Accenture: An insider guide - Gymkhana

Strategy and business architecture, as well as finance and performance management,
involve higher level consulting work to determine the client’s business and technology
needs. Employees in these service lines do often join engineering projects, but also
handle a wide range of other related duties focusing on business process. Strategy
and business-architecture consultants work at the highest levels of projects and
might come in early on in a project to do trends and industry analysis. They often
get paid more (after all, strategy has to compete with Bain, BCG, Booz Allen, and
the other big-name, big-dollar firms).
The Company
One employee describes how various service roles overlap on a typical technology
project: “First comes requirement analysis, where consultants help define the
scope and design of the project. Then we work on common components, putting
together the technology architecture. Training—gathering training needs to use
the system—follows. Finally we build out the application, doing the detailed
coding and user acceptance testing.”
View from the Bottom
With Accenture’s senior executives selling the firm’s pricey services on the basis
of its highly trained workers, the firm encourages newcomers to constantly
expand their skill set. For your first few projects, you’ll probably hop around
between service areas, building programming and business skills along the way.
Although some folks like to think of themselves as industry generalists, most
insiders say it’s preferable and easier to stick within one industry and gain some
specialization. “New analysts are encouraged to get a lot of different roles,
because once people get to the 3- or 4-year mark, they’re starting to build up a
resume that we use to sell them [to clients],” says one insider. “If you have 3
years of experience in something you don’t really like, chances are you’re not
going to stick around.”
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