Accenture plc (ACN) recently announced that it has won a deal from the West Bend Mutual Insurance Company. As per the deal, the insurance company will deploy the Accenture Duck Creek property and casualty (P&C) policy software suite to help accelerate its product development processes and enhance customer service. The new insurance deal comes on the wake of the company’s decision to diversify its service offerings into various other sectors.
Accenture Duck Creek Policy Administration and Accenture Duck Creek Billing software have been selected by West Band for its policy administration and billing systems. This apart, the company has also implemented Accenture’s product configuration software application, to enhance the efficiency of its commercial lines and workers compensation products.
Accenture has had an impressive run of winning new deals. Previously, the company won aninformation technology (IT) services deal from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Financial terms of the 10-year contract were kept confidential.
Per the deal, Accenture will consolidate three of IRS’ web portals under one umbrella. The company will combine the consumer-facing website, IRS.gov (designed by Accenture and one of the most popular websites for the tax payers), the registered-user portal for tax preparers and the agency’s employee intranet.
The new IT infrastructure will help IRS to streamline its operations, while making the whole system easier for tax payers. Accenture shares a healthy relationship of over 20 years with the IRS. In the past, Accenture served as a trusted partner of the IRS, helping the agency implement a number of new systems, processes and capabilities.
In an effort to better serve government clients, Accenture recently formed the U.S. Federal Advisory Board. The company is also inviting experts with years of experience in Fed activities to join the board. This will provide Accenture more insight into the current requirements of dealing with critical IT operations.
The deal flow and new business initiatives continue to flow for Accenture, and we expect the momentum to continue based on the company’s decision to continue to invest in priority industries (such as communications and public services) and emerging markets, where it will focus on further building its brand value. We believe that the company’s confidence in adopting such a strategy in the backdrop of lingering global concerns is backed by its five consecutive quarters of outperformance.
However, increasing competition from IBM Corp. (IBM), a dull IT spending environment and Accenture’s major exposure to the problem ridden European economy may temper growth prospects to some extent.
Currently, Accenture has a short-term Hold rating, denoted by the Zacks #3 Rank.
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