Accenture to Build Web-Based Portal for The Gender Equality Project

SAN FRANCISCO; August 31, 2011 — Accenture (NYSE: ACN) today announced that it will design, build and deploy a cloud-based self-assessment web portal for The Gender Equality Project(TGEP), a Swiss not-for-profit foundation that works with multinational companies to ensure equal opportunities for men and women in the workplace. The portal, which salesforce.com will run on its Heroku cloud platform as a service, is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Accenture and salesforce.com are investing resources and funds to support TGEP’s assessment methodology for gender equality in the workplace.  Launched at the World Economic Forum in January 2011, the assessment methodology will serve as the basis for the first corporate global certification system and standard in gender equality. The methodology will help organizations measure, track and benchmark gender equality in terms of equal pay for equivalent work, recruitment and promotion, training and mentoring, flexible working and company culture.

Replacing a time-consuming, manual process of collecting information in a spreadsheet, the online portal will allow TGEP to efficiently and cost effectively engage with a larger number of companies.  Built on top of the Ruby on Rails open source framework, the portal will collect more data, helping the foundation enhance its certification and benchmarking process.  For participating companies, the portal will provide autonomy for uploading data and provide immediate access to personalized analysis in a confidential way.

Accenture also announced that Pamela J. Craig, chief financial officer at Accenture, is joining TGEP’s Advisory Council.  Accenture is TGEP’s Strategy and Technology Partner.

“While gender equality has been on the corporate agenda for years, a significant gap between women and men in terms of economic participation and opportunity still exists,” said Nicole Schwab, co-founder, The Gender Equality Project.  “The portal Accenture and salesforce.com are developing will be critical in helping to take our assessment methodology to the next level.  We will be able to scale up rapidly, reach new members and enhance the relevance of our benchmarking, helping more multinational organizations close the gender equality gap.”

“As a strategic technology partner to The Gender Equality Project, we are applying industry best practices and innovative cloud tools and technologies to help the foundation meet its mission,” said Paul Daugherty, chief technology architect at Accenture. “The scalability and cost effectiveness of the cloud will provide TGEP with the flexibility needed to grow this initiative, add new members, and promote gender equality in companies around the world.”

“Gender equality is a global imperative,” Byron Sebastian, GM of Heroku and SVP of platforms for salesforce.com. “Joining Accenture’s efforts in supporting The Gender Equality Project as part of their strategic technology initiative underscores our joint commitment.”