As any of you who saw this know, the question on the lips of all people in their right minds three weeks ago was this: “Who, in God’s name, would hire Accenture to create a website?”
Before we examine this abonimably aberrant phenomenon, let’s take a moment to savor some of the juicier morsels of this world-class absurdity, shall we?
Hertz … hired … Accenture in August 2016 to completely revamp its online presence. The new site was due to go live in December 2017. But a failure to get on top of things led to a delay to January 2018, and then a second delay to April 2018 which was then also missed [leaving Hertz with] a product and design that apparently didn’t do half of what was specified and still wasn’t finished … Among the most mind-boggling allegations in Hertz’s filed complaint is that Accenture didn’t incorporate a responsive design.
Hiring Accenture to create a website is the rough equivalent of hiring a brontosaurus to challenge Usain Bolt in a 100-meter dash.
The Dinosaur Died For a Reason
Bureaucracies like Accenture (and its ilk) are often likened to dinosaurs — huge, lumbering, archaic, having outlived their ability to adapt and survive. To those of who’ve labored in the belly of the beast, the analogy is apt. With thought, it becomes downright profound. For instance, it’s no coincidence that:
- Dinosaurs were never known for their creativity. (After exhausting all their resources, dinosaurs — like bureaucracies — began to feed on themselves.)
- Dinosaurs were slow to respond to change. (Have you ever tried to convince a dinosaur to change its mind, let alone content, web design, or its stultified, bureaucratic overhead?)
- Dinosaurs had brains the size of walnuts. (Draw your own parallels here.)
You have to imagine some chucklehead or some group of nincompoops at the car-rental agency is in a world of Hertz for hiring a dinosaur to do its website.
Oh, Yeah! The Money!
Sorry. We got so carried away enjoying our roles as amateur paleontologists, we almost forgot to include this, which prompts another series of questions:
Hertz is suing for the $32m it paid Accenture in fees to get to that aborted stage, and it wants more millions to cover the cost of fixing the mess.
Here’s the irresponsibly short list of questions, in no particular order:
- What the hell would a $32-million-dollar website do?
- What could possibly be beyond the expectations of a $32-million-dollar website?
- How many people did Accenture assign to the project?
- Why didn’t everyone at Hertz keel over en masse at Accenture’s first estimate for the project?
- How did the Accenture project team escape tar and feathers for almost three years?
- If Hertz spends money like that, how could anyone ever rent from Hertz again without thinking about its rates?
We’re talking about a very special kind of stupid here, kids. But if you spend any time around dinosaurs, you know it’s not rare.
Bureaucracy. That’s where it Hertz.
