David Nguyen
Accenture
Changing Delivery Models of a Consulting Firm through Collaboration Technology

The model of delivering consulting work today is travel intensive. It affects the quality of the work we can deliver to our clients, it affects the cost of delivery, and it affects the work/life balance of our consultants. Our goal is to switch to a new way of delivering consultant work that helps improve all three dimensions. However, consulting work is rich in diversity and complexity presenting significant challenges. In this talk, I present ways in which we have analyzed the work of consultants using several different data gathering techniques. We outline some of the challenges faced by travel intensive consultant delivery work. And finish by laying the groundwork on future technology approaches.

David Nguyen is a research scientist at Accenture Technology Labs where he leads research around Human-Computer Interactions and Collaboration. At Accenture, his goal is to apply collaboration technologies to improve the way consulting teams deliver work. For his thesis work, he came to invent the MultiView, the first video conferencing system to support correct eye contact in many-to-many meetings by using 3-dimensional display techniques. Dave now holds his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley