Avanade Reviews

Pros

- Work/life balance is good
- Excellent benefits
- Good access to training

Cons

- No opportunities for growth at higher levels
- Definitely an "old boys club" mentality
- Accenture controls everything the company does at this point
- Entrepreneurial spirit has vanished
- Company has turned into a bean counters delight
- Internal processes are cumbersome and lack agility
- Same old, stale talent rehashed throughout leadership positions

Advice to Senior Management

Everyone loves to meet metrics but there has been too much focus on growing revenue at the expense of our people. This was once a great place to work. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Accenture needs to flush the management pipes.

Pros

Opportunities for technology training
Dedicated training time
$2000 technology benefit
Vendor discounts
3 week vacation after 2 years
Pays for Microsoft Certification

Cons

Career advancement is very limited
Cross department communication and collaboration
No strategy for Sales or Marketing
No company business standardization
Issues with pointing fingers at other departments instead of resolving issues
ITS help desk doesn't care about their customers and barely knows the products they support
Company passes to much information to their competitor and parent Accenture

Advice to Senior Management

Stop adding multiple levels of management for former Accenture employees and start working on standardizing global processes. If this was implemented the company could work together as a whole and not region against region or country against country.

Start working on your direct business, not being Accenture's puppet, the original intent for Avanade has been completely lost and was always a good idea.

The ELT is so removed from the day to day work at Avanade they do not know what the average employee does or has to go through to complete their work. So in turn they are unable to make decisions that have a positive impact on the company.

Pros

Good work life balance
Great people who want to do a good job
Flexible to accomodate personal circumstances
Open culture - good access to all leaders

Cons

Poor salaries/promotion opportunities
Poor leadership at all levels
People Management skills weak
Weak executives - recent reshuffle has exposed weaknesses
Leaders are predominantly white/male - poor diversity
No career opportunities - to move on need to move out
Biased towards Accenture employees

Advice to Senior Management

Don't be afraid to exit poor performers - don't just move them to another role.

Pros

fun atmosphere and flexible working hours

Cons

compensation not as competitive as in other companies int he same industry

Pros

The chance to work with Great people who are leaders in their field. Fantastic training for softskills (not so good on hard was my experience!) very demanding in MCPD requirements makes it very Hard Work to balance with family and utilization targets.

Cons

Probably a lot better place to work now the consulting industry has picked up again. Would probably work for them again. I (personally) would need to be stronger about my demands and expectations as an employee. Particularly around work-life-balance. I am a stronger person, and I think Avanade will push you around if you let them.

Advice to Senior Management

Watch out for the junior consultants. Especially if you wish to retain. The all work very hard, but have additional requirements and expectations (around certs). Sometimes the analyst's CMs measure their analyst's against themselves and not their peers.

Pros

1. Good comapny with great benefits
2. Great people to work with

Cons

1. Accenture's second class citizen
2. A few unqualified executives have managed to stay in their roles for far too long

Advice to Senior Management

1. If you decide to remove a senior executive due to lack of performance, do not just transfer them to a meaningless made-up job, terminate them.
2. When you remove a senior executive due to poor performance, do not replace them with another executive who has failed to deliver elsewhere
3. Hold executives accountable for really bad decisions. A few years ago, one of our executives made a decison to relocate a junior marketing person from one continent to another and promote them to a senior role that was fire higher than any role that person had ever had. Two months later, that person was terminated. The executivve who made the bad decision to cost the company so much for a relocation and promote someone into a role they were not qualified for should also be terminate.
4. Put a limit on how much alcohol is served at company events, specially America's leadership events

Pros

Great people, very helpful. Big company backing. Great opportunities and support from management.

Cons

Miscrosoft technologies only. Very technical.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide new hires with more information on how to make an impact.

Pros

benefits were useful, pay was competitive
training and learning sessions were valuable
The peer environment was rich with talented people

Cons

Poor top down communications
Incredible amount of posturing, self-interest, gossip filled environment
No respect for employees, customers or partners
Lying to get results seems to be the active model

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue about who and what is valuable within your organization, your partner channels and the real feedback from customers

Pros

Good people to work with

Cons

to much process slows down business development

Advice to Senior Management

cut the fat of senior people who don't do anything

Pros

Great and Smart people
Projects are often interesting and very challenging
Opportunities to learn a tremendous

Cons

Emphasis is sometimes more on the customer that it is on the employees
Depending on your level, it is sometimes hard to get promoted quickly
Some consultants are sometimes isolated on Accenture lead deals with no internal visibility which makes it even harder to get promoted

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on the people first, then the customer..
Try not to isolate consultants on projects too much
These two points could help reduce the turnover rate quit a bit