Accenture

"Companies looked at their operations and saw fragile supply chains, untrustworthy information and radically new customer needs. As they’ve adjusted to these realities, the most successful ones have become Masters of Change."

"As the future takes shape, there will be no room for enterprises that cling to the past. Will you watch the world change around you? Or be the one leading it?"

Agency M-1 Team Members

Accenture Innovation Lab Tour Group

From left to right: Yuxin Zhang, Fahria Tahsin, Brian Meek, Rafia Sultana

Table of Contents.

 

 

Innovation Lab Tour

"With over 100 innovation hubs around the world, (Accenture) can work with you to innovate at speed, scope and scale."

The Innovation Architecture is highlighted:
https://www.accenture.com/ie-en/about/innovation-architecture-index

Welcome! First of all, welcome welcome welcome!! This is our virtual tour with Accenture. We have several members of Accenture. What you see on your screen we're going to be able to visit today. I'm Lesa Verbick. I am with the student organization, Agency M-1. John Heinrichs is here who is our faculty advisor and Gabi Tremp is also here helping us with all of the tech stuff and we also have members of our team of Agency M-1 actually at the innovation hub in Livonia and so we're glad to have them here. Kristen can you hear me okay?

 

Yes, yes I can. We're just muted here. So we're ready to start when you are and we will step back put ourselves on mute and we'll watch for any questions that come up with someone that might raise their hand during the process. Excellent. All right welcome everybody. So I cannot see myself so we're out of screen just somebody pull me back. So, welcome! We appreciate your patience while we figured out some technical stuff like we were telling the team before we were a very well oiled machine a year ago but this is the first time we've done this since we've been Covid'ed. So, thank you very much for your patience I think we've got a really good virtual experience for you it's one of our first times doing this full walk through in a virtual experience so we hope you enjoy it and have the questions answered that you may be coming in with. Please feel free to interrupt, raise your hand, ask questions. Typically we do these in person and they are very interactive so please take the time we will have a afterward and we will have quite a few opportunities for questions and I will pause and ask for questions but please don't hesitate. That really helps us understand if we're on track and giving you anything relevant and also kind of helps guide because we have quite a bit to share and if it's not interesting we'll jump to something else that you might want. So thank you very much for joining giving us a couple hours of your time today. We're really excited to come show you what we're what we've built here with at Accenture. It's kind of nice that's in our own backyard we're here in Livonia so we are Accenture we are a global company we're a massive global company over 500,000 people right now. We've been around for many years actually spun off of Andersen Consulting many years ago and really focused on the technology side of things, the strategy, the management consulting, now we're really venturing into innovation and interactive. We're starting to see that business is not just about the solution; it's about what the customer wants and what that customer experience needs to be to to make everybody successful and so we're really trying to meld all elements together and be as successful for our clients as we can be for our own team here at Accenture. So we are in Livonia. We are the Detroit innovation hub. We focus on what we call Industry x.o. So that's what we consider like the latest industrial revolution. It's the idea of connected products, connected things, making tangible things smart and and you will kind of do a little walk around here with a Matterport I don't know if anybody has any experience with the Matterport you guys ever seen like those doll houses that people use for real estate selling homes and stuff now. So it's built with this what we use is a Lidar camera - a Matterport camera that really shows all aspects and you can kind of walk through the space. We're gonna actually give you that experience you get almost an in-person experience of our space right here today and we'll talk about a little bit about what we do in this space and give you a couple demos about or show you a couple solutions that we actually built with real clients based start to finish based on their customer needs. So getting started any questions anything anybody wants to bring up before we jump in?

 

Okay. We've got about let's see we got about half an hour a little bit more maybe to talk about this space and really talk about what we do in this area and then we're going to take a real quick break just while we reset get our panel ready we've got a really interesting panel ready set up for us that will jump in from four o'clock until never you guys stop asking questions but we're happy to to jump in and really explore what the world looks like on our side. So, first thing I want to talk about and talk a little bit about innovation it's very important for Accenture because it's very important to our clients and when we say innovation it's not just coming up with something new it's very robust very specific process that we use and we actually dedicate and have invested in quite a bit of support teams to help us on that path and so you can see here kind of our six pillars that we consider most important to innovation. We call it our "Innovation Architecture" and so it really starts at the beginning with research. So we have a whole team global team that really works on thought leadership. They're really the ones that are building the white papers they're doing the research they're understanding what the trends are, what the technologies are, what the customer needs are, and they're putting that all together into white papers or points of view that we can then share out to clients or bring to bear in a client situation. They partner with Accenture Ventures. So, Ventures is out there looking at startups. So we recognize that we're not going to have all the best ideas first. But we know that there are some people out there who are so dedicated to a certain solution or technology that we want to partner with that. So it might be a merger and acquisition, it might be just a partnership, it might be just pulling them in on something that we're already working on and we know they solve that that problem whether it's better faster cheaper first in the world so we are not precious about being the the only ones to be able to do things we want to make sure that we're doing it the right way and our partnering with people who are also doing it. Our Accenture Labs this is where everybody plays. So this is where we kind of bring together that thought leadership when they bring together that technology and we really start to experiment with what's possible. This is not all of this is usually not for client facing once you get into the studios this is where we start to apply what we've done. So we we take the technology you know we have a quantum lineup that we have here right downtown Detroit. We take that technology and then how do we apply quantum to sports and that's what happens here in the studio where we start to really seek finding application. Then you go into innovation centers. That's where we are today. This is where we bring our clients in. So we invite our clients into this space. We'll do workshops. We'll sit and talk with them about what their problems are what their challenges are in business and really help them we use a methodology called "design thinking" and it really helps these clients look at their challenges in a different way and kind of approach it with a different methodology that helps them break down the issues break down what they think are barriers that maybe aren't and we get those key stakeholders in the room to really start to build up what is possible in terms of fixing the challenges and and coming up with the solution that benefits everybody and that's kind of the demos that you'll see here today. That all of these demos came out of a workshop experience with a client who can't I've got a problem help me fix it and we don't just come in and fix it we sit down and really talk to them about what's going on and we co-create with them. Then finally we have our delivery centers. So they can work with us clients can work with us on every on every level of this if we Accenture innovation center we can walk away with just a strategy and a roadmap for how to fix it or you can partner with us and we'll help actually deliver and implement that solution. So a wide spectrum this is just an innovation we do a lot of other work in strategy, interactive, actually my background is in digital marketing. So not really related to innovation at all but I've had the opportunity to be a part of this innovation hub and it's been a really great experience. Any questions about our innovation architecture or our dedication to kind of bringing business and tech together? Okay. Cool! So let's go to the Matterport we'll show you a little bit about the space that I'm standing in right now. I'm kind of squished over here in a corner. I'm going to come over here. Oh, perfect. Okay. So what you're seeing here is again this doll house this Matterport camera that we have does is it Lidar yes Lidar so you'll see as we scroll through this space it has taken shots and really mapped the entire space so I'm standing right in the middle of this this was filmed previously but you can see this is our our demo space and it's really a hands-on experiment center. You can come in all of these demos we've probably got 95 maybe 100 here and they're all hands-on, they're all working solutions that we co-created with clients and have implemented and so if you kind of start in this first corner kind of where we're standing right now. Thank you, Perfect. This is kind of the process of product development. Now our Detroit innovation hub is specific to industrial and manufacturing mostly because we're in Detroit and that that tends to be what a lot of the industry is around us. We have similar in innovation hubs around the world. For example, we've got one in Houston that is more focused on utilities and resources. We have one in Chicago that is more on customer experience and the retail experience. So it really depends on what the industry is where we've put you know we've got our kind of a federal services government version in Washington DC. So here you can see it's mostly about industrial manufacturing making things smart and really building out products that are relevant and experiences that are relevant to customers and so you know we start the experience with how you know really understanding what consumers like. What is it that they want to learn about. How do we create experiences that are relevant for them. How do we the one we're looking at right now is kind of a software it's like an advanced Kanban software system that really helps us test and make sure that the tools and the systems that we've designed early on are going to be applicable where they need to be. Then we move into manufacturing. So once you are ready to once you're ready to design something and once you're ready to actually build it we have live working models here. For example, that's a fisher model. So it's a miniaturized model of an actual manufacturing line and it shows all the different capabilities that are available on a factory floor if we were to digitize it. So it shows quality assurance, it shows monitoring, it shows you can look at temperature you can look at speed you can look at quality there's all different things that you can be measuring and monitoring. So that's just one example whereas if there's a maybe a more traditional or more legacy company looking to revive their digital or revive their manufacturing processes they may come to us and say hey, "What can I do to make my manufacturing lines smarter?" We'll give them that example right through there so we talk a little bit about you know how do we make the manufacturing lines smarter then it goes into some really cool stuff where we're talking about connected products connected assets connected people connected workers so if you're looking you know say you're not you're you're not in your factory you're not in your store one night and something changes maybe a fan stops or a light goes off it's critical to the manufacturing process. We can be monitoring all of that we can capture all the energy usage, we can connect we can connect all of that information, and really narrow down how to be as efficient as possible and then it goes into servicing and connected workers. So a big issue that we've got in the industrial world right now is a lot of the workforce is retiring. They've been doing manufacturing for 30 years on the same line and they've gotten really good at it and now they're retiring and they're really struggling to find people to take those roles and if they do, they don't stay for 30 years. So knowledge transfer becomes a big issue and how do you train somebody new and ensure that there's no slowdown of the line that there's no quality issues or anything. So how can you offer whether it's over the shoulder training or maybe some virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality solutions that helps make sure that they are completing the job in a similar way as everybody else so that you make sure that nothing impacts the quality of your product. So these are all just again we've got about 95 different examples. We've got a couple here that I want to show you in person. Any questions right now about what we do in this space or why we do it?

