Outsourcing for the Retail Industry

Accenture research confirms that retail executives believe outsourcing delivers operational efficiencies and provides them with the ability to detect and quickly respond to customer needs. To combat the low margins and commoditization, high-performance retailers are leveraging outsourcing to increase operational effectiveness and gain enhanced productivity and lower costs.

Outsourcing can range from IT infrastructure through applications to a business process (part or whole). Many companies are increasingly seeing outsourcing as a phased process, beginning with infrastructure and ending with one or more business processes being managed by a trusted third party.

The benefits of outsourcing with a partner like Accenture can be enormous:

• Management focus: Focus scarce management resources where they are most needed.
  
  
• Keeping up to date at reduced risk: The outsourcer can bring industry-wide experience to bear, along with specialist knowledge, to help ensure the right decisions are made.
  
  
• Reduced costs: Economies of scale can drive down unit costs, as do the use of shared resources. Unpredictable capital costs are replaced with more easily controlled, variable operational costs.
  
  
• Improved performance: Expert outsourcers like Accenture can help clients simplify and automate their business processes through applying proven practices.
  
  
• Scalability and flexibility: The Accenture Global Delivery Network allows clients the opportunity to match changing needs to resources and infrastructure as required.

Accenture has a track record in helping retailers to use outsourcing to transform, increasing efficiency and enhancing their ability to achieve true competitive differentiation and high performance. Several factors combine to make Accenture the ideal outsourcing partner for retailers:

• Deep industry insight: We have been working in this industry for years and have a track record of helping retailers around the world achieve high performance.
  
  
• Business acumen: Our continuing research into high performance ensures that we have a scientific understanding of the capabilities that underlie it. As the world's largest management consultancy, with a vast pool of business talent, nobody else can better help companies innovate intelligently to create competitive advantage.
  
  
• Global reach: Accenture's global presence means we can leverage local insight like nobody else. And the Accenture Global Delivery Network means that retailers can leverage the skill and cost benefits of global sourcing, adding scalability and flexibility to their business processes.
  
  
• Technological excellence: The capabilities enabling high performance are increasingly enabled by technology. From innovation to what works, nobody understands how to use technology to better business advantage than Accenture—and we have the global capability to manage technology cost-effectively at higher service levels.

Accenture is committed to partnering with you on your retail company's journey toward high performance, helping you to achieve your strategic goals in the most effective manner possible.

Contact us to discuss how Accenture can help you understand high performance in this industry—and how best to reach it now.

Accenture offers a variety of outsourcing options as follows:

• Accenture Application Outsourcing Services: We deploy, manage and upgrade packaged or customized software to help organizations increase productivity, reduce total cost of ownership and improve service execution and reliability.
• Accenture Infrastructure Outsourcing Services: We transform IT infrastructure through rationalization and optimization, creating an IT environment that is flexible and responsive, where applications and business processes can enable enterprise-wide business value and achieve high performance.
• Accenture Business Process Outsourcing Services: We take responsibility for performing and managing the outsourced function or process on behalf of our clients in order to help them achieve high performance in critical enterprise processes at reduced costs.