Karl A L Smith

human knowledge belongs to the world

Agile World Market Entry and Capability Building Consulting

Agile World is involved in Strategic, Tactical and Operational market entry and capability building. Often this will involve embedding people into organisations to deliver the required change or to drive adoption of a new way of working to become effectual.

Case Studies

  • Accenture EUX – Capability
  • Wipro Digital – Market Position and Entry
  • Decision Point AI – Market Position and Entry

Accenture Enterprise User Experience (EUX)

Back in 2010 the world was changing and the big corporate world knew that Customers (targeted, with money to spend) were fatigued from bad real world experiences and moving to online experiences that were as bad. They were asking their corporate consultancies for support and those tax and management consultancies provided people who had no design backgrounds, no user experience background and no research background who where trained to be the expert from afar but never held accountable for outcomes to end customers before.

Around this time we were courted by Accenture, PwC and KPMG, EY were not really involved in digital at this time. Each had their own rational for what they wanted and why, but also they saw UX as a production skill not a strategic one. While there was a massive influx of graphic design into the field at that time, most of the pretty graphic UI’s failed to aid the actual experience as they were skin deep and did not tackle the end to end (UI, logic, ETL, process, latency, integrated support issues etc) experience that UX actually covered and still does for professional practitioners.

We reviewed the various offers pros and cons and went with Accenture because they were willing to let us build a capability rather than just a body shopping function. Accenture accepted that UX required two types of people with very different mental models where conflict is normal. UX people from the usability and research side able to create solutions and graphic designers from a digital side also able to create solutions. This conflict between ‘what users need’ and ‘what users will adopt’ was combined with ‘what the business needs’ to establish Accenture EUX globally.

The work started in 2011 and was complete in 2012 by Karl Smith. What was established was a new hiring protocol focused on specialist skills over the generalist policy at that time for consultants and new role profiles for EUX. New hires were locked in through a salary that would allow them to live in London and have money over at the end of the month. However it was double the standard salary for these type of roles in London at that time. A new funding model was created so that EUX staff would have hardware and software needed to do their jobs without seeking project funding and sign off, a common consultancy practice at that time. Additionally a co location space was established along with the attributes of a digital agency feel (in a corporate office). A great deal of time was spent creating internal marketing material around the services and engaging cross verticals on any opportunity that would require a great customer or user experience.

Also there were a number of strategic M&A activities going on at that time so ultimately the plan was for this group to join Fjord as part of its hands off engagement with Accenture through Accenture Digital.

EUX is still in use within Accenture as a descriptor of this capability.

Market Entry and Capability Building continued.

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