Kristen. This is Lesa. Maybe you could explain what type of items that you would produce in this area. Okay. Make there. So good question! We don't make anything here. We make ideas. So we actually so this is where we do our thinking. We'll have a client in we'll have them come into what we call our design thinking space or our generator and we really have a workshop. It's an interactive workshop where we're using sticky notes and voting and whiteboards and grouping and breaking down building backup kind of methodologies. We use this demo space here as inspiration. So we'll say, Hey okay so we're talking today about your customer is unable to get from point a to point b without these three hassles. Let's go out and look at the solution that we built for xyz and see how we might be able to apply that technology to your challenge. So we'll come up here we'll play for 30 minutes we'll go back in and say okay now we solve that and see how we might be able to apply it but we're looking at things a little differently and so it really is more of a box starter and an example of what's possible one of the cool things is around here that there's a lot of similar technologies with the same technologies or platforms that is underpinning the demos that you see. So it's saying we're not just taking solution a and applying it to your problem we're saying we've got the engineering, we've got the thinking, we've got the technology, we've got the business insights, how do we bring that all together specific for your challenge. I think that's really what we make here we then go off depending on what teams that they are where their clients are not all of our clients are from Detroit we have an industry x.o center just like this in Germany and in China and so it's basically regional anybody any manufacturing company that wants to work with us we do a lot of work here. Kristen, we've got a question from Antonio who's got his hand raised. So Antonio if you could go ahead and ask. Well yeah I was just curious about I was just wondering so what you're saying you do is like say if you already had like some sort of technology and customers were having issues with it that they were complaining about you would take that technology and then take take their feedback and then create like a solution for it where you can maybe make an extension of that technology and make it a little better for them. Exactly. Yeah just give me sorry sorry guys. Lucy we're here I'm the I'm the working analyst here at the center yeah so for example take into consideration things like for cloud services. We have Microsoft, Google, and AWS. We don't tell them which one they they should pick we just tell them the different solutions and based on what they want they usually pick the provider and we build something custom on top of what they already have. The reason is because we like to be very platform agnostic. We want to be able to for example if you're already working with Microsoft products we don't want to force you to switch to AWS but we do know that you know out of the box not every solution that Microsoft has works for your needs. So we customize that using already existing assets that they might have or tools that they might have. But yes in essence at the end it ends up being a custom solution for the client. Okay all right thank you. I just couldn't not mute it for a second I was just wondering out of curiosity like who's your main clientele like who do you guys approach to like I was just curious about. Really everybody. We work with 99 of the top 100 companies in the world in all different elements. Obviously around here a lot of our business is tier one suppliers, OEMs. I was wondering more so of like like are you guys more regional or do you guys expand like around the nation or even like abroad I'll just you mean specific to the Detroit innovation or Accenture as whole? So Accenture is a global company. We've got 500,000 people in, I think, 200 countries. We're a massive, massive company and so we we work with almost every other corporation out there. Kristen, one quick question before we go on, Jeffrey wanted to know Jeffrey Vale, what's an example of beginning idea to or problem to end solution what's an example of that Jeffrey it's like I put you in there to ask that question.

So lots of different examples of this. We also have one where we just show how we've worked with AWS this is a kind of what you were saying about marinade technology. We use facial recognition. We can use voice recognition. This is an example just as if you were you know a drink so if it's if you're a child and you come up and you want to ask for a drink it's going to give you the orange juice in the milk. It's me it's Friday afternoon it's been a long week maybe it offers up something a little stronger and it's just talking about how you know showing how we can use those different platforms like Louise was saying. How can we pair those with technology to really solve a problem that consumers may or may not know. Questions about kind of that example does that answer your question?

Good.

