EDS Sees Big Opportunity From Big Five Accounting, Consulting Split

EDS

On the eve of EDS' annual conference for security analysts, company executives said they expect to benefit from the accounting and consulting split, which has been precipitated by the Enron-Andersen scandal.

Brad Rucker, executive director of EDS' Bluesphere web design business, said he sees a "huge opportunity" for EDS to win new accounts. "I can't put a number on it, but I'm very optimistic," he said.

Rucker declined to detail how EDS is mobilizing to win the business but stressed that the company has a game plan and is moving forward with it.

Last week, the last of the former Big Five accountancies made moves to distance their IT consulting practices from their bread-and-butter audit/accounting businesses. The last two firms to crack were Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Ernst and Young.

EDS' Bluesphere regularly goes up against KPMG and Accenture, and a lot of that business is tied to accounting work, Rucker said. "With Accenture and KPMG, the up-front relationship is established by auditing," he said. "There is going to be a trickle down. That business has got to go out to bid."

EDS' A.T. Kearney management consulting group is aggressively swooping into accounts to try to snatch the business away from the accounting companies, Rucker said. "It's a new flow of opportunity for pure consulting firms."

That's good news for Bluesphere since about 60 percent of its business comes from working closely with A.T. Kearney, Rucker said. "That's a marriage made in heaven."

Customers are demanding that the company doing the consulting and solution design handle the web design and the integration work, which is a big competitive advantage for EDS because of its strong systems integration heritage, Rucker said.

Other parts of EDS are also moving aggressively to try to win new business from the Big Five in the wake of the accounting and consulting split.