A British former executive at consulting giant Accenture has claimed he was “belittled and shamed” by colleagues because of mental health issues including depression.
Peter Lacy, who was formerly chief responsibility officer at the multinational, has filed an employment tribunal claim against the company as well as its US-based chief executive Julie Sweet, claiming he was “frozen out of meetings” and mistreated before losing his job in an “ambushing”.
Mr Lacy suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress and depression. He has accused Accenture, which had revenues of $64bn (£51bn) last year, of unfairly targeting him because of his conditions.
Accenture has denied all of the allegations and is contesting the case at trial.
Mr Lacy was one of the accounting giant’s top fee-earners before he was dismissed last year. His lawyers claim that he considered his ADHD a “superpower” that was “integral to his success and that of Accenture as his employer who reaped the benefits”.
However, in the 18 months before his dismissal, his symptoms were exacerbated and he needed extra help. Rather than be granted such support, Mr Lacy alleges that he faced “adverse treatment” and was belittled “sometimes publicly” by staff, including Ms Sweet.
Mr Lacy is claiming unfair dismissal and disability discrimination, according to legal documents made public on Thursday.
The documents claim: “Rather than provide [Mr Lacy] with the support he required during this time and live up to [Accenture’s] rhetoric around health, wellbeing and catering for the needs of their neurodiverse workforce, [Mr Lacy] was frozen out of meetings, belittled (sometimes publicly) by senior staff such as Ms Sweet and Ms [Ellyn] Shook [Accenture’s HR chief], and shamed.”
This allegedly culminated in an “ambushing” where Mr Lacy was dismissed.
“This decision was a fait accompli with no form of redundancy exercise at all.”
Accenture’s lawyers have argued that it had to make significant cost savings last year, including a streamlining of leadership positions.
Mr Lacy’s seniority meant management wanted to speak to him directly about the loss of his position rather than include him in a collective redundancy exercise, according to court documents.
Mr Lacy, a Briton who graduated from the University of Nottingham, worked at Accenture for over 15 years and was one of the company’s highest paid employees, with a total package of around £4.3m in the year before he left.
The company argues that he was dismissed for fair reason and that his claims for disability discrimination and victimisation are “without merit”. The case is going to a full trial next year.
An spokesman for the company said: “Accenture strenuously denies all allegations made by Peter Lacy.
“The redundancy dismissal of Peter Lacy took place in the context of the publicly disclosed global business optimisation actions that impacted 19,000 of our workforce.”
A recent surge in diagnosis of mental and physical conditions has led to a growing focus on how staff with these conditions are treated at work. ADHD and autism referrals have risen fivefold since the pandemic.
City law firms including Norton Rose Fulbright have begun offering in-office diagnostic services for staff as ballooning NHS waiting lists leave people struggling to access support.
Ministers believe that the surge in adults being signed off work with mental health conditions and behavioural disorders, including ADHD, is a leading cause of Britain’s worklessness crisis.
More than 52,000 adults receiving personal independence payments from the Government have listed ADHD as their main condition, up from 38,000 in 2022.
Linklaters has hired Accenture for client service advice as it pushes for growth.
Consultancy giant Accenture has been looking at the Magic Circle law firm’s technology, templates and processes in order to improve its interactions with its clients, Financial News has learned.
The project includes exploring the use of generative AI in client pitches, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The work with Accenture focuses on the firm’s business services teams in a drive to make them more client-centric, the people said.
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“Our business teams play an integral role in the outstanding service we offer to clients. We want to ensure that we continue to be equipped to do that in the most effective ways possible,” a spokesperson for Linklaters said in a statement.
The process is being led by Linklaters’ chief growth officer Lucy Murphy, according to people familiar with the situation.
Murphy joined the firm in September last year having previously worked for Magic Circle firms Allen & Overy and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in senior business services roles.
Murphy was given a brief of driving forward the firm’s client strategy when she joined last year.
“Lucy will play a pivotal role in ensuring that we are even more client centric and that everything we do as a firm is to the benefit of our clients,” Linklaters’ managing partner Paul Lewis said in September.
Linklaters has been scrambling to harness generative AI amid a rush in the professional services sector to adopt the new technology.
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The firm launched an AI chatbot for its lawyers in March last year which was built using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service.
Last month the firm said it was promoting the co-head of its AI steering group Shilpa Bhandarkar to partner, in a sign of its commitment to the new technology.
Linklaters is not the only Magic Circle law firm turning to consultancy firms for advice. Its rival Allen & Overy has tapped KPMG and McKinsey to advise on its merger with US firm Shearman & Sterling which is scheduled to go live in May, Law.com reported.