I think so yeah we're in good shape. All right great on time. So what I'd like to do is transition over we've got another example again if you guys were here in person and be cooler because it's your virtual reality. But Julian like holly is going to put on some gear that we use a lot both in co-creation and building some of these tools but that also we supply to clients when they are building out prototypes or if they're training some of their employees. Some of these technologies are in works right now at say a dealership. So if you need to know how to change the oil in something and it's a remedial example but if I've never done it before wouldn't it be cool if I could put on glasses put on things and really just train without actually even touching a vehicle and how could we do that. So I'll let Lisa and Julian show you a little bit about what we do. Okay so like Kristen was saying so we took something that you know it's kind of mainstream for usually for games and we try to see what we could apply this to to make things easier and more entertaining and the best thing we found was essentially worker training and manuals and stuff like that things that are repetitive and they're boring because you usually just read a manual or somebody tells you how to do it once and you have to figure it out on your own afterwards. So what Julian is showing you here is usually a VR headset and remotes these are connected to two cameras on the ceiling and then if you can turn that one real quick so what we did is instead of having someone teach one-on-one how to build a turbocharger we had someone tell us exactly how it would be built how the experience should look and we designed that in a VR environment and now instead of having one person one-on-one we have one person training probably 20, 30, 50 people and how this made it better is you no longer have a mess to pick up or reset if you want to retry again and again. So if somebody wants to I don't know train 20 times today instead of just once, he just has to you know restart everything will reset to where it was and he's you know able to keep going as many times as he needs to. So what you're seeing here this is what Julian is looking in his glasses at the moment. So right now we have all the parts set up as in the training environment as they would be and then on his right is the actual initial steps for the server charger and the table. So I'm going ahead and let him run through it real quick here so you guys can see how it looks. Usually this is the part where we have you guys actually try it in person so you see the experience but based on people that train others and companies we've taken like the most important factors of this so for example highlighting the pieces so they know the exact order in which they're supposed to go arrows so they know where they need to put them you can't hear it because we're in a zoom skull but if you try to ratchet something it will actually do the effect. I also had Julian here drop apart because I'm going to show you something that happens at the end.

With this also the other thing you can see here is for example when you start to clamp things up things like that so it will give you haptic feedback and both audio and you know feel and again these are very even though this is a very crude technology at the moment because those for example the remotes don't resemble you know an arm at all but it this is as you can see this in real life this looks very close to what you would be looking at and it's helped a lot of people train faster more amount of people in the same amount of span. For example if one worker used to train 10 people in a month now he can train probably 60, 70 and they end up being more proficient because of it again. It's all about gamifying the experience essentially. Another thing is which is what we like to show people when they come in is that okay so Julian has done this multiple times because we have to showcase it for clients or people that come visit but this is very intuitive. So you'll see that if you even if you have never used VR ever probably the first few parts will be hard to do but once you finish probably the first or second assembly you're off to the races. You start to understand what the game expects of you how it expects you to behave and it it becomes like second nature essentially. So he's about done. Okay there's one last thing.

Okay, so now that he's when when he finishes what we're gonna see is the other aspect that this brings to the table which is what do you do with this how do how can you evaluate because they don't they no longer have an actual teacher showing them. So what we did was also include into this metrics for example in this case we have each of these three columns is one piece one will tell you how fast the person attached it how accurate his attachment was and how many times he dropped that piece you can use this to make the training more efficient. So you can actually for example if you see that there's a step where they take so long that it doesn't make sense it's probably because that instruction is too complex. You should break into more bite-sized pieces or show better either diagrams pictures or better instructions themselves. So you can see whenever he highlights the piece he will the the graph it will tell you what that graph belongs to and then you can see for example if you show there so there's some green bars those are the parts that he dropped it will tell you how many times he dropped them and you can use this to measure how he hasn't been improving throughout the training throughout the months and again if you need to revise your instruction manuals and stuff like that. So I'm going to pass it back to Kristen if anybody has any questions please now that we're here or how we would use it.

One of the this is Lesa one of the attendees and Paul if you want to jump in here that's fine and un-mute yourself but it's mentioning how this would be a great piece of technology to train on very sensitive items and applications that I had not considered I was just mesmerized by the actual VR itself. I was a patriot missile systems repair and in order to fix parts of the radar you had to deal with 53,000 kilovolts of power and discharge the capacitor and all this kind of stuff and quite a few people got blown 30 feet plus by the bus bar on that thing and this would have been a very neat safety tool to be able to train people instead of them losing their life over it. Great point! I think that would be a fantastic application and I hadn't even considered that Paul thank you for that. That's really interesting. So that's another thing yes this also helps because you don't have to train under dangerous circumstances and again it not only helps the company and cost but also the actual users because it's less strenuous for them like they're not actually picking the item if it's heavy things like that and I'm going to show you real quick now that you mentioned that one other solution that we did in VR was this one which was for airplane repairs. So instead of actually going out and sometimes it might be either windy or anything like that instead of actually going out into the elements or anything like that people can actually train in a room and a 10 by 10 with a virtual plane and they could actually pretty much you know do all the validation and see different pictures either virtual pictures or actual pictures as you can see he has kind of a tablet in his hand if you look down for a little bit there that will show you more or less how it should look. You can put pictures here of the actual real-life item or in this case virtual because again this is supposed to be a generic demo we weren't supposed to attach it to any client or anything so that's why that picture is not a real one. But again yes this this is a very great tool for this type of thing and learning and whatnot and another thing that it's also very good for is for example in university and schools to teach kids any type of you know any topic honestly either chemistry, math, physics, anything we've had an event once where schools came around and we showed them that they are for example things for astrology where it would actually show you the entire solar system you could actually zoom in zoom out get information specific stars planets galaxies etc. and again it's a matter of making the learning a lot more fun so that it's more efficient for kids and and users are more you know into the actual training process instead of it being a torture essentially. And it's becoming so much more relevant now in this time of Covid. Right I mean how much manufacturing or design or development has slowed even education you guys are probably experiencing it too just what has changed and so more interactive more virtual more digital environment it's only going to grow. We've seen such an acceleration in the past year and we don't expect it to slow down.

 

