Overview:
Accenture was a large corporation with 75,000 employees and $11 billion in revenue, which is why there was a high level of importance on having an effective IT infrastructure. Accenture wanted an IT infrastructure that allowed knowledge to flow freely across country lines and industry practices with accuracy. Accenture had the right to use Arthur Andersen’s technology infrastructure for one year, which gave the corporation only a short period to create one of its own. However, problems with Andersen’s technology had already existed for instance the systems were comprised of a patchwork of legacy applications that were not interconnected. The technology ran on an obsolete platform, which meant key systems and databases could not be accessed through the Internet. In order to compensate for this problem expensive private networks were required and financial information had to be manually compiled. Over the years, different offices around the world adopted different software systems, which made it difficult to get snapshots of the status of the whole organization.
Platforms: Accenture had a couple of options when pursuing which platform to implement within the company. The company could opt for a “best of breed approach”, which meant the company would buy the best option for a single application. This would lead to the company working hard to protect their reputation of being the best and it would please the stakeholders in the knowledge they had access to the best IT the industry had to offer. However, this will lead to many applications being developed from different vendors that would not necessarily be interconnected. If they implemented the one platform approach the company would have the advantage of working with one vendor or select vendors to meet application needs. The company would gain leverage if it wanted larger discounts and the applications would work together and could be accessed anywhere. However, by using one platform it would lower the negotiating power of future
