Northwestern, Accenture receive Gold Award for virtual learning partnership

The Kellogg School of Management, McCormick School of Engineering and Northwestern University, in partnership with Accenture, were honored for “Best Use of Video Learning” by Brandon Hall Group for their custom Executive Education program for Accenture employees. The Brandon Hall Excellence Awards recognize the best organizations that have successfully deployed programs, strategies, modalities, processes, systems and tools that have achieved measurable results.

Designed exclusively for Accenture by Kellogg professors Florian Zettelmeyer and Eric Anderson, McCormick professor Kristian Hammond and Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences sociology professor Steven Franconeri, the virtual program, “Leading with Analytics and Artificial Intelligence,” enables Accenture employees to gain a working knowledge of data science that allows them to solve challenges through analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. This focus on analytics has helped Accenture teams modernize offerings and drive more transformational results for clients.

Offered in an online format, the program is highly interactive and allows participants to engage in live discussions, lecture sessions, and peer and faculty review for their own personal business challenges related to leading analytics and AI functions. With these virtual interactions and consultations, participants are empowered to help clients make the most effective investments in people, data, systems, culture and organizational structure to make their businesses thrive, which is important now more than ever in today’s business landscape. 

In fact, Accenture’s post-course surveys show that the majority of participants in the course were confident that the time invested in the program will add value to the work they do. Further, 86% of participants felt that the content was presented in a logical and organized sequence, thus reinforcing that the format of content delivery using video lectures was an effective approach.

This program is a key part of Accenture’s learning curriculum and empowers teams to lead with data and analytics. Starting with only a small fraction of consultants and managers, the program has since engaged nearly 9,000 participants and is expected to continue to grow. This program is highly recommended to peers, as participants shared that approximately 43%of their total work time requires the analytics knowledge and skills they learned in this program.

This is the second award for a course partnership between Accenture, Kellogg and McCormick, after a 2018 Silver Learning Award for “Best Use of Blended Learning.”

For more on the original Executive Education course: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/executive-education/individual-programs/executive-programs/bigdata.aspx