Panel Discussion

Hello again, everybody. I’m Kristen Schweitzer. You've heard me talk for quite some time out there so I’m going to stop talking and introduce you to some of my colleagues. We'll mute on our side but go ahead and take it away. Lesa's going to lead us here. Yes you're good right. Okay. So first, thank you all for coming into the panel discussion. we are so happy -- Agency M-1 is tickled pink. We've been working on this and we just can't tell you thank you enough. We have lots of participants across several different business disciplines so we want to make sure that everyone's question - large or small - don't please ask that we do have a few that were sent in so I want to start out with one that's kind of generic at this point which is regarding this change with the pandemic and how everything has gone digital and Horace was really great in explaining how every company's a digital company every company is now a supply chain and we've seen that all maybe you someone would like to address the point of "What skills should a student strive to acquire to help companies achieve the transformation from maybe where they were and to where they need to be?" I’ve stumped all of you. I can talk a bit about that. My client specifically had to adapt in a huge way. I can't share my client but I can share some of the things that was helpful for me. I think it would just be overall like adaptability like being able to be flexible and being open to learning new things. This is a learning a high steep learning curve for all of our clients and Accenture in general so being flexible to work outside of your industry oftentimes and help the client in an uncomfortable time was really helpful for me. I’m just going to give everybody else a chance that's participating to not be shy and to ask some questions. Gabi, I know that you and I talked a little bit about the digital marketing side and Kristen let the cat out of the bag that that's what she is familiar with maybe you can talk a little bit about the digital marketing and how that has all changed for clients across the board and Gabi you'll be much more specific I’m sure than I am so, I don't want to steal your thunder in that regard. No, I think that's a great question and I think having the in-person experience to kind of hear from is definitely beneficial for all of us so Kristen if you wanted to talk a little bit on that. Sorry we're just working with some audio. So digital marketing is becoming we don't even really call it marketing anymore we call it transformation and we really like we talked out there we really look at how customers have shifted we tell our clients right now that if you had done any type of customer research or think what your buyer was last year throw it away. You have a completely different buyer today and it might be the same person but they are a different they have a different mentality toward everything. So, it's really I think it's been a good catalyst I think it's really helping clients and companies kind of get out of their ruts of like well we can't do that we've never done it that way and really forcing them to say if I were to start from scratch because that's what a lot of them did how would I approach it and if you just take that to its logical end the last is what does a customer need how am I going to give it to them and then how am I going to tell them that it's available. That's really the crux of what marketing is and just letting them know that it's available and letting them come to you when it's relevant and time for them. So I do think it's changing it's fascinating and like you see here again my background I had 20 years in traditional advertising like making newspaper ads and tv spots and this is the type of stuff I’m doing today and we call it marketing. So it's shifted before my eyes like I’ve never seen. I want to jump in. That's me - hold up. So here's a very technical detailed question I guess I’m not so technical but very detailed. So there are times when individuals from diverse specialized areas will be pulled together to complete a project. In your experience what have been the keys to helping this team function when they may not be speaking the same metaphorical language? Maybe I can take that. I’m Dave Quisenberry. It's nice to meet everybody. We so when we have a project that's goes across geo regions, countries, languages, cultures, you may have a subject matter that's heavy in cyber security who's working with an IT guy who's a little bit more in the hardware space and they're working with a marketing team that they all speak different languages. The key to drive these projects home when you have so many people is really gaining consensus. A lot of it's about listening a lot of it's about understanding the different schedules that everybody has to deal with and also the time zones you have to deal with. So a lot of this is especially with India they're going to bed just as we're starting our day and they're getting up just as we're going to bed so trying to coordinate all that is a very big thing. But the real key is to get to know the people get to know the leads, the subject matter experts, the client leads, and working with them to understand and translate the problems because each one of us looks at a problem through our own lens of experience and the key is going to get different people with different lenses to align and once we have that things run pretty smoothly. Hey everyone, it's Horace your friendly hub director hope you all are doing well. A couple things to add to both what Dave just shared as well as that very first question Lesa that you asked about transferable skills, what skills you need to do transition to the workplace, so, one, if you all haven't read the article and Lesa I’ll have to get it to you if this doesn't sound familiar but there was a there was an HBR article that came out in the November / December edition and it specifically talked about or spoke to how do you build how do organizations build robust teams and that article specifically called out three logical verticals of team member. It called out the expert - right so who's the person that knows the content cold - it called out the generalist right so a lot of companies these days will say hey generalists aren't valuable but I think the market is starting to change to the point where a generalist is valuable as long as they have a high value or high ability to adapt and be flexible which is actually how I’ve made my entire career and then there's this third vertical called and they called it something but I’ll just call it an integrator. The integration role was really around to the point that Dave just brought up and the question around people speaking different languages there are people that have made their entire career learning how to translate from business to technology. So because most of the jobs that we do at least refresh most of the jobs I’ve ever been on one of those two sides of the house owns it - either the business owns it or the IT group owns it and then but the stakeholder is the opposite group right and so you have to you have to be able to develop your own skills of learning how to translate from a to b right and there's always someone on the team that can do that. Because if there's someone if there's no one on the team that can do that then this whole concept of how do I get them to talk the same language it doesn't exist because engineers are engineers - finance people are finance people - right and so being able to have that translator in the mix is actually a critical role that is only more critical now because of this confluence of as I shared in that video every business is a technology business, every business is a marketing business, every business is an interactive business, every business is a health business, so you have to be able to talk all those languages right and then back to the question around - HBR equals Harvard Business Review - so if you all are interested in that article I’ll dig it up at least I can send it to you can get it to the masses if there if there's interest. The other thing that I wanted to go back on was piggybacking on Kristen's response to kind of the skills that you should be developing as you transition into the workforce and I’m going tell you all what you already know but I’m going to say it anyway because that's what good advisors and consultants do your job at Wayne State is to learn how to learn. Period. Right and you have a specialty and you have a function and you have a I was a chemical engineering major if you pull the Accenture people here Luis and Kristen and Dave and Kristen like we've all come from different places and backgrounds but we've all learned how to learn and if you figure out how to get out of out of Wayne State and figure out how to learn how to learn. Learn how to deconstruct a problem learn how to actually go identify the appropriate skills or individuals that you need to help solve the problem. Understand what your blind spots are. Understand what your strengths are. Make sure you don't over compensate on your strengths at the omission of a blind spot. If you figure out how to do that that's what's going to make you successful in the workforce because I will guarantee you one hundred percent the job that you hit day one leaving Wayne State is not the job that you will have five years after you start your career. But it's the flexibility, adaptability, and the tools that the folks at the Iliitch School of Business are putting in you around how to learn and deconstruct problems, that's the one thing you get too hyper-focused on statistical analysis and da da da da then you start to become a specialist and there's nothing wrong with specialists but 15 - 20% of the workforce are specialists. The rest of us learn how to kind of ebb and flow and go in between the nooks and crannies so I’m going on mute because if I don't I’ll keep talking but there was just too much meat on those bones to just not pull off and throw into the stew. So Lesa back to you sister. Horace, thank you! I’m so glad that you brought that back up because I think that is a really key component it's not necessarily just what we're learning but also learning how to learn and how to keep going on that arc as we go through our career so I don't want to overshadow I see Alexander Hawthorne has a question and so if you want to go off mute Alexander that would be great and you could ask your question. So okay I was trying I don't understand I understand the thing is I understand what you guys are saying. My problem is I’m trying I’m trying to get the ideas exactly like where is where is the value where is your guy's actual value in