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email Edin Imsirovic
Advising on new technologies, simplifying supply chain networks, helping to remove inefficiencies in workflow plans, identifying creative ways to mitigate risk—these are just a handful of the services that management consultants have been providing to businesses since the consulting field was invented around the turn of the twentieth century. Even as businesses have continued to innovate over the years, “in many ways, the problems of businesses haven’t changed; it’s the complexity of the problems, the environment in which the problems occur, and all the tools that are available to solve them that are constantly changing,” says Fred Pursell, adjunct professor of consulting at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.
Regardless of the circumstances, however, consultants still operate within a tried-and-true framework, which Pursell likens to the way doctors approach their patients: “Doctors of business,” he says, must diagnose each client’s problems—which requires a broad understanding of the industry landscape as well as an assessment of each business’s symptoms and health history—and prescribe a remediation plan based on the client’s desired outcomes.
It’s not an easy feat but the consultancies on this year’s list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms rise to the challenge again and again. How do we know? For the ninth year in a row, Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to ask industry insiders which management consulting firms are leading the pack. To do so, we conducted two surveys from mid-November 2023 through mid-January 2024: the first, a peer-to-peer survey of more than 1,100 partners and executives at management consulting firms; the other, a survey of more than 1,200 clients who had worked with management consulting firms in the past four years. Both groups evaluated consulting firms within their areas of knowledge across 16 different industries (such as healthcare, consumer goods and insurance) and 16 different functional areas (including human resources, operations, and innovation and growth).
All responses were combined into a scoring model, and the consulting firms with the most recommendations in each category were given star ratings: five stars for “very frequently recommended,” four stars for “frequently recommended” and three stars for “recommended.” The final list features 190 companies that together received 904 star ratings.
For the third year in a row, both Deloitte and Bain & Company received the most recommendations, with 32 star ratings each. Accenture, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and McKinsey & Company followed closely behind, with 31 star ratings each. Trailing those were PwC, with 29 star ratings; IBM Consulting, with 26; and Ernst & Young Global Limited, with 25.
What each of these top-performing consultancies do best, says Pursell, is offer their clients an objective view of the market environment while providing deep industry knowledge. And Christina Bieniek, deputy CEO of Deloitte Consulting, says it’s these qualities that distinguish the work of her company. As professionals who have worked as bankers, retailers, manufacturers, scientists, doctors and nurses themselves, Deloitte’s consultants bring years of experience not just in consulting but also in their respective areas of expertise, Bieniek says, affording them an “intimate understanding of a client’s business and specific industry.”
Alicia Pittman, managing director, senior partner and global people chair at BCG, says that one of the things that sets BCG apart is the firm’s ability to customize solutions for each client. “We really take the time to blend together best practices from within industry with what’s really right for this client at this point in their history,” Pittman says. BCG’s teams also take care, she says, to consult with employees at all levels of their organization rather than just working with leadership. That means “sitting with the junior people on the team and asking what they are seeing on the ground,” and then incorporating those insights into the firm’s recommendations.
Furthermore, says Pittman: “We make sure that we’re not just giving our clients ideas and actions, but actually enabling them to do something different, and drive things themselves when we leave.” This may involve “building a new team capability for our clients, operating it alongside them for some time, and then transferring it to their ownership.”
At GE HealthCare, which earned a 5-star rating in the health and life sciences sector, consultants help clinicians and healthcare systems bring new modalities to patients. For example, GE HealthCare is advising clients on theranostics—a combination of therapeutics and diagnostics that involves using molecular imaging to both diagnose and treat cancer, says Yassine Bhija, president of the company’s enterprise solutions in the United States and Canada. “GE HealthCare and our partners’ deep understanding and expertise can help our customers navigate the complexities of delivering theranostics care sustainably,” she says.
Of course, when it comes to innovative technology, consulting firms across all sectors are attuned to the siren song of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). “GenAI was not just the most notable—but a tectonic—shift this past year, as it is the constant and pervasive topic throughout our client discussions,” says Bieniek. “Those discussions started with organizations wanting to understand the benefit. Fast-forward to now, and those conversations are about their strategy, data needs and deployment. As a result, our teams are helping our clients navigate the GenAI revolution, outlining effective use cases for this transformational technology, and helping them scale GenAI across all areas of their businesses.”
