Accenture Insight Day

On the 20th November over 50 Diploma in IT students travelled from the surrounding areas to Manchester city centre to attend the Diploma in IT: Accenture Insight Day.

The day began with the students hearing from a senior consultant manager about what Accenture do and the role they play in the UK economy. This was followed by ‘A Day in the Life’ of an Accenture employee delivered by an intern at Accenture taking a gap year between leaving school and heading to university (to find out more about Accenture internships click here) who is now leading the life of a high flying consultant.

The main activity during the day was a workshop led by Accenture employees. This was based on a case study of a struggling fictional retail business called ‘StarCom’. The aim of the task was for the students to work in groups of between 5 and 7, each led by an Accenture employee, to find a technology solution to regain StarCom’s position as a key player in the retail clothing industry.  The students did this by considering what they had learned so far in the Diploma, particularly focusing on the following two units within the Diploma in IT:

• The Potential of Technology
• Creating Technology Systems

The workshop started with the Accenture representatives bringing the project to life by staging interviews with different members of the StarCom team. The groups then had 50 to minutes to work as a team to discuss the task and create a three minute presentation addressing the following two questions:

1. What do you believe are the major challenges facing StarCom?
2. What solutions would you put forward to address these challenges and why?

Two members of each team then had to present back to a panel of employer judges and were subject to a further 2 minutes of questioning from the panel. All the groups delivered their presentations with confidence and using the knowledge they have gained from studying the Diploma in IT. 

Following the presentations the judges came together to make the difficult decision of choosing a winning group. During this short break, students were given the opportunity to check out the BigAmbition website to learn about careers in technology and to enter competitions to win work experience and also the chance to win an iPod nano. The students also completed feedback forms about the day and one lucky student won an iPod nano!!

The day was bought to a close with the winning team being announced from Tameside Diploma Consortium were studying the Higher Level Diploma who were awarded prizes for winning the workshop session.

Accenture's Anju Elmes, Consulting Senior Manager Global Delivery Network, said this about the day:

“It was an extremely enjoyable day where we had the chance to work with the students sharing with them our day to day experiences and the work that we do. The “Industry Insight Days” help bring to life real world experiences for the Diploma in IT students preparing them better for a future in the IT Industry and Accenture is dedicated to support this course and engage with the students. The students demonstrated creativity, initiative and impressive analytical and communication skills in the workshops and subsequent presentation along with an understanding of the concepts of IT which made the day truly rewarding.”

To find out more about what it’s like working for Accenture you can watch this ‘A Day in the Life’ video.