terms of as you guys are continually trying to appeal to other people as being a digital marketing agency and having to use other people's tools just to appeal to like one company specifically. Where is the value then of genuinely having that middleman as again I would say you guys eyes to just be generalist about something versus when you have to bring in other people. For example let's say that someone comes in as I don't know like a software engineer here specifically and they're trying to develop something and you bring them in specifically to develop some tool or technology that they have that needs to be created. Where is the point where you guys are getting in your own way because I know that that that's the thing that happens the value in you guys being able to at least have a certain amount of judgment over the people that you really hired to go ahead and do that and when that I’m sorry if it's like kind of weird. I’m happy to take a first crack I will I will admit and I’m going go back on mute because my team knows if you all give me the mic I’m going take the mic, so, let's deconstruct value for just a second. Right so if you think about if you think about value at its most base element. Value is just simply usability right and so if I think about this through the construct of why either our clients engage Accenture or why our innovation hub is even in existence, it's all about how do we translate business need or business function - intersect that with concept and then put those things in the bowl so that you actually have an artifact that is usable in the end game to advance mission whatever you want to do. So, like I said, I’m not quite following the question all the way but I do think that people will engage people will engage marketing companies, advising companies, consulting companies, what have you they do it because they understand that they've got a gap - they understand that the product or services that they're trying to either market or operate or what have you are not necessarily filling that gap in the way that they are being utilized and so then the value really is all right how do I take what you have and transform that into something that is usable that's going to take to hit the bottom line that you're trying to that you're trying to hit. That's the value. That's the value behind all of it right it's the value behind why you're at Wayne State right now right Wayne State has the ability to take this vision that you have marry that with the right skills and capabilities you're trying to develop to make you as an individual a usable a value-adding usable commodity to where it is you're unleashed on. Right and so I would welcome Kristen or Dave or the other Kristen or Emily to tag on but I think value is usability right and if you can't get there on your own then then that's where that's where agencies and consulting companies and innovation hubs and all that stuff coming to help show you the art of the possible and how to do it. Emily with as far as like digital integration and working with clients that specifically have maybe they had a digital integration plan started and then the pandemic hit and their three-year plan went to a three-week plan and the three week plan was condensed down to four usable options instead of 10, and now they've got to develop something very quickly and I know that that's happened from Fortune 500 companies that had to accelerate very quickly that weren't necessarily prepared because all of a sudden maybe a small company was much more agile that now they were a threat to a larger company that weren't before, can you talk about that a little bit and how maybe that's happened here within the Detroit innovation hub like I guess coverage area and have we seen more of that than maybe domestically or less or how did we benchmark across other innovation hubs across the nation or across the globe. So I’ll talk to part of that question and then the other part it's a big topic to cover. But I think from starting from where clients are pivoting I think we saw that early I guess now last year right - projects that were in flight had to stop or pivot or change or things everything changed for us right and for our clients. So it was very much so about what do we do now what can we do within this given budget that we may have or we're in the middle of our project we're in the middle of building this web portal what do we do what's critical for making sure that we can at least stand something up. Right, if we're even close enough to do that. So there was a big question of assessment. Can we do this off-site right can we can we continue supporting the team that we have and a lot of questions around how to pivot. Right and then it was just everyone was kind of just waiting to figure out what was going happen next before really making that decision on - let's put this on pause let's put this on hold or let's pivot to something new. I would say that definitely now with innovation and helping our clients make those decisions I think it's there's a there's a there's a short play and there's a long play and that's something that I think we're seeing a lot more as we work with different clients that nobody's making those really long plans five-year plan this and that right. I mean everyone's got another in their head because that's really what we're seeing and I think even in our personal lives too right it's super applicable. So it's kind of interesting seeing how that how that's changed and the way that that our clients take on different projects and the way that they innovate things or maybe they had a project that they were working on that now they want to understand what's the low hanging fruit what can we actually go and tackle right now from that point of view. And how that changes across like the different hubs or how we interact with other people within our innovation network, I would definitely say that there's a lot more I guess virtual collaboration and that opportunity has really significantly increased our engagement with folks across our network and then I don't know if maybe Horace and Dave you guys want to tag on to that but at least from my perspective as a designer it's definitely learning new tools, learning new skills, being more virtually agile, and just being really comfortable with this new environment. Have, I guess, has Accenture seen that obviously that has been across at least our nation experienced here domestically but Dave if you could say have we benchmarked equal to maybe international, not equal, are we behind are we ahead, what did we experience that maybe they didn't. Well that's an interesting question, and I probably should introduce myself real quick, I'm Dave Quisenberry, sales for Accenture. I started as a graphic designer from Michigan State. I’m now working on cloud transformation and cyber-security so you never know where you're going end up. What I what I think is true, when you look at having to go remote with different countries infrastructure is different countries. So underdeveloped countries that don't have strong internet or the ability to be remote to keep that bandwidth up, you see them lagging behind a little bit. It's not for need of want. They certainly are trying to do it or make finding a way around it but certainly they've had a more difficult time; whereas, in the U.S. everybody's got cable bandwidth we can do zoom teaching classes everything is super easy. I think you then go beyond that into the family structure of if you've got a lot of kids somebody trying to home school, well you've got more overhead as far as   the demands in your time than somebody like myself has which is just me and my house which is makes it pretty easy. So, as far as benchmarking, I don't I think everything is working really amazingly well. IIt took probably a couple months to kind of figure out the connections and get everything working properly but once that was sorted people kind of settled into it and now it's become our new normal. I missed I mean I just pinging everybody on the on the call here it's good to see everybody's faces against I miss my Detroit crew. But at the same time it this is our new normal we're very familiar with it now. So the question will be as we kind of exit out of this and as you're coming out of Wayne State, what will the new landscape look like. Will you be working in an office with 100 people or we'd be working in small pods that have different shifts different weeks different days. What will that look like and I think another part of that too is you're going have another thing that we didn't have on us. We woke up at nine o'clock. We went to the office. We left at five. You coming out of school may have to be your own self-starter. You may have to assign yourself and get yourself to do those things. So as you begin to think about your what your new world looks like walking into the office for the first time, you're going have to build your office at home perhaps an office offsite those are going to be the new rules of the game. When you guys get out of school. Thank you Dave. Those are some great points that I was just talking to a friend of mine that is in real estate and how before it wasn't a big issue for someone to have a dedicated workspace and now that's every question for every new home owner, home buyer, whether regardless of what market they're in. Ash I see that you've got your hand up so if you could unmute or I can do that for you if you can't and ask your question please. Hello everybody. My name is Ashish. I had a question and it's kind of a two-part question as we're talking about innovation and how these days companies are always trying to keep up with the latest best possible way to kind of integrate technology into their current working environment. When it comes to collaboration, how do you guys set a limit on the potential of help you can provide to the company and how much change does a company go through when your company comes in to actually integrate that technology? That would be my first question. My second question is how do you guys keep up to make sure that your help does not actually go backwards and as the time moves forward so there the help that you provide the technology that you innovate and help co-create with that company, how does that not become obsolete over time? Those are great questions. So since I'm the tech guy I guess I’ll answer that you've we aggressively try to stay up on top of everything that's out there and that's one of the reasons that companies hire us. Because we're working with so many other companies and we're seeing best practices across the board in different industries, we can begin to apply and look at