Hertz paid Accenture $32 million for a new web presence that the consultants never delivered. The unresolved dispute was recently filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York.
Accenture disputes their former client’s claims.
Accenture has also filed a motion to dismiss Hertz’s claim under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and is intending to assert counterclaims for payment of past-due invoices.
The Project from Hell
As stated in the Complaint, in early 2016, Hertz began an ambitious project to transform its digital identity. The gory details of this project from hell are neatly summed up by The Register.
Here are a few of the lowlights:
Among the most mind-boggling allegations in Hertz’s filed complaint is that Accenture didn’t incorporate a responsive design, in which webpages automatically resize to accommodate the visitor’s screen size whether they are using a phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop.
It gets much worse from there, and I encourage you to read the account on The Register. If you don’t have time, right now, read this:
Despite having missed the deadline by five months, with no completed elements and weighed down by buggy code, Accenture told Hertz it would cost an additional $10m – on top of the $32m it had already been paid – to finish the project.
Words Are Easy To Say, Deeds Are Difficult To Do
Accenture Digital is one of the largest end-to-end providers of digital transformation capabilities in the world.
“We bring digital capabilities that help our clients rotate to the new,” it says on their site. We know now that Hertz vehemently disagrees.
We also know that Accenture has been buying up agencies at a rapid pace in their quest to own the C-Suite. Their latest head-turning purchase was Droga5, news of which sent several shivers down Madison Avenue’s spine.
“Accenture Interactive is one of the most disruptive forces in the industry, and we have always been a safe space for audacious ideas,” David Droga said at the time. “I’m confident they are the best partner to grow our business and provide greater opportunities for our clients and our people. Why live off past glories when you can get busy trying to create new ones?”
I bet the client team at Hertz wishes Droga5 had been purchased by Accenture a few years earlier.
