Industrialization: The Critical Next Step to High Performance
On the surface, industrialization appears straightforward: assemble and apply the best approaches to application development and maintenance. But large financial institutions have multiple divisions and IT organizations, each with its own processes, tools and process owners. Distilling this into a single effective capability can be daunting.
What does Industrialized Delivery look like?
Application management must be delivered as a business service, not just an IT capability, and must encompass people, processes, tools and industry best practices. A service provider must be able to apply standardized tools and processes to deliver application services through a proven global network, not only facilitating better communication, but also enhancing quality and productivity by transferring industry best practices and innovation across all parts of the IT organization. This can help create more satisfied users and lower delivery costs.
Impact of Industrializing Applications Delivery
Accenture research shows that if a $1 billion institution can reduce application costs (which can average 3 percent of revenue) by 40 percent, it can generate as much as a 1 percent increase in operating income. This reduction can be achieved through industrialization, which delivers IT process governance and discipline that can result in lower per-incident costs, greater platform stability, less rework and faster time to market.
Optimizing the Application Portfolio
In turn, Accenture research indicates that application costs and complexities increase as financial organizations grow. The journey to high performance requires ensuring that applications and their supporting infrastructure align with the business, and that the application portfolio is simplified.
Accenture has developed the Service Optimization Framework to guide clients through this process. It includes the Accenture Technology Discovery Suite, which tracks quality and complexity, establishes a baseline for measurement and identifies opportunities for improved functionality at the application level; and the Accenture Technology Rationalization Suite, which streamlines technology and management of the entire application portfolio.
In Accenture’s experience, application outsourcing services and optimization capabilities can help companies achieve and sustain improvements; reduce complexity, risks and costs; and drive innovation by allowing IT executives to maximize their spending in the highest-value areas.