the challenges they're having and help them respond very quickly. Company by company though I mean companies will get their technology up to a certain point, they tend to standardize and plateau for a few years, and then they'll upgrade again. They do them in those sprints so that when you have so many computers and so many systems dependent on so many internal linkages, you got to be careful about how often you actually do that kind of each one of those uplifts for a one OS update can have a catastrophic effect across the board. So it's really not just when you think about systems and computers, there are larger systems of play for manufacturing that link into product information that links into marketing that all these things are very heavily interconnected and that's why they need companies like us, that's why they need this middleman to kind of help them sort that out, and it's really because we have that best practice knowledge from all these other places. We have these subject matter experts that are integral to each one of those small systems but because they're talking to everybody else all the time in our in our ecosystem that knowledge share is really where the value comes in for the individuals out there. Does that answer your question. Well I was I was kind of wondering in the sense of how much change does a company go through when you first step in to help them. Like how much does of a structural change the company have to go through to integrate that technology when they're first coming to ask you for help. It really depends on how big the transformation is. If they're going from a bare metal ecosystem into like a cloud experience that's a pretty heavy lift. You have in the number of systems you have to move from bare metal up to the cloud that takes a lot of time. That's a two-year exercise generally several hundred people are involved with that. That's pretty challenging. A lot of times we see change happen when a like there's a c-suite organizational change. Shifts happen at the director level. They begin to move things around and that puts people in positions that want to achieve certain kinds of things. They're the ones that have the funds to do that so when you see a change like that that's generally when you see transformation happening. If you see a company that has an org chart that hasn't changed in probably 10 years and it doesn't look like it's going to change they tend to stick to the systems that they have in there if they're working well. So the lift will really depend on what the need is and what the vision is that's driving the larger company as a whole. Very good. Thank you so much. Your welcome Ash. We have Antonio with the question go ahead. I was just going say so I know that today it's common for companies to collaborate with their competitors versus like it used to be - these are our competitors, we don't want them to know anything about us or we're going to stay closed off to them. You being the innovation hub, I know there are other innovation hubs out there, do you collaborate with like your competitors and other innovation hubs to get like information and insight that you maybe don't get at your innovation hub or are you like closed off to these other competitors because sometimes I know that when you collaborate with your competitors it could actually benefit the business so what stance do you guys take with that with your competitor. Hey Antonio it's Horace. Good question. Let me take a crack at that. I mean so I think there's I think there's two layers to that. Right layer number one is our innovation hub in Detroit is a as a part of a network. Right so we're part of a network of 12 different innovation hubs in in North America, a hundred different kind of innovation hubs innovation centers that that that globally we've got hubs and centers and delivery studios. We've got a bunch of things. Right so there's a there's a network there which I think is piece one that you should just be aware of that the size and girth of the organization that we sit in. In addition to that and that's just the innovation slice in addition to that we also have a huge network of kind of technology experience all of these other pieces that fit into this global network all right so I think that's I think that's piece two. Then piece three kind of on the a side is we also have a very strong ecosystem and partnership network. So we actually have partnerships with everyone from your Microsoft's and your Googles and all your big boys all the way down to local startups that have specific niche functions and use cases for specific industries. Right so I think one of the one of the benefits of being in a firm with over 500,000 people with a global footprint is we've it's not just my hub. It's not just the six of us there's an entire network that sits behind it. So I think that's that that's piece one. Piece two is we do partner with I got to be careful around this one we do partner with either other ecosystem players, other technology players, other process players, when it when it makes sense. So to the if you went and looked at our standard list of competitors kind of Accenture versus other people I mean so Accenture, Deloitte, BCG, McKenzie, you don't see a lot of partnering kind of one-to-one there even though there are small pockets where it happens but where you typically see it more is a client has a specific need we are all client-centric and therefore in order to meet that need it is best if we Accenture partner with insert name of company or technology or practice here so that we can so that we can meet that need. That's how we tend to do that and then it does two things. One it allows us to ensure that we're being client-centric and providing them the need that they have as one and then two it also actually serves as an opportunity for us to uplift our skills, uplift our capabilities, up with our knowledge ,and make sure we're maintaining relevance, going back to what Dave said earlier. So that's kind of answer that's the answer to that question and I do want to just take 30 seconds to tag on to Ash your question earlier and just for everyone just so that you all know how we process innovation at Accenture. Innovation does not always mean technology it does not always mean flash and dash. It does not always mean cutting edge anything. Innovation could be as simple as I need to find a new route to get from my house to Wayne State because I-94 is shut down and right so innovation is simply just a new way of doing things that adds or unlocks value and when you think about innovation that way and you decouple it just from the technology piece, then it really starts to unlock, really starts to unlock opportunities and it starts to unlock the ability to be less culturally trans not transformative less culturally impactful right we do damage to our clients that hurts everybody. So the goal is to how to help the goal is to figure out how to help them lift whether it's technology whether it's culture whether it's process. So how do we do all of those things in a transformative value-add way not in a harming way and then how do we back Antonio to your question how do I then bring the relevant partnerships to bear that are going to enable us to do that. So two questions one answer but Antonio does that does that help. It helps thanks. I want to add on to that one too. Because I know Horace we talk about this all the time. About consuming content and getting out there and exploring and knowing what's out in the world with like startups and doing research and I just want to tag on I know we're always consuming content right but it's so much about the kind of content that we're consuming and how we're using that to expand and bringing that to the table for our offerings and offering that as not just I saw this but how is it relevant to our clients and continuously expanding that that frame of mind. Thank you Emily. I’m so glad that you added that on there because it just brings more to it. Alexander you've been really patient with me. Thank you can you go ahead and ask your question and maybe who you would like to answer? So I’m just specifically wondering how are you guys at least in terms of like at least recruiting for you guys for your innovation hub how are you guys specifically finding other startups at least to be able to at least help at least help you guys and work on at least whatever you guys need us need them and well the startups that really do in order to actually facilitate you guys like what is the process in terms of looking for some something that's about some a group that's valuable in that. All right, I promise - someone else can take it please. So I think that there's we kind of talked about that innovation architecture a little bit earlier those six pillars it starts with research and we have that ventures pillar but that's really the one that is looking for those startups and trying to find the technologies that might be being piloted anywhere in the world. That isn't something that actually sits in our Detroit organization. Again it's a benefit of being such a large global that Accenture has is that we've got those skills and those expertise at our fingertips but they're dispersed across the globe. So that's an individual skill set and organization within our larger firm but it's not actually part of Detroit. So we don't look for individual startups just locally here it's more about the technology that might be happening somewhere that could be relevant in the future. So I’m going to switch gears on everybody a little bit - I’m going to throw this little a teeny curve ball and I’m going to take you back a little bit some more than others we won't talk about the distance but I want to ask you maybe a personal question of what was the most pivotal lesson learned from college that's helped you in your professional career? Now we've heard how somebody's a graphic artist and somebody was a chemical engineer and someone and now you're not working on that specifically, but what was the most pivotal lesson that you learned in college that's helped you the most in your professional career. Well I guess I’ll jump in before Horace does. I would in graphic design you wouldn't think it would apply to this, but it was. I would I was taught how to think - critical thinking. How to break ideas down, distill them, and then what I could action off of those. So that's all I do every day now. I look at very complex problems I try to figure out who needs to do what, when, and how and I reassemble the thing. So graphic design production is not much different from what we do every day here for every project that we go after. So that's the one thing that I took