| Topic Name: |
ACN Vs BE |
| Message Name: |
Investment vs. Career |
| Date Posted: |
02/13/2006 |
| Message: |
If you are looking for an investment, ACN stock is a much stronger buy than BE. To be fair, BE's drop in the recent past makes it a possible, (tho slightly risky) buy for speculators. However, ACN, with its business model of selling, staffing, laying off, selling more plus the big move from IT consulting to IT outsourcing, makes current profitability something that should carry on into the near future. Also, by 2010, once the pre-IPO partners have cashed out and left, the focus will return to long-term growth rather than short-term stock price hiking.
If you're looking for a job, then you should look beyond any short term stock price behavior of the employer company and look at the job instead. ACN and BE are very different.
First of all, BE usually focuses on hiring experienced individuals while ACN focuses (and prefers) less experienced. 26 years old would actually put you in the middle of the age range here. So ACN is good for newbies just out of college or recently (less than 6 years) out of college. ACN would not be the place for someone experienced, especially if you are over 35 years old.
While both companies provide IT services, ACN focuses on the technical IT consulting while BE focuses on the business analysis, project management and information technology strategy side of the business. If you are more interested in aligning IT with business goals, or if you have an MBA, or if you are interested in project management (and not just having a "manager" title and following the dots), then BE is for you. If you want to focus on hands-on, technical system analysis, network design, application design, database architecture, etc, then ACN is for you.
While ACN is not Andersen Consulting with a name change, BearingPoint is, pretty much, the KMPG Consulting with a name change. The reputation remains intact, as does the business consulting part of the business. Accenture has a strong reputation for I.T. implementation and structured, methodic application building and testing, but the business consulting side (inhereted from AC) has taken a hit, reputation-wise. It's still respected, but it's a minor part of the business and has re-invented itself with a strong focus on such things as transformational outsourcing. Sum result of all this is that when people think ACN, they think fast and dirty computer programming and application integration performed by a company that has done this hundreds of times and has a "factory" style workforce than works as efficiently as any automobile assembly line.
ACN is a great stepping stone for kids right out of college. Stay 3 or 4 years, get college out of your system and build up some buzz words on your resume. Then move on to your career job at another company. BE is the kind of place you might end up later in your career, especially after you work in industry for a while, and add business, managerial and industry-specific knowledge to your experience bank.
So, for investments, go with ACN. For a job, it depends on your age andyour career goals (the development and applications integration side of IT or the business alignment and planning side of technology).
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