{"id":1062,"date":"2015-02-21T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-21T10:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/mike-sutcliffe_022115\/"},"modified":"2024-09-11T05:51:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T05:51:44","slug":"mike-sutcliffe_022115","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/mike-sutcliffe_022115\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Sutcliff, Digitally Distinct"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mike Sutcliff is Group Chief Executive, Accenture Digital (Click for bio)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Two buzzwords have re-ignited the world of global services since “offshoring” became so pass\u00e9… Digital and Automation.<\/p>\n

And the two are inextricably linked – you can’t really digitize<\/em> your business processes until you have effectively automated<\/em> them. \u00a0And if your industry requires you to have that digital interface with your customers and suppliers to survive (and that pretty much includes all industries today), you’re pretty much done for, if you haven’t build that automated process layer as the foundation. \u00a0And if you need more evidence of this, please take some time to read our recent report<\/a>\u00a0on the impact of Digital on business services.<\/p>\n

So surely this is the gravy train for ambitious service providers to jump to the needs of their clients to save the day? \u00a0Or is the business world changing so dramatically that this is simply going to be one insurmountable challenge too far for many enterprises, and they might as well give up now?<\/p>\n

So let’s hear from the one service provider that dusted off the “Digital” terminology from the dictionary and reapplied it to the world of services. \u00a0We managed to get some face-time recently with\u00a0Accenture\u2019s Mike Sutcliff at his firm’s Global Shared Services Conference (GSSC) in Prague, to hear about how his group is developing its digital capabilities and applying them to the world of business operations and shared services…<\/p>\n

Phil Fersht (CEO, HfS):<\/strong> Mike \u2013 Good to connect again! Tell us about your background. How did you come to lead the digital practice for Accenture?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mike Sutcliff (Group Chief Executive, Accenture Digital):<\/strong> I\u2019ve been at Accenture for 27 years. In the early 1990s, I founded the Finance Management Group which developed our shared services business. Then I got the opportunity to establish a new business. I became interested in analytics; I wanted to understand how analytics could bring more value to companies. I studied how enterprises created data as a mass that they then could leverage across the organization. I combined my experience in financial services with my new understanding of these growing fields to form Accenture Digital, which brings together our capabilities around e-Commerce, digital marketing, social collaboration, mobility and analytics.<\/p>\n

Phil:<\/strong>\u00a0“Digital” is the industry\u2019s new hot button; everyone has jumped on this and is coming out with their own digital practices. How is Accenture\u2019s digital practice different from the offerings of other tech-based services firms?<\/span><\/p>\n

Mike:<\/strong> First, we have history. We\u2019ve been working on various parts of our digital business for a decade, collaborating with our technology partners across the entire ecosystem. Over time we developed our offering that now the marketplace considers digital.<\/p>\n

Second, we don\u2019t use digital as a group of technologies. We think about digital as:<\/p>\n