Similarly, BCG’s consultants are guiding clients on GenAI at every level, says Pittman. “We’re doing board presentations on what you can make of GenAI, we are supporting marketing and commercial teams on how to create new businesses out of GenAI, and we are supporting HR operations teams and back-office processing centers on how to use GenAI to create new efficiencies,” she says. BCG even has its own internal GenAI enablement network, which consists of hundreds of people across the company who volunteered to be become “black belts” in GenAI, says Pittman. These newly minted in-house experts now mentor their BCG colleagues—getting them up to speed on GenAI for themselves and for their clients.
But for those in the consulting field who worry that GenAI may soon replace human consultants altogether, Pursell says there will always be a need for people. “Consulting is still a people business. It’s about relationships,” he says. “As long as the customer is a human being, there’s a very important role for a human relationship.”
For the full list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms, click here.
Methodology
Forbes’ list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms 2024, is based on two surveys conducted by market research company Statista from mid-November 2023 and mid-January 2024: a peer-to-peer survey of more than 1,100 partners and executives at management consulting firms; and a survey of more than 1,200 clients who had worked with management consulting firms in the past four years. Both groups evaluated consulting firms within their areas of knowledge across 16 different industries (such as healthcare, consumer goods and insurance) and 16 different functional areas (including human resources, operations, and innovation and growth).
All responses were combined into a scoring model that also included last year’s results to assess the consulting firms’ performance over time. Recommendations from the management consultants were weighted more heavily than those from clients; this year’s recommendations were given more weight than last year’s. The consulting firms with the most recommendations in each category were given star ratings: five stars for “very frequently recommended,” four stars for “frequently recommended” and three stars for “recommended.” The final list highlights 190 companies.
As with all Forbes lists, companies do not pay any fee to be considered. For questions about this list, please contact listdesk [at] Forbes.com.
Accenture has announced the acquisition of Melbourne-based marketing technology consultancy The Lumery.
Founded in 2017, The Lumery provides industry and platform consulting services, including marketing advisory and planning, implementation across entire technology stacks, operational excellence and simplification. Its team of approximately 80 people across its offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Bengaluru, India, will join Accenture Song’s Marketing practice.
The acquisition aims to strengthen the marketing transformation capabilities of Accenture Song – the firm’s tech-powered creative group – and add significant depth to its offerings in Australia, such as personalization, CRM and loyalty, testing and experimentation, and automation, Accenture said of the deal.
It added that the acquisition reflects its continued investment to help businesses in Australia respond to rapid changes in martech. Global spending on martech is expected to soar by 64% to $216 billion in 2027.
“There is great interest in using tech to understand Australian customers more deeply and to streamline, enhance and transform marketing and sales efforts, especially with the rise of generative AI,” said Mark Green, Australia and New Zealand lead at Accenture Song.
Rajan Kumar, co-founder and CEO of The Lumery, added: “Building compelling customer experiences isn’t going to be solved by technology alone. It also requires creativity, modern ways of working, ever-evolving customer data and most importantly, great people.”
Peter Burns, who leads Accenture’s business in Australia and New Zealand, said: “Bringing The Lumery to augment Accenture Song’s tech-powered creativity, data intelligence, and industry expertise will help expand our Australian practice to lead clients further on their path of sustained relevance.”
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Top software services firms such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Accenture have either made or are on the verge of making job offers to engineering graduates from the Class of 2024, offering reprieve to colleges during what has been ‘one of the worst-ever placement seasons,’ according to the Economic Times.
This season, TCS in particular, has emerged as the leader in giving job offers, the ET report said.
At Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), for example, almost 10% of the 9000-strong batch have secured jobs from TCS; at Chennai’s SRM Institute of Technology (SRMIST), on the other hand, the IT major has made as many as 410 offers for three profiles alone: Prime ( ₹9 lakh per annum), Digital in the middle, and Ninja ( ₹3-4 lakh per annum), according to Dr N Venkata Sastry, director, career centre, SRMIST.
“Accenture, meanwhile, has hired more than 150 students so far from SRMIST and its diversity hiring round is currently taking place at the campus” Sastry told the business daily.
Of the more than 900 TCS offers at VIT Vellore, as many as 97 are for the Prime Profile. Also, this is the first time that the Mumbai-based company has offered Prime salary profiles at each of the two institutes: VIT Vellore and SRMIST, as per the report.
The jobs offered under the Prime profile by Tata Consultancy Services at VIT, is ‘the highest such number anywhere in the country,’ said Samuel Rajkumar, the director of the institute’s CDC (career development centre).
