Do Accenture and IBM have any truly satisfied clients? Anyone have a positive story (more than acceptable) with one of the professional services firms?
Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
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Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
24 year olds? Since when are they sending the senior consultants out on engagements like this! I lasted not even 6 months working in professional services, really woke me up to what "prestigious careers" really are.
The only consulting firm I've ever heard spoken of somewhat favorably is McKinsey (and then only by ex-McKinsey people)
The kind of work that McKinsey does is much different to most of the work done by firms like Accenture. The latter may do some strategy-level work for managers / senior managers, but the largest portions of their revenue comes from work like BPO and technology implementations.
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#73Another web agency failure post on HN today. Interesting trend!
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#74The UK’s NHS can top that, with the infamous Capita contract that cost billions and delivered nothing.
One expects this kind of behavior from the government, but business setting huge pile of cash on fire still attracts attention.
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#75"Hertz gets Hertz treatment from Web Agency"
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#76My main question is: who hires Accenture for this kind of job, for no less than $32m??? They would be my last point of call, literally after my mum, and maybe even after my dog. At least he's cheap.
Companies hire Accenture and other firms like that usually because their demands are so challenging that only big firms can give a shot at that. On top of that usually the contracts provide so much strong guarantees to the Client that only these firms can afford and this is a tremendous incentive for closing the deal. It's a common strategy also to sell the initial contract at low margins with the outlook that the deal will continue and will bring other money with less risky maintenance streams. In a short summary in the vast majority of the cases these kind of projects already start with a lot of risk and on shaky grounds.
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#77I've been hearing about this lawsuit for years now, but I've never seen what the ruling was.
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#78At what point will these lauded MBA programs teach people how to hire and manage consultants? This is a predictable failure mode.
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#79You have to wonder what proportion of GDP is money sloshing around like this but not providing any real value. The consultants got their paychecks and spent their money in the real economy, but there seems to be a great deal of waste in the B2B space.
I'd wager only 5-10% of all money is actually used in an exchange for real value. Everything else is just rotating through the bureaucrats.
Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)
#80"Content Management – Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) was the tool of choice to update and revise the content that appears on the website." If you want to blow a massive development budget AEM is a great choice; otherwise I'd advise you to pick a different content system. This decision alone probably sunk multiple millions of dollars. The platform license alone for their operating scale was probably a half million or…
> If you want to blow a massive development budget AEM is a great choice; otherwise I'd advise you to pick a different content system. It’s tailor made for this. Management will always sign off because they’ve heard of Adobe.
As someone who holds a certification as an AEM Business Solutions Specialist (possibly lapsed by now) I have to agree. It's hot garbage.