Seems like on many boards mostly Accenture threads people are asking about moving to strategy from BSIC whats the reason for all these and why the move didnt they think of these when they started or is it because of the pay, challenges, prestige or help in career. Thanks lets have your opinion mostly if you are in accenture and secondly if you are thinking of moving to strats. happy holidays

I think the main reason would be that, like myself, many people would apply to acc citing strategy as their first preference as it may be the more interesting area to many applicants.However they only accept a very small number of people into this area and the majority get put in BSI. So, in the interview process they ask "If you don't get into strategy would you be happy to work in BSI?" and in my case the answer to that was yes. I'd imagine it's the case with a lot of other people too.Strategy is much harder to get into in general i think.

I do agree with you Anon. Though I think the SITE practice is even harder now because this year will be the first time the SITE practice of strategy take any graduates into it. The main point I was making is how many successful transition to strategy have we gotten, also do you get strategy people working on BSI projects meaning if they want to develop certain skills will they be allowed to opt on an implementation project.

This happens more often at Accenture than anywhere else because of the way that the firm misleads its graduate joiners.If you read any of the recruitment literature they generally paint a picture of interesting, strategy related work. The reality is that 90% of analysts end up doing pretty routine SI work.All these people who talk about changing from SI to strategy (or at least to another area of business consulting) are just trying to get the job that they were initially promised!

Jonny are we saying that SI analyst are told they are supposed to do more than system integration or get involved with implementing some ERP systesm. I dont want to believe so, because that is what anyone going into SI should expect. Now for chaning I want to think that many people just think they can go on implementing sytems all thier career so they want to do some analysis and strategic consulting which only a few can get in this is something i realised about 2 days ago after speaking to some people. I might be wrong. Anyway if that is the case and as you said is mostly with Acn employees what has been the success rate and is that what is making the moral among the SI pretty bad on certain boards.

Pls ignore my typo errors just suffering from a bad hangover not beer though but some drowsy flu drug.

So, what options in or outside Accenture for someone who is in BSIC who really wants t go into strat.Could they for example do 3 years in BSIC, MBA at good business school then be elligble for intake at a strat firm or would that route typically involve having done your initial 3 years or so in strat already?

i've seen lots of people go from non-strategy to strategy, but it may be different depending on operating group. I've seen at least 5 people go into strategy at analyst and consultant level over the last 2 years or so. The best process to follow is usually to get yourself on a strategy project, show that you're really keen, speak to the right people, ask to be transferred, and if there's space and you're the right person it can work quite easily.