FRIDAY INTERVIEW:MARK RYAN, managing director of Accenture Ireland
FROM HIS vantage point in a top-floor office overlooking Grand Canal Square in Dublin, Mark Ryan has had a bird’s eye view of Ireland’s recession. In 2007, Accenture, the management consulting firm he heads up in Ireland, was one of the first tenants in a development that was going to kick-start the renewal of the south docks area.
Like the rest of the economy the pace of development slowed. Grand Canal Theatre opened next door to Accenture’s offices last year, breathing some life into the area, but an empty unopened hotel still dominates one side of the square.
Accenture had its own wobble as the recession hit. Staff numbers dipped to 1,260. But with the 80 graduates entering its recruitment programme this year, numbers are heading for 1,400 – a level last seen in 2007.
Accenture doesn’t break out country-specific revenues but industry estimates put local turnover at about €190 million last year.
“[Business] is definitely improving and it’s definitely a lot better than it was,” says Ryan.
Ryan is particularly pleased that a new Accenture research and development centre, which will create 100 new jobs over the next four years, with 20 already filled, was formally opened in Dublin this week.
Analytics has been identified as a growth area for Accenture whose current core areas are management consulting, technology services and outsourcing.
According to Ryan the massive explosion of data being created online means “companies have lots of data but very little information”. Accenture believes it can generate a nice profit helping clients make some sense of all that data whether its on Facebook, Twitter or just stored in their own databases.
The Dublin centre will focus on developing software and analytic processes to detect and eradicate fraud, error and waste. It is already working with the Revenue Commissioners, a long-time Accenture client, to tackle the issue of PAYE fraud. Ryan admits he spent a great deal of time and energy convincing the firm to locate the centre in Ireland. “It’s been a while in the pipeline,” he smiles.
Given that IDA Ireland boss Barry O’Leary is on the record about how much harder it is now to sell Ireland as a location for investment, weren’t there concerns at Accenture HQ about the Irish economy?
“Not really. There were concerns in a nice way as in how are things going, what can we do?” says Ryan.
If there were any doubts back in the US, wider events in Ireland can’t have helped. The expansion was announced at the end of last November, just days after the Government finally raised the white flag and hammered out details of the €85 billion EU-IMF bailout.
“It was the worst time that any of us had and it [the investment] was this little chink of light in the doom and gloom. In fact a number of people asked me at the time: ‘Surely you were under pressure?’ ‘Were they going to halt the investment or re-think it?’,” he explains.
It also helped that, since 2009 Accenture has been officially headquartered in Ireland, having moved its incorporation from Bermuda. Ryan says regular visits by the top brass for board meetings also keep the Irish operations front of mind.
Accenture’s traditional Irish business is split about 50/50 between outsourcing and management and technology consulting.
“More and more organisations are looking at what outsourcing does for their cost model . . . freeing up management time to focus on the core activities.”
He concedes outsourcing still has a bad reputation in Ireland where it is seen as shorthand for jobs moving to low-cost locations overseas.
“You can effectively outsource and still keep the jobs on-shore,” he says citing the example of Accenture’s contract with Microsoft, where hundreds of staff transferred to work with the consultants.
Although some of Accenture’s long-term clients have felt the pinch that’s not always bad news. Even though the banks “are on their knees”, Ryan says they “remain good clients of ours on the basis there is a massive amount of restructuring that needs to go on”.
He believes the recent stress tests on the banks adopted a “a belt and braces approach” and that if some of the scenarios envisaged materialise – such as 25 per cent default on mortgages – the banks capital requirements will be the least of the country’s problems.
“At this point it feels like there is a real line in the sand,” says Ryan.
Multinational business – whether from international firms like Microsoft and Pfizer or the homegrown variety such as Kerry Group – has been more resilient. “They have been pretty immune. It was the banks and the construction sector that brought in the recession.”
Although public sector business is understood to be less than 20 per cent of Accenture’s Irish business, the firm has a number of high profile contracts, notably with the Department of Agriculture and the Revenue Commissioners. Ryan sat on a public sector reform taskforce in 2007 and it is an issue that still gets him animated. He admits to being “irritated” that the whole debate about public sector reform has crystallised about how many staff will be cut, with Labour suggesting 12,000 during the election and Fine Gael 25,000.
“That’s not what it’s about. Public sector reform is going to require some investment but it’s also about efficiencies,” says Ryan. Rather than duplicating functions, he says shared services centres should be established, an area Accenture has plenty of experience in.
He also says “demarcation lines have to go”, with civil servants moving between functions and departments as needed. And he believes technology, such as “self-service portals” similar to the Revenue OnLine Service that Accenture worked on, is key to pulling it all together.
This might sound like a pre-tender pitch for Accenture but Ryan says his firm is willing to do its bit for Ireland Inc. He is proposing “value-based deals”, where Accenture’s compensation would be related directly to the amount of money the successful project saves the Exchequer. He gives the example of the City of London Corporation in Britain where Accenture is engaged in a project to save £28 million. The more money saved the bigger Accenture’s fee; if a pre-determined saving is not achieved, the firm loses out.
“It’s all about our remuneration being tied to the realisation of those benefits, rather than the old days of charging for times and materials,” says Ryan.
He denies that such an arrangement would just favour the big consultancies but says the current public procurement process would have to be reworked to allow for this kind of charging.
“There isn’t money there to be spent on projects, but there is money to be saved,” says Ryan.
ON THE RECORD
Name: Mark Ryan
Age: 52
Position:Country managing director, Accenture Ireland
Family:Married to Clare with four children
Why is he in the news:Accenture formally opened its new analytics research centre in Dublin this week, creating 100 jobs over the next four years.
Something you might expect: He's an Accenture lifer, having worked with its predecessors Arthur Andersen and then Andersen Consulting.
Something you might not expect: He's passionate about Connemara ponies and breeds the hardy horses on land he inherited in the west.
