At a Glance
Hewlett-Packard’s Image and Printing IT Americas Group tapped Accenture to design, build, run and operate a world-class SAP solution. The results speak for themselves. Shortcut to:
Business Challenge
Accenture/HP Solution
Innovation Delivered Posted: August 22, 2003 Hewlett-Packard (HP) is a global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and business that operates in more than 160 countries with FY02 revenues of $72.3 billion. The company invents engineers and delivers technology solutions that drive business value, create social value and improve the lives of their customers. HP has four core business groups: - Enterprise Systems Group (ESG): Enterprise storage, servers and management software.
- Personal Systems Group (PSG): Desktop PCs, notebooks, workstations and personal devices.
- HP Services (HPS): Services helping customers realize value from their IT investments.
- Imaging and Printing Group (IPG): Printer hardware, all-in-ones, cameras, scanners and accessories.
Business Challenge The Supply Chain Operations Group within IPG Information Technology Americas supports one of HP’s largest order fulfillment platforms, interacting with more than 100 strategic resellers and generating more than $18 billion of revenue annually. This group maintains a mission-critical SAP platform supporting order-to-cash processes for HP’s imaging, printing, and personal computing and supply products sold in the Americas through commercial and retail channels. It is the highest volume SAP platform in operation at HP, supporting customer transactions valued at more than $2 million per hour. IPG Information Technology Americas faced three key business imperatives relative to the SAP platform. First, enhance platform reliability and usability through deployment of improved application and operations management practices. Second, reduce operating expenses by improving efficiencies and leveraging lower labor costs where appropriate. Third, secure a long-term, flexible solution that could change and grow along with HP’s new organization. These business challenges were further amplified when the merger with Compaq caused a tremendous increase in sales order volume and raised the profile of the IPG Information Technology Americas systems. Accenture/HP Solution HP enlisted Accenture to provide Application Management Services for the IPG Supply Chain Operations SAP platform. HP recognized Accenture—an existing HP alliance partner—for its application management expertise, its ability to ramp up quickly while minimizing transition risk, and its solutions delivery approach utilizing an integrated network of delivery centers. The Accenture Delivery Centre net-work includes major locations in Toronto, Canada; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mumbai, India; Malaga, Spain; Manila, Philippines; and more than 30 other locations around the world. This global approach enables Accenture to deliver a seamless set of offerings and capabilities quickly and cost-effectively, while minimizing risk for clients. The Accenture Delivery Centre network plays an important role in the IPG Supply Chain Operations solution. As part of the business imperative to achieve higher platform reliability, the HP IPG Supply Chain Operations system’s hardware and operations management was migrated to a data center operated by HP Intria (part of HP’s Managed Services Group) in Toronto, Canada. The migration of HP’s hardware operations to Toronto was complemented by Accenture’s deployment of the supporting application management service in the Accenture Delivery Centre in Toronto. The HP and Accenture team in Toronto developed a highly reliable and responsive supply chain solution designed to be online 24/7 with 99.5 percent availability, managing more than 60 servers and a large storage farm. About 98 percent of all trans-actions are received electronically and processed through the system with minimal human intervention until shipment. Given the critical nature of this solution, HP and Accenture also implemented a business continuance plan to prevent downtime of this critical supply chain process. In structuring, implementing and managing a scalable, durable and stable SAP platform solution, Accenture’s outsourcing services include: - Managing the transition and day- to-day service delivery.
- Level 1 Help Desk support and monitoring for SAP and EDI.
- Fielding an average of almost 1, 000 help desk calls per month.
- Running and monitoring more than 3, 500 jobs per month.
- Level 2 support for EDI.
- Processing and transmitting 580,000 EDI documents per month.
- Level 3 SAP functional configuration support, ABAP and SAP BASIS services, working with HP employees.
- Providing Production Optimization support to help improve overall system performance.
HP retains responsibility for: - Ensuring the hardware platform provides continuous availability while delivering multi-platform operational and network service.
- Directing ongoing project enhancements.
- Managing accounts within HP business units.
- Performing Level 2 support for SAP.
Innovation Delivered Since the engagement of Accenture for application management services and HP Intria for operations management, HP IPG Information Technology Americas Supply Chain Operations now runs at lower cost on an optimized system infrastructure for mission-critical SAP systems support. “Partnering with Accenture has resulted in a significant cost savings and improvement of service levels for these critical SAP application management activities,” said Volker Joehnk, HP Americas IPG Platform Manager for Replenishment Operations. “We can now manage our SAP order fulfillment at very competitive rates. We improved our efficiencies in resources and application management, and consolidated our contractor and supplier base. ” Talk to someone about this topic  To Top
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