Raluca Burghelea, Country Managing Director Accenture Romania: Reinvention begins with redesigning processes and how we work with new technologies

Outsourcing Today, the business services industry’s community networking and news integrated platform, resumes the series of interviews dedicated to evolution, expectations and opportunities in business services and related industries.

Business leaders, managers of strategic departments of companies, key voices in their field shared their insights depicting the new beginning of this year in business, how it looks, how it is anticipated, what adjustments are included in 2025’s agenda and the perspective of growth.

Find the full series of interviews here

We spoke recently with Raluca Burghelea, Country Managing Director Accenture Romania about the business evolution, work environment approach and expectations on the impact of AI and new technologies.

What is your take on AI?

The industry has started to shift from experimenting with generative AI to building a strong foundation and focusing on strategic areas of reinvention. Yet, only 13% of the executives’ report that they are creating significant value in their organization with AI. This means that many are quite in an early stage in their AI journey. At Accenture we are investing, at a global level, 3 billion USD in AI practice, building specialized talent, new assets, and industry solutions that integrate it responsibly. We have already delivered over 2,000 generative AI projects for clients worldwide – across industries like automotive, retail, banking, and public services.

Based on our experience, there are three major things which we see as imperative in being able to really scale AI successful and gain meaningful value. First, is what we call building your digital core, which basically means building a strong foundation for GenAI. Leading organization modernize applications, invest in proprietary data, and create adaptive architectures.

Then, we need to rethink our way of working. Reinvention begins with redesigning processes and how we work with this new technology. This is where we move from small GenAI use cases to bringing value across the organization and changing customer experience.

The third element is the most important one, our people. Organizations that excel in transforming their business by using GenAI invest in a broad are of AI upskilling and enable human+agent collaboration.

Speaking about Romania, we see that the AI is mainly used to support employee’s productivity by reducing repetitive work, to focus on gathering, analysing and managing large pools of data and to improve and hyper personalize customer experience.

How does Accenture Romania support skilling and education?

At Accenture, employees are in the centre of our organizational culture and business strategy, because while technology anchors any transformation, it’s the alignment of people, processes and technology that drives reinvention. Now, research shows only 35% of the business executives say they have a roadmap for how gen AI will reshape their workforce.

As a response to this context, we are embedding AI training across all roles and departments, through personalized learning paths that blend technical skills required for a certain position or area of expertise. And we increased our data and AI workforce to approximately 72,000 people, continuing progress against our goal of 80,000 by the end of FY26. At the same time, we also prioritise leadership development through enhanced mentorship programs and cross-functional exposure, so that all our colleagues would have access to best-practice scenarios and leaders that can guide them and help them grow and improve.

Now, if we refer to our future employees, we know that we have a big responsibility: to encourage the young generation (students) to discover and then harness their talent. Thus, apart from our internship programs – the most notable focusing on digitalizing engineering and manufacturing through AR/VR, cloud, and AI – we established and deepened our partnerships with the academia.

In Romania, our teams have worked on AI projects that help global clients personalize mobility experiences, improve product quality in real time, and automate repetitive tasks at scale. The best use cases are not only smart—they’re sustainable, human-centric, and connected to strategic goals.

And how many students have enrolled in these projects that you and universities made together?

One of our key programs, is the Accenture Student Labs. This year we have reached 3 such labs within important universities in Romania. Through them, we offer hands-on training in digital and emerging technologies, as well as practical advice on how to build a career. This way, students gain practical skills for the jobs of the future, preparing themselves to be resilient and competitive in the digital economy.

One lab is at “George Emil Palade” University in Târgu Mureș (AI and automation in healthcare), another at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies – ASE (business technology and digital transformation) and the third one is at University of Bucharest’s Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures (AI-driven translation and digital communication tools). We have over 400 students enrolled on our Labs programs each year.

What changed, in the recent past, in terms of how people relate to work?

The world today is defined by change and challenge and requires a strong level of resilience from the organizations and their people. We try to meet our employees’ expectations from this point of view, by shaping internal programs that nurture their creativity and strategical thinking.

Besides that, at Accenture, we prioritize psychological safety to ensure long-term success of our business, through programs such as “What If?”. It provides over 20 hours of emotional well-being training to 4,000+ employees and actively uses digital platforms for continuous feedback. By fostering an environment where employees feel safe to take risks and by encouraging them to express themselves and even speak up, we boost creativity, collaboration, and innovation.

And, apart from all of this, a very important link is the leadership style. And I say it is important because, depending on the organizational culture, it may be the strongest link or the weakest one. So, leadership development, intertwined with empathy and effective communication, is key for us, at Accenture, since it strengthens our teams, supports their well-being, and aligns with our goals for the future. 

Last, but not least, staying competitive today means being resilient and developing critical and strategic thinking. These two qualities go hand in hand, and this current landscape offers a tough, yet unique opportunity. While continuous change in an uncertain global economy and geopolitical context is challenging, it also provides a chance to improve daily and see where each can contribute—as an employee, as part of a team, and as leaders.