Global Service Provider: Business Process Management

Accenture helped a global service provider understand the connection between its applications and the business processes they support, thus laying the foundation to achieve high performance. The client is a major global services company.

As part of Accenture’s ongoing High Performance Business research program, Accenture identified the distinguishing characteristics of leading companies in the services field. This research revealed that high-performance services businesses were more likely to have achieved mastery of standardized processes and integrated IT, which has enabled them to deliver returns to shareholders 50 percent higher than those of their peers over three years.

This finding would have come as no surprise to the client organization, which had long recognized the important role IT played in driving high performance. Recently, for example, it set its sights on identifying the applications that best supported the processes for each of its businesses.

During its review, the organization discovered that many of its divisions used disparate applications to complete the processes which are very similar. This lack of standardization directly affected the company’s bottom line, because of the IT support necessary to maintain and upgrade many different applications. Thus, standardizing and rationalizing applications across its businesses became an immediate priority. However, to do this as effectively as possible and with minimal disruption to the business, the company would need to gain a clear understanding of how each application was linked to key business processes.

Accenture’s deep experience in Business Process Management Lifecycle (BPM-L) would be a valuable asset in the company’s quest to more deeply understand the connections between its applications and business processes, and prioritize its IT rationalization project accordingly. As an additional benefit, Accenture’s BPM-L experts could help the company ensure its most critical processes were fully aligned with its strategy and with industry best practices, and provide the necessary tools, infrastructure, techniques, and coaching for future sustainability of their processes.

At the outset of the project, the Accenture team worked with the organization to document its operating model and create an overarching view of its major process areas. To do this as quickly and efficiently as possible while ensuring high-quality outcomes, Accenture relied on our BPM-L methodology and our cutting-edge BPM-L assets and accelerators—including our industry specific BPM Reference Model.

Another way Accenture accelerated the company’s attainment of value was by using the latest BPM-L technology. By utilizing the industry specific Reference Process Model built into Oracle BPA Suite (ARIS version sold by Oracle)—a business process modeling and repository tool—Accenture helped the client rapidly create an organization-wide process map that gave the company’s leadership team a clear picture of core processes across the enterprise. From this overview, the organization selected eight pilot process areas for improvement.

With Accenture’s ongoing help, the global services company deepened its understanding of the connections between its applications and its core business processes, laying the groundwork for a better approach to application rationalization.

Furthermore, by defining, documenting and centrally storing processes utilizing the ARIS repository, the client organization is now better equipped to maintain or improve existing processes and design new processes. Apart from the ARIS know-how of Accenture’s BPM-L consultants, Accenture’s High Performance Business Process cross-industry process model library also played a key role in the project. This library includes more than 20,000 models covering 71 industry segments, providing a wealth of performance improvement references. Accenture’s access to high-performance process models from the freight and logistics industry enabled us to bring the best ideas and approaches to bear.

The company now has the ability, tools and associated application systems it needs to define and manage its business processes more effectively. The end result: greater operational efficiency and agility that ultimately enhances the company’s ability to achieve high performance.