As discussed in “Three ways Accenture cheats on its clients, just like Tiger Woods” Accenture systematically overcharges clients. One of many scandals that became public was the overcharging at the Inland Revenue (UK). When appearing before the Commons Public Accounts Committee to answer cost questions, Accenture executives blamed salaries of their own personnel.
Accenture Senior Executives claimed that they have the best staff and therefore have high salary costs.
"Best staff" is a joke at Accenture. Accenture is a firm that is all about quantity, not quality work. They simply don't need the best staff, nor is it their strategy to get them. They push their personnel to get as much done as possible (filling Excel sheets, doing audits, etc), NOT to think. They have 200.000 consultants, it is not an exclusive crowd hard to get into.
They are also known to hire people at too low level, e.g. someone who was a Senior Manager before gets an offer for a consultant level. (Source: Wetfeet.com)
Regarding the price for their supposed "best staff", Accenture pays about half the salaries of what other management consulting firms do. An analyst would enter at about EUR 24K per year and a consultant at about EUR 42k (source: Accenture). Average management consulting firms pay 80-90k to consultants (Source: Wetfeet.com), and of course I'm not even going to compare to the top firms because Accenture doesn't come close to competing with them. I would say Accenture is not even a management consulting firm, it's more a secretary consulting firm
