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Running Head: ACCENTURE IT DEPARTMENT STRATEGIC INITIATIVES PAPER 0

Accenture IT Department Strategic Initiatives Paper

Accenture IT Department Strategic Initiatives

Accenture happens to be the largest consultant firm that is spread all over the globe. Actually, it happens to be only sixteen years that is considering the time it got independence from the parent company. The parent company happens to be Arthur Anderson that was initially an accounting firm only to split in the year 1989. Later on, in the year 2001, Accenture emerged. After SWOT analysis about the company was conducted, and a number of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities as well as threats were identified. The SWOT analysis can be in turn used as a tool to develop the company’s strategies. This can be achieved by coming up with some questions and answering the so as to see what the company needs most. The questions should evolve around asking things such as a way through which the company can use its strengths so as to take advantage of the so identified opportunities, use the strengths identified so as to overcome the threats stated, minimize the company’s weaknesses so as to be able to easily curb the said threats not to mention how the identified weaknesses can be overcome so as to take advantage of the opportunities.

Strategic IT Initiatives

As stated earlier, there are various ways of coming up with business strategies. However, for those strategies to be quite effective, they have to align well with the given company’s vision and mission statement. Furthermore, the IT initiatives have to be support best practices as dictated by both external and internal standards. For example, Accenture’s vision is to become a leading IT firm when it comes to offering customer centric services while its mission statement states that the firm wants to work so as to ensure that customers get the best services through both the advancement of IT structures and innovation (Furgison, 2017).

The first strategic IT initiative will be reached by using the company’s strengths so as to minimize threats. One of the company’s threats is the stiff competition that it gets from major competitors such as IBM. I will recommend the company to use its strength, that is on the side of large amounts of revenue collected each year due its huge size and instead use part of this revenue to research on new innovations that will in turn help in improving both their products and services and in turn give them a competitive advantage over its competitors. This will be in line with the company’s mission to offer optimal services to their customers through innovation. This strategy also breaks no law or ethics in reference to both the company’s internal and industry’s standards (Furgison, 2017).

The second strategic initiative will be reached by taking the company’s internal strengths so as to take advantage of the company’s opportunities. The company has quite a huge opportunity when it comes to the exploitation of small and middle level projects which might in turn help in expanding the firm’s market share. The company can therefore use its strength, which is on its strong customer legacy to achieve this. As a result, this will lead to the company’s second strategy and that is: to exploit both middle and small projects that will in turn help in expanding the company’s market share. This is in line with the company’s vision statement that states that Accenture aims to be the leading IT firm when it comes to offering customer centric services (Colgate, 2017).

The third strategic initiative will be reached by taking the company’s weaknesses, and instead improving them so as to take advantage of its opportunities. For example, one of Accenture’s internal weaknesses includes stiff competition. The company can improve on this weakness and get a hence take advantage of the company’s external opportunity of merging its competitors. As a result, this definitely give s us the company’s third strategy, to work on its competition so as to merge the other competing companies so as to increase both in size and reduce competition. This is in line with the company’s vision, which is to be the leading IT firm in offering customer services. Merging is also not against the law as well as fair competition (Colgate, 2017).

The last strategic IT initiative will be reached by trying to curb the company’s weaknesses so as to avoid threats. The company’s weakness happens to be stiff competition and therefore, this can be curbed so as to avoid future threats of quite serious competitions from other big companies and hence lead to the closure of the company. Such weaknesses can be curbed by diversifying on the company’s products and ensuring that quality is always the company’s priority so as to maintain as well attract new customers. Therefore, from this, we get the company’s last strategy which is basically, to diversify as well as improve on its products and services quality so as to curb competition. This is in line with the company’s mission statement that is meant to ensure that optimal services are offered to their customers. It also does not break any law or ethics as stated in any of the company’s internal or external standards (Furgison, 2017).

Conclusion

In the end, it is clear that SWOT analysis can be properly used in the development of an excellent business plan. For example, just as clearly illustrated from the paper, all the strategies have been developed from the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Internal strengths have been used to both take advantage of opportunities and minimize threats whereas weaknesses have been used to both take advantage opportunities and avoid threats all in a bid to develop a strategic initiative.

References

Lisa Furgison. (2017). Turning your SWOT Analysis into Actionable Strategies. B PlANS.

Adam Colgate. (2017). Using SWOT Analysis to Develop a Marketing Strategy. Business Dictionary.

Program Management. (2017).Program Management and Fiscal Operations. Head Start.