by Herman Manson (@marklives) Accenture Digital is already one of the largest digital service providers in the South and sub-Saharan African (SSA) market, with more than US$100m in sales, according to managing director Wayne Hull. The business marries together Accenture’s digital marketing, analytics and mobile capabilities to manage customer experiences for a number of large corporates plus government departments.
Hull recently returned home to South Africa after spending more than a decade working in various European and Middle Eastern markets, and it’s come with a couple of surprises: The digital needle has barely moved in SA in the intervening years. We are sitting in a bookstore in one of the most-visited tourist spots in Cape Town and there is no wifi. Which is why South Africans always carry around their own hotspots or internet dongles. For him, the store is at an obvious competitive disadvantage. The cost of connectivity in this country just keeps on costing us.
Scale and expertise
Accenture Digital aims to speed up the moving of said needle: it has scale and it has expertise — globally, the Accenture Digital business employs more than 41 000 people (and more than 1100 in SSA) and generates US$9bn in revenue.
The drive of tech and consultancy firms into what was traditionally the domain of ad agencies has been rapid. The Econsultancy Top 100 Digital Agencies Report 2016 of UK digital agencies only lists one agency group in its top five ranking by revenue (SapientNitro from Publicis Groupe); Accenture Interactive was listed in the second spot. In the US, Accenture Interactive, part of Accenture Digital, was named the world’s largest digital agency network by AdAge.
In SA, Hull intends increasing digital’s revenue, and that includes the interactive agency (with around 150 people) by more than doubling revenue over the next few years.
Unique value propositions
Accenture Digital, he says, offers a number of unique value propositions. It believes in the primacy of people in taking raw data and gaining real insight from it. Those insights are then used to design engagement with consumers. The team doesn’t only consist of data scientists but a broad spectrum of expertise, from content creators to entrepreneurs.
According to Hull, the business world today demands multifaceted and diverse skills, and his agency offers access to a pool of people with wide-ranging capabilities, including digital strategy, digital marketing, service design, content, ecommerce, platforms and operations. It also has platform capabilities so it can build the platforms brands need. Its focus on elevating the customer experience — taking data to insights and, finally, engagement — is another key differentiator for the agency. The business also takes risks with its own clients by linking parts of its fees to agreed-upon outcomes. He says this truly makes the business a partner with clients at a commercial level.
Hull expects to grow Accenture Digital’s already-substantial SA revenue base quickly by upping its game in terms of engaging existing Accenture client relationships (it offers services to the consulting group’s existing client base). With a strong organic base in place, it may well look at acquisitions in future. He wants Accenture Interactive, Accenture Digital’s agency, to become the leading interactive agency in SA — and quickly. Interactive already generates US$3bn in revenue annually globally. The analytics business is also growing fast and, of course, its ability to build platforms is a significant selling point for the business (and where it beats many traditional agencies).
Key African markets
Apart from SA, Accenture Digital is active in Nigeria, Kenya, Mauritious and Botswana. Hull is meeting key clients to discuss their two-year road maps for digital, and this will inform when and where Accenture Digital will invest and expand into other key African markets.
Hull says his team is focused on customer segment one: understanding individual customer behaviour — the what, when and where of individual customer requirements. The direction of consumer power is increasingly being driven by the digi-savvy millennial and Y generations, placing more pressure on business to transform and rapidly growing the digital marketspace. While traditional agencies have been working towards integrated offerings, Hull says none of them enjoys the scale that consultancies have the potential to achieve. As clients build in-house capabilities, it’s also become important to find new ways to partner with clients, something agencies with legacy business models find hard to achieve.
Accenture Digital is on a drive to actively educate the market and procurement departments on its digital offerings. That said, digital business transformation is a boardroom discussion, and this is a space Accenture as a whole is very familiar with. Ultimately, the business wants to help business clients as they tackle the process of transforming digitally. “We are looking to have mindful, informed discussions on what consumers want tomorrow,” he says.
Updated at 9.10am on 3 May 2017 to reflect that it’s “more than US$100m in sales”, not “revenue”. We regret the error.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
— Sign up now for the MarkLives email newsletter every Monday and Thursday, now including headlines from the Ramify.biz company newsroom service!