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‘Transformation isn’t just about systems or technology’: the Hertz/Accenture debacle

By Stuart Toller, Director

May 3, 2019 | 6 min read

When the news broke about global car rental brand Hertz’s $32m lawsuit against management consultancy giant Accenture, eyebrows were raised in studios and boardrooms across the industry.

digital transformation

Hertz is suing the marketing behemoth for breach of contract, claiming that Accenture’s digital division failed to deliver on the redesign of Hertz’s website and mobile apps. The car rental company wants to recover the fees it paid to Accenture for the project and the resulting damages.

As more mind baffling details of this website redesign nightmare were revealed, it became clear that many of the industry issues we’ve been grappling with were still at play even as recently as May 2018 when Hertz decided to pull the plug on its ill-fated partnership with Accenture.

Although this Goliath vs Goliath battle is being fought in the US, the challenges are shared by marketers around the world. I was particularly struck by the important role digital transformation and the client/agency relationship have played in this case. There are a few early lessons to be learned in order to avoid Hertz’s website redesign woes.

Like many in the digital marketing space, my experience of digital transformation is that it can’t be achieved by simply launching a new website, updating some internal systems or introducing shiny new ones. Transformation isn’t just about systems or technology, it’s about business change - which is why for many businesses, the worst place for digital transformation to start is with the IT team. Instead, transformation should be more focused on reaching a mindset change from the bottom up, with everyone in the business understanding the need for that change. In effect, there needs to be a cultural shift and collective willingness to disrupt the status quo for digital transformation to succeed. An ambitious large scale digital transformation project like Volkswagen’s €3.5bn digitisation initiative exemplifies how brands are taking their people and customers on the transformation journey with them and gradually shifting brand culture and mindsets along the way.

Based on the facts we know; Hertz appears to have come to this project from a position of being culturally prepared and understanding the need for digital transformation to succeed in a highly competitive industry. Some of the stipulations and clauses that were allegedly broken by Accenture ironically illustrate Hertz’s desire for its customers and staff to get the best experience from the redesign. The brand might not quite have been aiming for the dizzying heights of the digital dominance that Domino’s achieved over its rivals, but there were certainly signs of a desire to improve the online customer experience.

From its specific request for an interactive, updateable style guide rather than a PDF, the extensibility requirement so the code could be used for Hertz’s other brands, to security concerns about the customer-facing ecommerce website, Hertz seems to have been thinking strategically with this project and looking for more than just ‘a shiny new website’.

There is merit in bringing in an independent party to drive a digital transformation campaign, and Hertz must be commended for contracting Accenture to spearhead it. It was an ambitious two-year redesign project, which the brand admitted it lacked the technical capability and know-how to deliver internally. It could be even contended that Hertz heeded the best practice advice that agencies have been championing – successful brands partner with an expert in implementing digital transformation. So why did Accenture’s work fall short of expectations and how can agencies continue to work successfully with brands and businesses that are more conscious of the fact that digital transformation is not just an app or a website?

It’s dangerous to speculate, but from the outside, it appears that there was a lack of project ownership at Hertz and the Accenture team was left to its own devices for much of this programme – so it’s no surprise that their view of success was different to Hertz’s. It’s also unlikely that the right people on the ground at Hertz were involved in the process. The internal stakeholders tasked with leading the digital transformation, be it at board or senior management level must ultimately be responsible for the end results. Businesses working in partnership with external third parties should appoint an internal brand guardian to manage each stage of the process and ensure that the end results are reflective of what their customers and staff need.

The fact that a single programme of work was worth $32m should have sounded alarm bells at its inception for both parties, not least the brand. Even if that was the overall digital transformation programme budget, there should have been smaller iterative deliverables within it with checkpoints to ensure that the output was on track and in line with what had been promised at the pitch and negotiations stage.

It is worth noting that Accenture is not an incompetent company, so it’s likely there were problems on both sides for this to go as wrong as it has. And in the interest of fairness, I hasten to add that even though they make for fascinating reading, Accenture has said that the allegations are without merit and it fully intends to defend its position.

In our world it’s easy to forget that the client is usually the expert when it comes to their business and their customer behaviour. At the end of the day, they are the ones that will have to live with the outcome and commercial success or failure of any digital transformation programme. As agencies, bringing them on the journey is vital to success and will help to prevent these occurrences which cast a shadow over our collective efforts to encourage transparency in the client agency relationship.

Stuart Toller is the director of Dam Digital

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