DuPont: Alliance/IT Outsourcing

DuPont's IT organization had long been viewed as being highly capable, having successfully supported the company's business objectives while reducing IT costs by 45 percent in just four years. Yet, IT is not a core business for DuPont, nor did the company want it to be.

DuPont is an icon in the global chemical industry, with 92,000 employees serving customers in 70 countries. With eyes and energy set on doubling shareholder value by the year 2002—the company's 200th birthday—there was one thing DuPont executives did not want to second guess: having a stellar information technology (IT) organization that would help transform the company from an industrial giant into an agile, knowledge-driven business.

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DuPont's IT organization had long been viewed as being highly capable, having successfully supported the company's business objectives while reducing IT costs by 45 percent in just four years. Yet, IT is not a core business for DuPont, nor did the company want it to be.

Rather than turn IT into a core business, DuPont preferred to focus its attention on the business of science—delivering science-based solutions that make a difference in people's lives in food and nutrition; health care; apparel; home and construction; electronics; and transportation. DuPont's IT organization would need to be flexible enough to support a changing mix of businesses, and sophisticated enough to keep delivering innovative solutions—without adding costs. DuPont began to see outsourcing as a way to strategically and effectively move the organization forward towards its ambitious goals.

DuPont decided to take an innovative step and enter into a ground-breaking outsourcing relationship with Accenture and another service provider. This 10-year, $4 billion "alliance partnership," as DuPont calls the relationship, combines the business process management expertise of Accenture with DuPont’s chemical leadership to ensure overall IT and business performance success. As part of this growing relationship, about 3,000 DuPont employees transferred to the two alliance partner companies.

Understanding how to bring value through outsourcing, Accenture is providing proven business solutions which are critical to the support of DuPont's global manufacturing, marketing, distribution and customer-service functions for the chemical business, including management of applications such as:

• Materials and resource planning
• Order processing
• Manufacturing and engineering systems
• Safety, health and environmental analysis and reporting

The alliance partnership is proving to be a smart move for DuPont. The company is reaping increased variability in spending, greater flexibility in responding to business needs, and access to diversified state-of-the-art business solutions, methods, skills and techniques. “On-demand” IT support is available, allowing DuPont to bring on new businesses quickly, or to get out of a market without being left with the residual costs of an IT infrastructure that is no longer tied to a business.

Furthermore, the alliance partnership has improved DuPont's ability to stay on top of evolving technology and a changing business environment. Through the partnership, DuPont is confident that its own technology will not only keep pace with the company's growth and changes, but will also speed up the creation of new systems while reducing IT costs by five percent or more. And reducing costs is one way DuPont will make good on that 200th birthday wish.