New Growth from Enterprise Systems: Achieving High Performance through Distinctive Capabilities

Accenture research unequivocally shows that successful implementations of enterprise systems drive corporate financial performance.

Extensive research conducted between 2005 and 2006 by Accenture's Enterprise Solutions group and the Accenture Institute for High Performance Business shows that enterprise systems, once derided as "generic IT," have the potential to provide organizations with a basis for developing distinctive capabilities. Enterprise system processes and services enable companies to differentiate themselves from competitors and outperform industry peers.

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In the post dot-com era, organizations concerned that enterprise systems were not delivering enough value began cutting costs and consolidating systems. In 2002, an Accenture-led study, The Return of Enterprise Systems: the Director's Cut, made a significant contribution to perceptions about the value of enterprise systems. The report identified three value drivers for enterprise systems and revealed that some companies were achieving significant benefits. This timely insight helped to reset organizations' expectations about the role of enterprise systems.

The 2006 study is based on a much larger sample: 371 organizations in 34 countries representing 19 industries. The findings reconfirm the value opportunity and reveal that companies are using enterprise systems to enhance competitiveness. This underlines a new trend-that organizations are leveraging enterprise systems to develop distinctive capabilities integral to their business success.

The study interviewed 25 industry analysts and experts on enterprise systems and executives from 15 companies, a rigorous process that confirmed the causal link between enterprise systems implementation, business value and, increasingly, the opportunity for business growth.

Key insights explored in the research report include:

• The enterprise solutions paradox: Despite starting with the same products, organizations achieve outcomes different from their systems investments.
  
  
• A foundation for high-performance business: Enterprise systems support the development of distinctive capabilities that define market leaders.
  
  
• The advantage through insight: Enterprise systems increasingly enable better decision-making, which in turn creates opportunity.
  
  
• Closing the gap: Organizations are tailoring their systems and adopting flexible architectures to better and more quickly enable business needs.

Our study confirms that enterprise systems correlate with—and drive—corporate financial performance. Accenture has taken the research findings and has been able to determine the key practices for raising business performance with enterprise systems. The practices that contribute to a company's formula for serving its customers include tailoring systems, implementing industry solutions and taking advantage of Service-Oriented Architecture.

Read "New Accenture Research Shows the Potential of Enterprise Systems to Drive Business Growth".

New Growth from Enterprise Systems Executive Summary (2-page pdf) [PDF, 60KB]
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