Passenger Trains > "Amtrak Selects Accenture....."

A fresh new fiscal year begins at Amtrak and the new money train has arrived from the Treasury. It's time to spread the new money around. Perhaps Diner Lite will now be "holistically" dispensed from "silos."

"Amtrak Selects Accenture to Design and Deploy Enterprise Resource Planning Solution
SAP implementation designed to streamline Amtrak’s operations nationwide
RESTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amtrak has awarded Accenture (NYSE: ACN) a multi-year contract to develop and implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to standardize key areas of Amtrak’s business operations.
Under the contract, Accenture’s initial task is to develop a blueprint for Amtrak’s Strategic Asset Management initiative, which is a phased approach to streamlining its business processes. Longer term, Accenture will deliver solutions for Amtrak’s ERP infrastructure and help consolidate a number of disparate information systems to help Amtrak increase productivity and better leverage resources and infrastructure.
“When the deployment is complete, Amtrak will be able to operate more holistically across the entire enterprise, rather than managing individual silos,” said Jerry Briggs, managing director of Accenture’s U.S. federal practice. “Having a single view of the enterprise will enable Amtrak to realize efficiencies in many areas, including in scheduling and maintenance, both of which ultimately can have a positive impact on the passenger travel experience,” Briggs said....."
About Accenture [formerly Andersen Consulting]
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With more than 180,000 people in 49 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$19.70 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2007. Its home page is www.accenture.com."
Contacts
Accenture
Lisa Meyer, +1-703-947-3846
lisa.m.meyer@accenture.com"
http://www.businesswire.com/news/google/20080916005456/en

Hooray for buzzwords! I'd pay good money for some of those myself.

Wow! this is a wonderful example of convoluted English. I was thrilled that Amtrak should operate holistically and stop managing individual silos. Also happy they will better leverage infrastructure. Also loved the phased approach to streamlining.

What does "better leverage infrastructure" really mean? I assume it means doing more things like the reconfiguring of the New Rochell turnout for example---but I'm not sure.

It'll look fantastic on some Accenture employees' year-end self review to justify their job

floridajoe2001 Wrote:
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>
> What does "better leverage infrastructure" really
> mean?

"Holistically?"

"Silos?"

I wish there were a universal translator from Pseudo-intellectual Gobbledegook to English. But there doesn't seem to be one. This kind of press release is often used by those who think they are High and Mighty, in order to convince mere HUMANS that what they do is important AND unfathomable and therefore worth the millions of dollars they are being paid.

Which usually means that it's not.

-GP

Lurch_in_ABQ Wrote:
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<snip>...
> About Accenture [formerly Anderson Consulting]
> Accenture is a global management consulting,
> technology services and outsourcing company.
> Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive
> capabilities across all industries and business
> functions, (snip)....

I think it would be good policy for people to refuse to do business with companies who adopt ridiculous, made-up names - whether it is Cengage, Accenture, Exxon, Acela, or Advantron. Always assume such neologisms are hiding some sort of shameful, nasty, evil intentions. If nothing else, they are direct attacks against meaningful, clear language.
- Karl

All of these people go to pretty much the same business schools where, apparently, they take at least one semester in Business Gooblygook. Managers just lap this stuff up and I'm not above using some myself when justifying funding for a project. I have no idea what any of it means. I doubt that the managers do either.

On the bright side, both Anderson Consulting (Accentuwhatever) and SAP are very highly respected firms that usually deliver on their promises however uncomprehensible those promises might be.

Ken

I think this means that money to buy eggs for dining car will be used to fund a new sail boat for some congressman's consultant brother-in-law.

They must have used the BS generator:
http://dack.com/web/bullshit.html

kframbo Wrote:

> I think it would be good policy for people to
> refuse to do business with companies who adopt
> ridiculous, made-up names - whether it is Cengage,
> Accenture, Exxon, Acela, or Advantron. Always
> assume such neologisms are hiding some sort of
> shameful, nasty, evil intentions. If nothing else,
> they are direct attacks against meaningful, clear
> language.



In Accenture's defense, it was a GOOD move for them to change their name.

Accenture is a 1989 split-off from Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm which
imploded in the Enron scandal. It did business as Andersen Consulting and
(lucky for them) changed its name to Accenture before the Enron ruckus.

Accenture is based in Bermuda.

None of this changes the effect of such consultantspeak gobbledegook as a direct attack on meaningful, clear language.

Comment I just got from inside the Beltway:

> Accenture is one of the leading "beltway bandit" government
> consulting firms...I'm sure Kummant and his direct reports are fluent
> in consultant-speak and fully know what's going on.

Yeh. They're "Beltway Bandits" AND based out of the country, too.

Well, Accenture is primarily an IT Consulting firm, and I think that all of this just refers to Amtrak trying to standardize their software systems between various areas of the company, and make them work as "one whole".

This is a rather common exercise in big corporations.......

It does not look real cute if all they said they were doing was streamlining Amtrak's disparate data systems. It sounds way better if they were being hired to holistically look at entire processes, systems and silos. It sounds important that way and since no one will really understand what they actually are doing, no one attempting oversight from outside will know if they actually do what they are paid to do with the hard-earned tax money that is flowing offshore to Bermuda.

In concept at least this sounds like a not-bad idea. I too wish though that someone would ban Dilbert-speak, I encounter it all the time in my work and wonder why we can't just use plain English. Oh wait, then it would be too easy to realize that the Emperor is indeed naked.

I can say without a doubt that the effort to do so will pay off in spades. When BNSF began fully integrating and cross-feeding information and making it available to everyone that needed to it, the benefits were huge.

The arriving computer r/evolution will be having damn near every metric available at a single click, no digging through varied and disparate menus, no signing on to different platforms and having a half-dozen different windows open flipping back and forth trying to see how it all goes together, no department able to hide behind their own separate system. Far more transparent and open.

At least give Amtrak a break for having the awareness to embrace a good information management change.

Other change, well...gotta start somewhere....

smitty195 Wrote:
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> They must have used the BS generator:
> http://dack.com/web/bullshit.html


Well, you know if you can't dazzle them with brillance, you baffle them with bull....well, you get the idea...

Amtrak meets with "the Bob's"...

Speaking about terminology, many years ago Trains magazine published two photographs of the same steam locomotive.

In the first photo, parts of the locomotive were identified using their usual names.

In the second photo, the locomotive parts were identified with terms that NASA would use if they designed the locomotive. Same parts; same functions; just fancy, new names.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the date of the issue where the photos appeared.

OCV

Yep ... right after the Bob's return from lunch at Chatsky's ...

tmurray Wrote:
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> Amtrak meets with "the Bob's"...

Sorry..I never took Latin in Hi School....

Someone call Barbara Billingsley -

"Oh stewardess..."

Agt-Highland Wrote:
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> Sorry..I never took Latin in Hi School....