Accenture Strengthens Delivery of Outsourced Learning Services
Accenture Learning Enhances Capabilities to Transform Workplace Performance
NEW YORK; June 26, 2002 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) announced today that it has consolidated its outsourced learning capabilities under Accenture Learning, a unit that focuses on providing outsourced transformational learning solutions to help companies and governments achieve measurable business results through significant improvements in workforce performance.
Accenture Learning brings together Accenture’s resources in corporate learning with its expanded network of alliances and affiliates to help clients reduce employees’ time to competency, increase employee knowledge retention, manage learning technologies and vendors, and reduce the costs and time to deliver complex training content.
“By consolidating our capabilities, we are even better positioned to address a key concern of senior executives: The need to upgrade workforce performance to respond to shortening economic and product life cycles, post-merger integration, intensifying global competition and a more challenging business environment,” said Harry H. Brakeley, managing partner of Accenture Learning. “Our experience demonstrates that companies can adapt quickly and efficiently to achieve their strategic business goals by enhancing workforce performance through an innovative, outsourced learning transformation solution.”
Accenture’s capabilities and assets in the learning market include recognized expertise in business processing outsourcing; advanced performance-simulation capabilities; myLearning.com, a proprietary training and knowledge management solution; and iAuthor, a sophisticated learning content development and management software.
In addition, Accenture Learning’s recent alliances with FT Knowledge, the corporate training arm of Pearson, the global media company, and Indeliq, an Accenture affiliate company that provides patented technology-based performance simulation products, enable Accenture to offer professional learning services and products, including customized competency assessment, curriculum and course design, and to create and deliver instructor-led classes and blended curriculum solutions.
Accenture Learning’s other corporate partners include Docent, a premier provider of learning management systems software, and Interwise, a leading provider of virtual classroom and enterprise communications technology.
Among its significant engagements, Accenture Learning is working with Avaya, a global leader in networking solutions and services, to provide end-to-end learning services, including Web-based e-learning and classroom-based training, to Avaya’s employees, customers and business partners.
“Avaya selected Accenture for its breadth of experience and track record with clients spanning the full range of industries around the world,” said Michael Dennis, vice president, worldwide operations and services for Avaya. “We wanted a company that would step up to a big job and commit to a cost envelope and higher level of service than we had been able to deliver ourselves. Accenture rose to all these challenges.”
Accenture Learning’s core capabilities include a proprietary process that links learning to business objectives; developing and implementing training and technology platforms to help expedite the learning process; and assembling a comprehensive set of assets and capabilities that can be introduced immediately to a corporate environment. All of this is delivered in an outsourced context, where Accenture maintains accountability for delivering learning outcomes that are run as a business.
“The benefits of outsourcing can be enormous. We can rapidly transform clients’ learning capabilities to help drive business results,” said Leonard Sherman, head of Strategy and Business Development for Accenture Learning. “An outsourced solution can help to strengthen a company’s relationship with its employees by providing benefits that are important to their success, consolidate the learning process and introduce discipline, and deploy and deliver content quickly and consistently on a global basis.”
The demand for outsourced learning solutions is growing rapidly, according to Gartner Group, and organizations considering effective solutions are looking to service providers that can upgrade technology infrastructure; redesign provider and user processes to efficiently create and deliver blended learning solutions across the global extended enterprise; and deliver mechanisms to link learning priorities to desired business outcomes, backed by metrics to help monitor the effectiveness of the organizational response.
“Accenture’s move in this area reinforces the fact that this market promises significant growth,” said Rebecca Scholl, an analyst with Gartner Dataquest. “The market need for learning solutions also confirms a trend identified by Gartner Dataquest suggesting that after payroll and benefits, education and training outsourcing would be the next big wave in human resources.”
About Accenture
Accenture is the world’s leading management consulting and technology services organization. Through its network of businesses approach – in which the company enhances its consulting and outsourcing expertise through alliances, affiliated companies and other capabilities – Accenture delivers innovations that help clients across all industries quickly realize their visions. With more than 75,000 people in 47 countries, the company generated net revenues of $11.44 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2001. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
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Jill E. Posnick
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