General Information
Promotional Video
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Instructor Bio
Paulo Salomao is the Managing Director and National Strategy & Consulting Lead at Accenture Inc. He has ~20 years of experience in consulting and executive roles and worked across multiple strategy, digital, and operations transformation initiatives throughout his career.
Prior to Accenture, Paulo held executive roles at OMERS, Manulife, and Aimia. He started his career at McKinsey & Company, where he spent most of his tenure advising C-suite executives in Financial Services.
Paulo holds an MBA, an MASc from UofT, and a BEng in Control and Automation from Unicamp (Brazil).
Target Audience
Students interested in having a hands-on approach to digital transformation. Working in teams under the guidance of the instructor, students will partner with executives at Achev (www.achev.com), a skills and employment non-profit that helps 100K+ Ontario residents every year, to deliver a digital transformation strategy for an area of the organization (e.g., cross-offerings of services to clients).
We are seeking individuals who are eager to tackle challenges and contribute to cutting-edge solutions at the intersection of business and technology. In terms of technical background, students should be sufficiently technologically savvy – but they do not require a background in technology for this effort.
Format
The first meeting will be held in person on Sept 8th, and it will last ~ 3 hours. In this time, we will provide students an overview of Achev and its businesses; introduce students to the Achev management team they will support; introduce students to the key concepts of digital transformation base on Accenture’s methodology; and assign students into the different teams.
Thereafter, students will have 3-5 virtual check-ins with Achev executives related to data gathering, questions/interviews and gaining context. These will be scheduled based on the convenience of students and Achev staff. If students want, they might ask for in-person meetings at Achev’s offices at 50 Burnhampthorpe Road West, in Mississauga.
There will also be optional weekly check-ins with the course instructor, organized by teams, to discuss progress, outline next steps, and identify potential areas of support required from Accenture SMEs.
In addition, we will host two three-hour facilitated lab sessions at Rotman, Oct 7th and Nov 14th, so teams can share their learnings and collaborate, as they will all be working for Achev. These sessions will be particularly important when it comes to architecture design, and they will be supported by Accenture SMEs as needed.
The final presentation by the students to the Achev management team and course instructor will take place in person, either or Rotman or at Achev’s headquarters in Mississauga, on Dec 5th.
The balance of interactions will rely on email and chat. We may set up a shared virtual workspace depending on circumstances.
Course Mission
In this course, students will learn a world-class approach to digital transformation and use it to design a real-life effort in partnership with the executive team at Achev. With access to Accenture digital transformation SMEs (e.g., experience design, data & analytics, technology architecture), students will also learn strategies and approaches to overcome typical digital transformation challenges. Finally, by working directly with Achev executives, students will learn how to tie digital transformation and real-life business outcomes in an investment-constrained environment.
Course Scope
With respect to this course, students will undertake some part, or all, of the following tasks:
- Analyze existing Achev business goals and challenges to map and evaluate potential digital transformation ideas to unlock disproportionate business value to the organization
- Define the one digital transformation opportunity to purse at Achev, with Accenture SME help
- Design the future-state digital experience enabled by the idea, and regress it into business requirements, technology requirements, and architecture
- Develop a transformation roadmap to support the deployment of the digital strategy, including but not limited to people, process, and technology changes.
- Design the value realization management approach, including reporting cadence, metrics, and risk management
- Present recommendations to the Achev senior management team and Accenture sponsors.
Evaluation and Grade Breakdown
| Component | Due Date | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Project Scope and Benefits Case – Articulation of digital transformation ideas considered, their relative merits, and the recommended area of focus and associated benefits; proposed workplan to deliver on the work. | October 3rd, 2025 | 25% |
| Digital Strategy Overview – Articulation of the digital experience (e.g., wireframe) to deliver, regressed into the associated business requirements, technology requirements, and architecture. | October 28th, 2025 | 25% |
| Final Deliverable – Full report covering the two other deliverables as well as the proposed transformation roadmap to enable the digital strategy. | November 22nd, 2025 | 25% |
| Achev presentation – Presentation to Achev management, of recommendations, including proposed immediate next steps (preceded by an optional dry-run presentation to the instructor at the same day). | December 5th, 2025 | 25% |
Grading and Assessment
This course will use the Honours/Pass/Fail grading scale, and this course will not count towards a student’s GPA. The final course grade reflects the student’s level of demonstrated achievement of the Course Learning Outcomes listed above. Deliverables provide feedback on your progress towards the course grade. Students should contact the instructor as early as practical if they have any questions at all about how they are going to be assessed. The onus is on the student to ensure they have received full clarity and that they fully understand the assessment process.
Required Resources
Materials will be posted on Quercus, at no additional cost to students. Example readings include:
- The Life Centricity Playbook, Creating Value for Customers | Accenture
- Digital Transformation Overview, What is Digital Transformation & Why is it Important? | Accenture
- What is Digital Transformation, What is digital transformation? | McKinsey
Experiential Course Limit
There are limits to the number of RSM27XX range courses that students may take for credit toward their degree. Please refer to the Global and Experiential Course Eligibility Specifics and Limits section on the RO website for all details.