In 2023, TCS made over 3500 recruitments from VIT Vellore, and more than 2000 graduates were taken in from SRM Institute of Technology.
Notably, at a recent Nasscom session, K Krithivasan, TCS chief executive, had noted how the firms ‘needs more people for more work.’
“We have no plans to reduce our hiring plans and will continue to hire the same way we have been doing. Probably, we will have to change the hiring phase, but no cutting down on our plans, for sure,” Krithivasan had said.
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Accenture has announced the acquisition of provider of strategic sourcing and procurement services, Insight Sourcing, to expand its capabilities for private equity companies and the consumer goods, retail and technology industries.
The Georgia-based consultancy specializes in helping its clients optimize costs when sourcing and negotiating contracts for direct materials (e.g. metals, electronics, food ingredients, chemicals, clinical services), indirect materials (e.g. logistics, packaging, IT, marketing), services related to capital expenditures (e.g. construction, facility equipment) and energy procurement management.
This acquisition is poised to strengthen Accenture’s work with added expertise in cost takeout strategy, powered by category and supplier market intelligence. Insight Sourcing will also add approximately 220 sourcing consultants to Accenture’s sourcing and procurement practice within the supply chain and operations function.
The acquisition comes with Insight Sourcing’s suite of more than 40 technology procurement tools to help clients capture value faster.
“Accenture and Insight Sourcing will combine expertise across direct, indirect and capital expense cost reduction with complementary data and technology capabilities to drive efficiency and resilience across our clients’ supply chains,” said Rob Fuhrmann, global lead for sourcing and procurement at Accenture. “With Insight Sourcing, we are taking another important step to position Accenture as a leading provider in sourcing and procurement advisory and execution services for corporate and private equity clients.”
Accenture is poised to continue expanding its capabilities for private equity clients as Insight Sourcing currently serves more than 60 companies in this industry, including 10 of the 25 largest funds in North America.
Accenture also recently acquired two sourcing and procurement service providers that support private equity companies, New York-based advisory Impendi in January and The Shelby Group consultancy in November last year.
Tom Beaty, founder and CEO of Insight Sourcing, said: “Joining Accenture will accelerate our mission of bringing procurement excellence to our clients.
“Over two decades, we have built a skilled team of professionals who are passionate about being the best in their craft and driving impactful results. As part of Accenture’s sourcing and procurement strategy, we will reach new levels of continued success with increased resources and opportunities.”
Another recent announcement saw Accenture acquire Singapore-headquartered media and marketing technology company, Jixie, to help clients in Indonesia deliver more personalized experiences to enhance customer engagement for business growth.
Accenture remains the world’s most valuable IT services brand, with a brand value of $40.5 billion, representing a 1.6% increase from the previous year, according to an ET report quoting Brand Finance 2024 report.The company is well-positioned to embrace the potential of newer technologies and reinvent businesses and industries.
TCS, a leading Indian IT company, secured the second spot with a remarkable 11% rise in its brand value, reaching $19.2 billion. In absolute figures, the increase in brand value was the most significant among global IT majors, rising almost $2 billion, compared to last year’s $17.2 billion. TCS attributed this growth to its investments in AI-readiness and commitment to sustainability.
World’s Top 10 Most Valuable IT Services Brands
However, Wipro, backed by Azim-Premji, witnessed a decline in brand value by 7.6% to $6.2 billion. The company has faced challenges in turning around its business and has seen several senior executives leaving in 2023.
David Haigh, CEO and Chairman of Brand Finance, praised TCS for its outstanding growth and market leadership. He highlighted TCS’ strategic excellence and consistent brand investment as factors contributing to its success.
Infosys, on the other hand, has maintained its position as the fastest-growing IT services brand over the past five years and maintained its third spot on the ranking. With a brand value of $14.2 billion, Infosys ranks 145th among the world’s most valuable brands. Salil Parekh, CEO of Infosys, was recognized as the number one IT Services CEO for 2024.
HCLTech, the third-largest Indian IT firm, experienced the fastest growth, with a 16% increase, retaining its eighth position this year. The valuation reached $6.5 billion, marking a year-on-year rise of $1 billion.
Lorenzo Coruzzi, valuation director at Brand Finance, said that while IT services brands flourished amid the digital transformation boom sparked by the pandemic, the current slowdown, attributed to macroeconomic challenges, inflation, and geopolitical tensions, is prompting a reconsideration of their strategies.
Read From ET |Brand Value of IT firms
He emphasized the need for brands to adapt and differentiate themselves in the face of macroeconomic challenges and the growing demand for AI.