European Postal Service: ERP and SAP Implementation

Key to the transformation’s success would be the implementation of a common enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management system.

Working closely together, the postal service and Accenture identified SAP as the enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management system best suited to support the enterprise-wide transformation. In addition to developing and implementing the new system in three release phases, Accenture helped the organization reengineer processes to improve customers’ experiences with the postal service.

Improvement initiatives supported by the SAP customer relationship management implementation included:

• A new customer interaction model for handling customer service more effectively.
  
  
• Segmentation capabilities that allow the organization to differentiate its treatment of various customer groups.
  
  
• Analytics and insight-driven marketing capabilities to guide campaigns and improve profitability.
  
  
• An automatic response-handling system that eliminated 70 percent of basic service calls previously handled by call center agents.
  
  
• An efficient process for consolidating customer master data.
  
  
• Enhanced and integrated sales support processes to drive efficiencies throughout the sales cycle.

Other efforts to generate “quick wins” and IT efficiencies included creating a process-based IT organization and governance structure; implementing interactive voice response technologies; establishing a shared financial services center; and consolidating and outsourcing the postal service’s IT infrastructure.

The three-year business transformation program significantly reduced the postal service’s infrastructure and maintenance costs by allowing it to retire a number of legacy systems in favor of an integrated SAP solution. In addition, Accenture helped the postal service improve its sales efficiencies and cut customer-related costs by approximately 20 percent, resulting in annual business savings of up to US$144 million (roughly €110 million).

Equally important is the postal agency’s new ability to continually enhance customer satisfaction through streamlined processes and a more responsive sales and customer service organization. Accenture’s ongoing High Performance Business research reveals that successful companies forge a strong bond with their customers by creating and consistently delivering an experience that not only meets customers' needs and preferences, but is also strongly aligned with the company's overall business and brand strategy. With Accenture’s help, this postal service now enjoys the customer-centric capabilities needed to drive profitability and long-term success.