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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)

#31

Post by tootie »

curiousllama wrote: post #20

Tech consulting, of the type Accenture does, is so weird. I once got staffed on a multimillion dollar project to "predict general macroeconomic activity." The story described in this article just sounds so classic. I'm consistently surprised that more consultants don't get sued.

My only interaction with Accenture was years ago. They air-dropped like 100 recent grads and few account managers to build a very complex system like 1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters. And I know for a fact they used underhanded techniques to maintain their foothold at the expense of the quality of the product.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#32

Post by naet »

osrec wrote: post #23
naet wrote: post #14

"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…

Why anyone would pick that over a bunch of very mature open source offerings (with much larger developer communities) is beyond me.

There is a certain class of high scale enterprise client that always voices strong prefernce for AEM. I think it might be because AEM at one point was ahead of their competitors and so a lot of the existing enterprise level companies use it in production and have experience on it? Or maybe they think everyone at that operating scale is using it, and so it must be the best choice... truth is the development experience is painful and it usually isn't the best tool.

My agency had a contract to make a site for an Amazon event. They specified that we had to use AEM, probably because Amazon uses AEM on some of their other properties, but it was not a good fit for quickly standing up a limited scope event site.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#33

Post by Tade0 »

bastardoperator wrote: post #4

I'd love to see the statement of work and bill of materials for this. I feel like this isn't Accenture's first rodeo.

I was an intern in Accenture in 2010.

My general impression was that my role was actually "budget filler".

Saved up for a laptop and a driving course, so can't complain.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#34

Post by devmor »

1123581321 wrote: post #6

A client paid me $7,500 for a site in 2011, approved the final version, but never got around to giving me the hosting information. It never went live. The screenshots were fine portfolio pieces and I spent their money, but I’m still annoyed by that.

I had a similar experience but with a contract 10x that amount. It was baffling.

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#35

Post by raverbashing »

88913527 wrote: post #17

You 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 ask myself the same question

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#37

Post by smetj »

osrec wrote: post #23
naet wrote: post #14

"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…

Why anyone would pick that over a bunch of very mature open source offerings (with much larger developer communities) is beyond me.

Another variation on "Nobody ever got fired for buying ${big_corp}"

Re: Hertz paid Accenture $32M for a website that never went live (2019)

#38

Post by orf »

> In its revised suit, Hertz states that Accenture represented that they had “the best talent in the world"

> Hertz claims that they were far from experts in these technologies and that Accenture was deceptive in their marketing claims.

Colour me surprised.

> Accenture also failed to test the software, Hertz claims, and when it did do tests "they were seriously inadequate, to the point of being misleading." It didn't do real-world testing, we're told, and it didn’t do error handling.

> Accenture’s developers also misrepresented the extent of their testing of the code by commenting out portions of the code, so the code appeared to be working.

> Despite having specifically requested that the consultants provide a style guide in an interactive and updateable format — rather than a PDF — Accenture kept providing the guide in PDF format only

So, like always, they sold a fantasy to a bunch of executives asleep at the wheel who lacked even the most basic technical skills needed to see that it was a fantasy, then farmed the work out to the cheapst developers possible and pocketed the difference.

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