away from college that I don't maybe they intended to teach me maybe they didn't but it's the one thing that I use every single day. I really appreciate that and since we have several members of faculty on this call from Wayne State so I’m sure that they're probably rooting that as well it's not we're not being taught what to think but how to think that's really wait you let them in they weren't supposed to be in this let them in what can we just let anybody in everybody say why not if anybody else would like to add to that we'd love to hear other viewpoints on that. I’d like to add to that first I forgot to introduce myself sorry. My name is Kristen Jordan. I’m a consultant in the Detroit office working in the public sector and I went to Howard University in DC and the biggest lesson that I learned was to put myself out there and network. Accenture when you join consulting in general when you join it is only what you make it. So it's uncomfortable and I’ve learned that like just to go with being uncomfortable because that's when I’ve grown the most and like for example I met Kristen and I was like this is what I’m interested in doing Kristen was like I have a project for you. So it's like putting yourself out there that was the only way I got any of the projects that I was on that was the only way that I started to grow is telling people what I was interested in making it known and finding these mentors within Accenture and so I think network, learn to network, learn to make connections that are lasting and meaningful, and that's my advice. I’m not going to stop anybody else from adding to that but you bring that up that Kristen that making those personal connections and that's difficult in this zoom world in the Covid world I guess we're calling it and so knowing that networking and you discussing specifically how networking has specifically added to your contributions at Accenture and how you've worked through different projects it's really interesting to know. So now I’m going to put you on the really big spot and I’m going to ask you - your educational background - how did it maybe those particular things not translate directly into your real world career experience because we all know that we love to study the ideal while we're in college but doesn't necessarily always pan out that way. I studied finance in college and when I started Accenture my first project was on a healthcare client had nothing to do with finance at all. I was doing a technology implementation. Didn't know anything about the technology at the time. I was like what do I need to do on here they were like you need to research this technology and figure it out so that you can be of value by tomorrow and continue to research. So like I said in the beginning in the first question it's like just being adaptable, being open to different opportunities, now my project that I’m on now in the public sector does have to do with finance so it kind of came round circle but the lessons that I learned in the projects that I had in healthcare and doing technology implementations definitely transferred and it's like being able not only to make connections within Accenture is also about being able to make connections with the client which is extremely important. So those are some ways that a finance major came to be in technology implementation back to finance. Emily, you look like you're about to say something. I am and only because I feel so compelled to share this with the group because I actually happen to think and I think most of the people on the call may agree that know me that I’m actually very outgoing in person but having to now be in this environment like you really have to learn to rework your network and do all these new things that maybe you didn't do before even though you feel like you did them but now you're doing them from your guest's bedroom and it's completely different. So I think a lot of of kind of re-learning it just never ends right. So I mean you're learning how to do these things in college and then when you get to work things change and you just you have to be flexible and adaptive and be willing to take some of those learnings that you had from college and continue to apply them in new and different ways. I guess I’d just build on top of that too. I mean, I'm from graphic design to where I am now you think not a lot of that applies but those are just the building blocks that kind of got me into what I do now I mean when I’m doing pitches and PowerPoints obviously that skill set comes into play very heavily but at the same time getting to where you're at this far in my 36 years in the career - always learning, always looking, always trying to figure out new things, you just never stop growing in that format. That's one of the things I love about Accenture that I didn't find anywhere else it was simply that there's a lot of opportunity to educate yourself to learn. There's a massive wonderful mentoring program to kind of help you get through the thing. Everything is in a company like Accenture you're actually set up to succeed. We've got all the pieces there they try to culturally put all those pieces together for you so you don't have to go and try and figure it out that's something that you don't get at a lot of companies. Some companies you walk into and they don't have that kind of structure to help you succeed initially and also continue to train you so that you can grow in different ways. So, from a graphic designer to serve security cloud stuff. It was an easy transition right one from one to the other. One of the things that I’m just going throw this in there because it's one of my questions and I would love for Kristen, Emily, whomever, Luis how has working from home changed how you are addressing or diagnosing a particular situation or problem for one of your clients have you noticed that you spend more time less time are you more productive less productive does the dryer bell going off hinder your thought process. I mean we've all we've all had to change into that. I’m just curious of how you've managed the process of personally having to transition while you're helping clients. So if you guys don't mind real quick. So, for me it was very eye-opener and it made me adapt a little bit more than I expected to. For example, usually we go to client sites see the problem in person show it to our SME - subject matter experts - and then start diagnosing issues and how we can solve them etc. Now we can't. We can't travel. We can't go visit them. We can't send anyone. It's essentially it was just pictures and whatnot. In this process essentially I had to come up with another way of helping my team deal with anything that we had to do client facing and we ended up doing something like we showed today with the center where you guys were able to see a 360 view of everything. That's where that initially came from we had to send a camera up to our clients, I had to work with them remotely, take pictures of everything we needed, essentially as if we were walking there in person and then guide them in the call going step by step understanding the problem but again learning new technologies and new ways of interacting from the come from my home or here in the office without being able to travel so with heavy restrictions essentially. So it made it more difficult but it made it worth it I learned new things essentially. I think one of the things that what I’ve noticed with individuals working from home have been just managing that work life balance. I know that's been a big issue just for me personally that I have spent more hours in this particular spot than I have probably the entire time I’ve lived in this location and I see lots of heads nodding that we're all in the same boat and I’m wondering how that's affected the teamwork aspect. We've all had those moments where we've got to work together as a team and then all of a sudden the dog decides to make a cameo or my internet went out how do you manage that with working with I mean we've seen how you've adapted with that with your own specific role how have you adapted as a team to be able to communicate that with your clients. I can take that one. So for me we have this saying at Accenture called truly human and it's really just that that we are human beings and I think that like when I when we all started virtually it was like everyone was trying to have like the perfect background, people were worried about their kids being loud, but like now it's like that's just something that comes with working from home and I think it's like drawn me closer to my clients and also to my co-workers because I’m like I know that if I have a if I have a call with this client he's going to be teaching English to his five-year-old son and his three-year-old daughter is going to run through their office chasing their cat every morning at 9 30 a.m. and that's just that's just what you have to deal with when Ryan’s on the phone. Because he is a father. He's raising two children and I know his wife who's also the client is doing the same thing. So it's like we just take it he's a human being and he's trying to make it work. So I think it's drawn us closer together and understanding people's lives outside of work and just like having more patience with people and understanding that we're all human. So yes I live in a studio apartment so you're going hear the dryer like I can't control that my clothes have to get washed. So that's just how it is but also I will highlight what you were talking about at work life balance and how that was definitely an issue for me and like forgetting to eat and like you can go through meetings all day there is no transport to the office anymore I don't need to drive anymore. So like setting blocks of time to have lunch to go work out to just sit there and just like not think about work for a second has been really important. Thank you Kristin! I really appreciate that and I understand it's gets the time gets away from you very quickly and the focus needs to change just for our own mental stability and health and in that regard. One of the things that was sent in by one of the students that asked a very specific question and so I want to change gears again kind of head it back into the technology and business client world. With regard to I guess I will say information policy we're all working from home everything's digital transfer everything's digitally shared specifically and I want to make sure that I read this question correctly. What specific areas would you suggest a student focus on with regard to IT policy or information policy and governance with regard to handling clients from home or with an employer and what particular