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Since adding in the capabili- ties and teams from The Monkeys, Fjord, Maud and 2nd Road to the Interactive team, he says the energy and culture has been infectious.
“Every time the acquisition has brought in some very good talent and it’s an experience where we’ve had to evolve. That’s one thing which I really enjoy in Accenture,” he says.
“The best thing that we do is change ourselves regularly. We thrive on change. These acquisi- tions help us continue to be on our toes, bringing in new talent, and looking at the same problem with a different lens.”
Design and innovation firm Fjord joined the Interactive fam- ily in 2013 and a year later opened up shop in Australia with Bronwyn Van Der Merwe as employee number one. Van Der Merwe was hired to establish the design capability in Australia and eventually across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.
Today she has a dual role as general manager for Fjord APAC and the design lead APAC at Accenture Interactive. Her role for Interactive sees her lead the design teams across the portfolio which includes brand strategy and brand design, and growth, venturing and business design in addition to product and service design.
“It’s a really incredible team and I’m extremely proud and honoured to be part of such a talented group of people,” Van Der Merwe says.
“It’s a really unique set of skills in the market in terms of the breadth of capabilities, but also the scale and the footprint. The combination is just killer.
“The combination of the design and the creativity of the team with the rest of the technology prowess of Accenture Interactive, and then all of the industry depth knowl- edge of Accenture, it’s a really exciting place to be.”
Getting to where they are now wasn’t necessarily smooth sail- ing though, she admits. As the first designers in the business, there was a lot of work to be done educating others within Interactive and the broader extended family at Accenture.
“There was a lot of work to be done to educate colleagues around the value of design and what it can bring to clients in terms of helping them to solve their challenges,” she says.
“And really take a much more human-centred and experience-led lens to the work that we do to help our clients transform their busi- nesses and re-imagine whole industries.
“But it took a while to really put in place the right ecosystem and conditions for a design team to thrive.”
Van Der Merwe believes design is only “one piece of the puzzle” for clients. Coming together with the others within the Interactive family helps, she says, helps them live up to what Interactive is all about: reimagining business through experience.
This involves everything from design to brand strategy, comms plan and the right technology and platforms.
“You need all of the bits that we have within Accenture Interactive to actually be able to deliver on the ambition of making a difference in the world and transforming industries and doing this experience for imagination,” she says.
“Multiple parts of
a business coming together to deliver integrated solutions so seamlessly.” Sunita Gloster