Accenture has signed a five-year application outsourcing contract with Nordea, a leading financial services group in the Nordic and Baltic Sea region, to develop and maintain applications that will support the bank’s customer websites. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

The agreement is designed to help Nordea improve customer service and increase cost efficiencies. With 30 websites and more than 7 million monthly visitors, Nordea’s online channel is one of the most important access points for its customers and an increasingly vital channel for sales and service.

Under the terms of the agreement, Accenture will assume responsibility for maintaining and developing Nordea’s Web content management platform for its customer websites. The platform is based on Microsoft .NET technology. Accenture will provide the services through local facilities in Denmark and through its Global Delivery Network using centers in Bangalore, India.

“This agreement gives us access to skilled resources and the benefits of international expertise in Web application development and maintenance,” said Henrik Korch, Business Chief Information Officer for Marketing at Nordea. “It will also ensure that we have the flexibility to ramp up and down according to our demand and changing business needs.”

“In selecting a reliable business partner to help us, we focused on track records of innovation, creativity and new ideas,” said Juha Toivari, Vice-president and head of digital marketing at Nordea. “Accenture’s knowledge of our business and proven ability to provide enhancement and management services for Microsoft applications make it an ideal business partner.”

“As consumers become increasingly Internet-centric, providing them with a unique online experience is critical to organic growth,” said Bent Dalager, executive director of Accenture’s Financial Service group in Denmark. “Through this agreement, Accenture will support Nordea in pursuing new levels of customer interaction and business efficiency enabled by offshore capacity and deep technology insight.”

Accenture will deliver the services in collaboration with Avanade, a business technology services provider that connects insight, innovation and expertise in Microsoft technologies to help customers realize results. Avanade is majority owned by Accenture.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 181,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

About Nordea

Nordea’s vision is to be the leading Nordic bank, acknowledged for its people, creating superior value for customers and shareholders. Nordea has around 10 million customers, approximately 1,400 branch offices and a leading netbanking position with 5.9 million e-customers. The Nordea share is listed on the NASDAQ OMX, the exchanges in Copenhagen, Helsinki and Stockholm.

If the source is to be believed, Accenture has seen large scale voluntary attrition in their Indian center. According to this report: Increments at Accenture after 4500 workers quit , close to 4,500 people have voluntarily left Accenture since December. Looking at the attritions numbers presented by Accenture last week, their attrition rate seems within the new industry range ( 15%) but higher than their previous number of 9%.   ( Attrition rate for Indian vendors)

With the attrition rates creeping back up, we still believe that the mid size firms are more at employee flight risk than some of the larger ones. Multi national firms seem to have done better at attracting employees. Accenture did also say that they plan to add 50,000 staff globally although they did not mention any particular geography.

 The report also put the headcount for Accenture in India at 50,000 although Accenture does not provide a breakup in their earnings release ( Accenture quarterly earning release)

Accenture  is providing Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. , one of the world’s largest hotel and leisure companies, with a range of information technology (IT) outsourcing services under a multi-year contract worth more than US$200 million.

Under the terms of the contract signed in May 2009, Accenture is providing Starwood with an integrated IT solution, including end-to-end application and infrastructure management. Application outsourcing services include development, testing, maintenance and running of the applications. Infrastructure outsourcing services include server and storage management, data center management, end-user computing, network management, and service desk management.

These services are enabling Starwood to improve the quality and the efficiency of its IT operations. In addition, Starwood IT is better able to focus on driving new innovations into the marketplace to enhance Starwood’s competitive positioning.

Todd Thompson, CIO of Starwood, said, “This program with Accenture is key to the continued transformation of IT at Starwood into a team that is outstanding at execution and delivers initiatives that drive business results. In addition to improving quality and efficiency, we are excited about the ongoing opportunities to work with Accenture to increase and accelerate innovation to our business.”

“Accenture is delighted to have a vital role in the IT transformation at Starwood,” said Umar Riaz, a senior executive in Accenture’s Products practice. “By combining our experience in providing application and infrastructure outsourcing services, along with our deep knowledge of the hospitality industry, we are able to deliver consistent, cost effective and innovative IT solutions to Starwood as they seek to further drive a platform for profitable growth.”

Accenture is delivering the services to Starwood leveraging teams based in the United States and utilizing its Global Delivery Network.

About Accenture

Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 176,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

Learn more about Accenture’s application development services and listen to the podcast or download the pdf to learn more about the costs and complexities of managing multiple application development and maintenance providers.

About Starwood Hotels & Resorts

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with 992 properties in nearly 100 countries and 145,000 employees at its owned and managed properties. Starwood Hotels is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts and residences with the following internationally renowned brands: St. Regis(R), The Luxury Collection(R), W(R), Westin(R), Le Meridien(R), Sheraton(R), Four Points(R) by Sheraton, and the recently launched Aloft(R), and Element SM. Starwood Hotels also owns Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc., one of the premier developers and operators of high quality vacation interval ownership resorts. For more information, please visit www.starwoodhotels.com.

In a recent interview with Outlook Business , Accenture CEO Green talks about the current market, growth and acquisitions strategy for Accenture. (LINK)

Accenture believes that organic growth is the way to go for services firm and 97% of services companies acquisitions fail. Interesting giving the fact that a number of the Indian IT /BPO services firms have grown organically and have made acquisitions which are smaller in size to acquire revenues.

Why would a services firm acquire a firm:

- To buy revenues ( A number of recent captive deals in the services space)
- To buy new product offerings ( Infocrossing-Wipro deal)
- To buy operations ( EDS buying mPhasis )
- To buy innovation ( ? )

Looks like Accenture is looking to up it’s headcount in India again after falling off it’s earlier projections last year. ( Accenture to up headcount in India – April 2008). Last year Accenture was looking to up it’s headcount to 50K and looks like this year it has set a similar target. 

Currently Accenture has around 23% of their workforce based out of India ( 42,000 out of a total of 180,000)

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Salt River Project after an RFP process decided not to outsource the IT jobs.

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Consulting and outsourcing firm Accenture PLC said Friday it signed a deal to provide application development and maintenance services for a subsidiary of QBE Insurance Group.

Under the contract, QBE Europe will outsource application development and maintenance activities to Accenture to help it improve service to its customers. Terms of the five-year contract were not disclosed.

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Consulting and outsourcing firm Accenture PLC said Friday it has signed a contract with Fiat Item, a subsidiary of Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA, to help the unit consolidate its information and communications technology.

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Accenture has signed multiyear deals to provide computer support and Web services to two European companies, reports Forbes.

The Hamilton, Bermuda-based Accenture will provide outsourcing services to Luottokunta, a card payment service company based in Finland, for five years.

Accenture also signed a seven-year contract with the German-based consumer products maker Henkel. In the US, Henkel is known for brands like Soft Scrub cleaning products, Purex laundry products, Dial soap and Right Guard deodorant. Accenture did not disclose the terms of either deal.

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Accenture continues to trim their bottomline and manage cost in times when consulting revenues growth seems flat. Firms which have cost to trim continue to do that assuming the worst. Accenture is looking to trim their real estate and consolidate offices and reduce their senior staffer. 

So when people talk about economic recovery that still seems distant given that the job market continues to be shut down and corporate profitability is there due to companies working hard on pruning their bottom line.  A number of good qualified people still are facing a reducing work opportunity market place.

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