The article is from the public account: Guotai Junan Securities Research (ID: gtjaresearch) , author: monarch computer team, the original title: “

Accenture: from IT consulting originator to ten-fold shares in ten years “, The title picture comes from: Visual China.

In 1953, General Electric was troubled by how to manage salary for 125 branches and hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide.

What’s more troublesome than GM is Andersen, which is going to audit it.

So, a project manager proposed:

Let’s try a commercial computer?

Commercial computers were iron boxes worth the size of a standard parking space at the time, and no businessman knew what it could do. In everyone’s mind, I am afraid that its reliability is not as good as the current blockchain.

Fear is power. The salary statistics of more than 400,000 employees has given GE great strength.

In 1954, a string of code was written in that “iron box”.

It’s done.

GE has thus become the first company in the world to automatically calculate employee salaries.

The Andersen project manager Joe Glickauf, who made this decision, is known as the father of technical consulting by future generations.

The GE case is just the beginning. In this regard, Arthur Andersen started a consulting business and used a variety of innovative technologies to help clients solve problems encountered in traditional audits.

In 1989, Arthur Andersen Consulting changed its name to “Anderson Consulting (Anderson Consulting) “, after long negotiations and litigation, On January 1st of the year, Accenture was listed. The new name was taken from Accent on the future, which means focusing on the future.

The development of an enterprise always requires some luck. Later in the same year, Arthur Andersen was pushed to the forefront of the Enron incident, and at that time, Accenture’s stock price rose to $ 16.5 on the NYSE, hitting a three-month historical high.

Accenture, who was supposed to be in the vortex, became one of the people watching the fire from the other side.

In the eyes of Accenture, only the future is left.

01 Lucky or lucky

Andersen’s withdrawal from the stage of history is actually a fate of the professional service business model.

Practices such as consulting and auditing provide services to customers with their own expertise, while also contributing to the brand building of their own companies and binding each other.

The brand new Accenture is no exception.

At that time, MBB consultants were holding a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan to entice latecomers to open up wasteland in the still-absent Chinese consulting market. IBM’s minicomputers were shipped one after another into Chinese cities, and consultants were knocking on the doors of Chinese companies one after another.

Accenture must make a choice.

On the one hand, Accenture initiated a large number of mergers and acquisitions, and completed expansion from three dimensions: business scope, geography and professional capabilities.

Starting in 2000, Accenture acquired e-commerce, financial services and technology providers in North America and Europe at a rate of 2-4 transactions per year.

At this stage, Accenture focused on strengthening the capabilities of IT infrastructure operations. The targets of mergers and acquisitions included data processing companies, IT outsourcing and implementation vendors, and even Telekom, an operator based in Norway.

In 2007, Accenture acquired high-value companies such as George Group and Ariba and had strong compatibility with Accenture’s business attributes, achieving “1 + 1> 2”, increasing the company’s brand premium and entering the consulting industry faucet.

Accenture accelerated the pace of acquisitions during 2011-2019. During the period, the company acquired ASM Research, expanded its military medical market business in the US defense, acquired Acquity, Fjord, and avVenta, and improved its creative design, digital content and e-commerce platforms Ability to interact with each other, acquire Cloud Sherpas, consolidate its position as a leading enterprise cloud service provider, acquire Pacific Link Group, enhance its digital marketing and business capabilities in Greater China, acquire FusionX, and further enhance its network security capabilities, The merger and acquisition strategy has broadened Accenture’s business scope and broken the space constraints of Accenture’s operations, which has contributed to Accenture’s development and growth.

On the other hand, Accenture completed the accumulation of the original value of its own brand by empowering large and well-known companies:

  • Cooperate with Microsoft to launch Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure;


  • Work with Amazon Web Services to create a new business group to help customers migrate to the cloud;


  • Work with Apple to help customers create innovative solutions for iOS that change the way they interact with customers.



    While improving user experience and innovating service models, Accenture has gained more loyal corporate users, laying a solid foundation for the company’s success.

    At the same time, within Accenture, businesses are divided into five broad categories, including strategy, consulting, digital, technology, and operations.

    Accenture strategy and consulting business provides the core driving force for the company’s development; digital and technology businesses enable companies and customers to improve productivity and new growth opportunities through various aspects such as artificial intelligence and blockchain; operation business is committed Help customers optimize operational processes.

    The five major businesses are interconnected and promote each other, which has promoted Accenture’s steady development in the consulting industry for many years.

    Among them, the Operations Division has become Accenture’s main market channel, providing services to customers in more than 40 industries worldwide, and providing management and technical consulting services to customers by establishing and maintaining long-term customer relationships.

    In 2018, Accenture’s global revenue reached US $ 39.6 billion, with more than 450,000 employees, making it a giant in the IT consulting industry.


    02 Is “selling a head” a good business?

    Today, the business model of the To B business is no longer as simple as persuading GE to buy a computer.

    Large enterprise customers, especially very large enterprise customers, due to high business complexity, numerous subsidiaries, branches, and branches, standardized software is difficult to meet special needs, and often requires implementation and secondary development.

    Taking ERP as an example, in general, the implementation period of a million-level ERP project is about six months, and more than five implementers are required to enter the site. No company’s ERP can be used directly from the original factory, and corporate customers are not entirely product access