Fortune Global 100 and

more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500. Since September 1, 2009 the company has

been incorporated in Ireland.

Being a service provider Accenture has been proactive in providing their clients with the

mobility and enterprise mobility solutions. Accenture has served for the clients in various

industries like Bouygues Telecom, National Geographic Kids, Post Italiane, Vodafone and

others.

Accenture is providing extensive support for the use of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

technologies across the enterprise. More than 115,000 smartphones and tablets already connect

to Accentures e-mail today, up from 7,000 three years ago, and this total continues to grow at a

rate of some 2,000 new devices per month.

METHODOLOGYThis data was collected on a telephonic interview with Mr. Shishir Bhatt, who is the Assistant

Manager at Accenture Services Private Ltd. working at Accenture Bangalore (Bang-4) Office.

Mr. Nilesh Khoriya, a Software Engineer working at Accenture Services Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore

(Bang-6) also cooperated to provide the required information.

White papers available from the Accenture Official Website, talking about the case studies of

their clients were also used in this report.


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ANAYLYSIS

Consider Partitioning

Mobile technology has taken a page from virtualization through the use of partitioning. By

creating a virtual barrier between personal and corporate data, Accenture ensures that users getproper access to corporate data, while still keeping personal data separate and untouched. Done

well, partitioning allows to wipe the part of the device containing corporate information when

employees leave the company or when they lose the device. Another option is application

containment, which partitions applications into separate areas (called sandboxes) so that

anything done within that area doesnt affect other facets of the device.

Create Enterprise Application Catalogs

To reduce the possibility of employees downloading applications that might contain malware orotherwise compromise the mobile device, enterprises can combine the concept of partitioning

with enterprise application catalogs. These catalogs, utilized only within the company, contain

corporate applications that have been tested and approved for corporate use and potential access

to approved public applications. Non-authorized applications means fewer support issues

stemming from unfamiliar downloads.

Designate Supported Devices

The abbreviation of BYOD is rapidly evolving in many corporations to BYOSD (bring your ownsupported device) or CYOD (choose your own device, but still from a designated list). This

involves enterprises setting clear parameters for which mobile devices theyll support. For

enterprises, this means a narrower universe of devices to support, create applications for, and

understand. Its a win-win for both, because employees still have choice, while enterprises still

have control.

Identify Development Needs

In an additional effort to place rational parameters on mobile devices, enterprises should alsoidentify how it is going to develop applications for mobile devices. By hewing to development

tools specifically tailored for the hardware itself, they can incorporate convenience and

performance capabilities. However, this requires a somewhat bifurcated development strategy,

especially if an enterprise allows devices running all operating systems. By focusing on say, two


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operating systems, enterprises can still offer choice for employees but limit the dilution of

their development resources.

Deploy Mobile Device Management (MDM).

These tools simplify the tracking of devices and components, a capability highly valuable whenan enterprise is accommodating a wide variety of devices. Most MDM systems provide the

capability to download updates to mobile devices.

Protect Secure Documents

Just as enterprises should set up application catalogs that only allow downloads from that server,

they should also set up systems that preclude employees from sending corporate data in any form

to unknown or unprotected applications or e-mail systems. This ensures corporate data cant

accidentally or intentionally be transferred to an unsafe computer, website or applicationprovider.

Deploy Mobile Application Management

Mobile application management focuses on a single mobile application by enabling the

procurement, deployment, configuration, performance monitoring, usage tracking, updating and

uninstallation of specific mobile applications. This functionality is sometimes included in other

tools such as mobile enterprise application platform, mobile consumer application platform and

mobile device management, but its also available from pure-play software vendors.

BYOD at Accenture

Accenture being one of the Fortune 500 companies does not prefer to take risk with the

confidential data of the clients available to it. They have implemented this concept but to a

certain extent.

They allow their employees to fill in their timesheets, or claim for their expenses using an in-

house built Android and iOS application, which can be installed on their device. That application

is nothing but a mere interface between an ERP-system implemented at Accenture and your

smartphone or tablet. It will let you use those internal application which cannot be accessed over

the browser of your smartphone or tablet.

Once this application is installed it will ask you to put a security lock on the device and if it is

not done then it will not configure your corporate Accenture account. Same pre-installation


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requisites are followed when your smartphone or a tablet tries to stay connected with your

official mail server.

Apart from this, Accenture avoids offering more liberty to the general employees with their

clients data on their personal devices. However, Accenture is lot more involved in terms ofCYOD

CYOD at Accenture

Accenture allows you to carry the official laptops to home, which is available in almost every

organization these days. Again this facility is available to the employees from Project to Project.

Let me explain it with the help of an example.

Employees working for Bank of America as their client will not be even allowed to carry their

cellphones or their wallets inside the bay, where they are supposed to work. Their data privacy

terms are so strict that employees serving under such kind of projects will not entertained with

the feature of Enterprise Mobility. Obstacles or compulsions like these does not give Accenture

enough freedom to implement such norm in their enterprise.

However, various BAs (Business Analysts) and Consultants who are in direct touch with the

clients are allowed to carry a laptop and iPad, which will be used by them to understand the

business of the client, record the requirements of the project and to get in touch with the off-

shore team via Accenture Internal Video Communication Portal.

These iPads come pre-installed with a set of restrictions, wherein any normal user will not be

able to install or uninstall any application. Moreover, there will a set of applications for various

Accenture internet portals which he needs to access. This kind of provision is available for BAs

though out any project irrespective of what the data security terms are because BA or consultants

are not given any access to the raw data from clients. Such raw data has a different channel to

travel through and reach directly to the secured teams at Accenture.

INSIGHTSAccenture cant really delve itself into this technology completely because it is in a service

industry and it will have to work accord to the needs of client. For them, clients data privacy is

really important.


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However, Accenture can and it is working towards fulfilling the needs of their client by helping

them to include Enterprise Mobility into their premises. Recently Accenture helped Vodafone

shooting up their sales figures by helping their sales force management module to be integrated

over Enterprise Mobility.

BYOD has done it for many companies in the past and it can also help Accenture to cut down the

cost on hardware implementation at office. Moreover, the promptness in data access will speed

up their projects and issue handling, in short the employees will be able to access their official

data all the time.

CONCLUSIONEnterprise Mobility will always exist with huge limitation in the companies under service sector.

The BYOD trend is so strong that for many companies, it may not be a matter of if but ofwhen, and the answer could be sooner than anyone imagines. Companies face a d ecision: find

techniques to securely allow BYOD, or let devices proliferate and face the consequences.

Currently, most BYOD usage will be incremental, with users adding personal devices to their

corporate-supplied tools. Eventually, the BYOD trend is projected to become substitution,

because that is where the savings are. Just as companies do not buy business clothing for most of

their employees, there may well come a time when corporations will not buy technology devices

either.