Accenture renews its partnership agreement with ISAE-SUPAERO

Could you tell us about the activities and professions at Accenture?

Gilles Stahl: Accenture is a worldwide player in consulting and technologies. We work with the largest companies and administrations to help them in their transformation, with advanced expertise in the fields of digital technologies, the cloud, and security. We work in over 40 sectors, backed by the largest international network of advance technology centers and intelligent operations. With 506,000 employees, Accenture is committed to its customers every day in more than 120 countries.

Websites: www.accenture.com/fr and www.accenture.com/aero

What actions are being set up under this renewed partnership?

Florence Real: Through our partnership with ISAE-SUPAERO, we take part in the Village Entreprises organized by the Institute every year. It is an opportunity to meet with students from the school and to answer their questions about our professions and our opportunities, to hear about their expectations and to talk with them about their career outlook. This partnership also provides us with the possibility to contribute to the students’ training, notably with the organization of a conference dedicated to a relevant, well-considered business topic, but also through the organization of a case study to let students step into the shoes of an Accenture consultant for a half-day and to gain a more concrete understanding of our professions. We also intervene directly in the 3rd-year curriculum for several course modules dealing with the digital transformation of businesses. Systematically, ISAE-SUPAERO alumni working at Accenture get involved in these actions and these discussions to facilitate communication between the business world and the academic world.

This year, renewing the partnership will an opportunity to contribute to a new event organized by the school and dedicated to sustainable development. This subject is a major concern for students and for our consultants, so we quite naturally wanted to take part.

We also plan to organize a conference developed by Accenture on the subject of the Matilda Effect, which concerns the minimization of women’s role in the history of Science. Accenture is also very involved in the question of gender equality, having set a target of hiring 50% women for our staff through to the end of 2020. We think it makes sense to contribute to increasing student awareness on the challenge of diversity.

So we have an amazing program for this year!

Why is it important for Accenture to renew its partnership with ISAE-SUPAERO?

Gilles Stahl: We have a long-term commitment to the school, as Accenture was the first service company to sign a partnership with them, over 10 years ago.

This partnership was set up with 3 dimensions:

• First, an educational dimension, with the coordination of several course modules for the engineering program and DESIA, participation in internship juries and the main DESIA oral exam jury, hosting thematic conferences, as well as workshops, for example, to prepare for interviews.

• Second, a financial dimension, notably to subsidize third-year students to obtain APICS certification in the supply chain field.

• Lastly, a collaborative dimension to provide support for school or student projects through a skills sponsorship, as we did in 2015 and 2016, at the birth of the Learning Center and Innovspace project. We worked with the head of this innovative project on various aspects such as the overall definition of the concept, the different collaborative spaces and needs, identification of the different functions of the Learning Center, needs expression for the architectural specifications, and the communication campaign and supports. Former ISAE-SUPAERO students now with Accenture made key contributions, as they combined the innovative techniques used in the aeronautical field today with the fundamental needs of the students – which is who they were not that long ago!

Accenture needs to have the best academic allies in the labor market around Toulouse, a region where we currently have – and will continue to have in the coming years – high stakes in business that we need to consolidate. We will need their vital strengths to help us meet these challenges and the students at ISAE-SUPAERO have always been amazing assets for our teams. So it was important for Accenture to renew this partnership with ISAE-SUPAERO to reassert our commitment to the school, its training programs and its students – especially this year, with all of its uncertainties, we wanted to reassert our trust in the future and the capacity for resilience of the school and its students, whether in the aeronautics sector or in the other fields that their training has diversified into.