skill set and maybe that's actually architecture as well to handle those new challenges with working from our space at home. Dave here. Again so I guess we just I mean we're going through this with our clients right now pretty much all of them. A lot of cyber-security, master data management, is really where that's seated as far as governance goes it's not so different than what you're currently learning. There's no special application because of your at home or somewhere else. Every company has their own set of rules for firewalls that are set up on the laptops or at the homes. It really comes down to what the company policy is for all of that so I don't know that there would be any more beyond what the curriculum currently has for computer science or data whatever is there is pretty much what you have and right now things are changing a bit with the California law going into effect about the sharing of data. But that again is all managed by the larger systems that would be that are exchanging the data back and forth. So master data management is kind of where I’d focus. Cyber-security would be a sub-category that I might look into and just kind of follow those threads and figure out what our best practices out there in the world and then align that to the curriculum you're looking at there Wayne State. One of the things that we talk a lot about with curriculum as we talk about cyber-security, we do discuss CanSpam laws which are the United States version which is different than the CCPA laws that have now come out and the GDPR laws that and those specifically for those who may not be aware those are privacy laws that particularly attain or attach to a client or a person that's visiting a particular website and how much information they can receive do they receive it until they tell us to stop or do were we permitted to not send them do we have to gain permission to send them anything and so one of those things that we're seeing with our curriculum (close your ears John) that we're seeing some lag because the change is coming so quickly, we're playing catch-up and learning those things and I’m sure that's the case with everybody making that transition as well. One question that I have and is a little bit interesting is there a difference in the career path for someone with an advanced degree at Accenture versus an undergraduate degree at Accenture. I’ll just speak for myself I don't have an advanced degree it hasn't stopped me at all. Really I mean it's that you get to a certain point where your value is your knowledge or your experience and that and over time will prove itself out. I think if you come in with an advanced degree you certainly have a leapfrog advantage because you've been schooled through case studies that four years you're putting in are pretty highly focused on getting you a little further ahead. So it's not it's a gap you can make up in the real world but certainly they I would go with advanced degreed to like get a little bit of a head start but has it been a roadblock to anything not for myself. Glad to know that especially as I finished my undergrad in May and considering my graduate studies and how quickly I went to attack that, eat that elephant one bite at a time, anybody else Kristen, Emily, Luis want to add to that. No. So I do have a I have a master's degree in mechanical engineering and again I when I came in to Accenture I came in with two other friends which were also mechanical engineers but they only had a bachelor's and that has made no difference. It's really a lot to your attitude and again yes it does give your head a bit of a head start because I at the construct problems in a different way because I was again a little bit more specialized than they were but apart from that anyone again you can start from different start points and get to the same end goal without any issues that doesn't matter. So Horace touched on this a little bit before where he said that the position you may be hired for it used to be pushes and you were hired for initially was not the same job that you had five years from the end things evolved but also now we've seen that somewhat accelerate that the position I may be hired for tomorrow would not be the same in a year because of all the transformation that's happening how is tech consulting changed maybe what was the pace prior Covid and the pace now. It hasn't changed a lot to be honest with you there the there was a an immediate sprint in spring of last year around march that lasted about 90 to 120 days obviously companies had to very quickly spin up and tool up for moving their workforce to a remote framework that wasn't planned so that caused a lot of rush but beyond that things have got advancements in tech,   cloud, everything else it's all gone at the same pace there's every once in a while you'll see a milestone reached that kind of lifts up everything and that creates a an impetus to actually change very quickly and respond but for the most part there's it has not a lot to do with Covid or anything else it's just tech goes as fast as tech goes. It is getting faster. My iPhone is already out of date so that's just the way it is but yeah last week yeah exactly so I mean it is moving quicker and I believe too that the more other countries, other geo zones, get stronger infrastructure in place things will speed up a bit more too but it is what it is and it's I have not seen any lag or any anything slow down or speed up except for that one moment in Covid where we had to move the workforce remote. Gotcha okay. Emily, I give myself away every time I just don't want to step on anybody's comment I just go right ahead. So for me personally, I think yes I agree with David and then I also want to add that from at least my particular job function which I also did not have a chance to introduce myself sorry - Emily Banks - so as a designer out of the hub now so many companies are pushing forward with these new initiatives they're thinking we want to get to the market before anybody else, we want to bring the most innovative thing, we got to bring our collaborations,   right now because this is the chance right everyone's kind of gathering their bearings and going back out right. So I feel that for me personally I mean I’ve been crazy busy the last couple of weeks as a result of that just because everyone is in that same state of we are going get that speed and take that win that's on our back and do it right now we don't want to miss our chance. So I think definitely it's at least and over the last five years has the pace changed very much and I say five years because I’ve been with Accenture now for I’m going on year five, I wouldn't say that the pace changes but as you lose some of that luxury of keeping your knowledge to yourself with the more time you spend at a firm. Because people get to know you they know what you're good at they kind of pull you into more stuff and then there goes your free time because then you're a hot commodity people want your skills they want to pull you into new projects and they want to they want to know what so I think it just it just kind of depends with it goes very much so I I would say with the speed of the market and the way that people are feeling in the in the marketplace and right now everyone's just kind of like I think from our personal lives I think everyone's just kind of like okay when is this going to be over but I also think that from a business perspective at least like I said from my point of view where we're kind of up front and trying to stimulate some of that sales activity, I think it's definitely in a completely different spot. I can understand exactly that answer and yet I’m going to even put you further on the spot and I ask all of you from the Accenture team anybody care to speculate where business consulting is headed? In what way, what industry? Anybody want to jump in there and try it I mean Kristen your finance you want to try and time this market. I can say from the public sector perspective and where I’m working that we're definitely more sought after right now based obviously because of everything that's going on with Covid but in terms of like overall obviously I think that a lot of clients are going to be hesitant to ask us to come back. They need to figure out what they're going to be doing with their own workforce force first. So we'll see if we are traveling as much as we once did and when that will start if we do start traveling again. Also the need for consulting is really complexity. The more complex the problem the reason that's why you need consultants to come in and help you solve that. So as we become more digital, as we connect more technologies together that adds complexity to a model that most companies don't have a core knowledge for and that's why consultants are needed. So I do see it I mean it's been growing quite a bit since well since the Mac came out to be honest with you so it's going continue to trend that way as it gets more and more complex and as I mentioned before as other geos and cultures get more infrastructure embedded in there that's going to add to the complexity. So it's a growing space for sure there will always be a value for somebody that knows how to put a couple of the pieces together and connecting them with somebody else that has that that's outside of a firm. So I feel like I have great job security. I’m with a great company. We've got a lot of great people here on this call looking at what they might want to do with their careers in their lives. So it's a nice place to be. I agree with you. One housekeeping item students if you need to verify your attendance to your professor the link has been put in the chat I’m going to go ahead and drop it in there one more time you need to follow that link so that you can provide that for your instructor and complete the form in its entirety so that you can receive that. I want to take the moment to thank Kristen Schweitzer and Kristen Jordan, Emily Banchs, Luis Rivera Santos, David Quisenberry, and Horace Tiggs isn't here but thanks to Horace just the same thank you all.

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It would just be overall like adaptability, like being able to be flexible, and being open to learning new things.

  • The expert: the person that knows the content cold
  • The generalist:  a lot of companies will say generalists aren't valuable, but I think the market is starting to change to the point where a generalist is valuable as long as they have a high value or high ability to adapt and be flexible 
  • The integrator: this role focuses on people that have made their entire career learning how to translate from business to technology