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Accenture helped this company reduce its annual IT budget by $85 million by defining a new model for desktop support and consolidating infrastructure service providers using the IT Infrastructure Library.
Freed-up funds are now being applied to developing innovative products, a key enabler of high performance.
To sustain revenues in a competitive market and invest more aggressively in research and development, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies made a strategic decision to reduce $100 million from its IT budget.
IT standardization was the first item on the agenda. With Accenture's help, the company defined a standard operating model for desktop support services and managed the implementation of new workstations for 200 sites around the globe. This effort saved the company $15 million per year in ongoing operating costs.
Based on the strong results of the global desktop management services project, the pharmaceutical company approached Accenture to find the best way to consolidate infrastructure support to one selected outsourcing provider.
The company's request aligned with Accenture's ongoing research into the characteristics of high-performance businesses and a recent survey of global IT executives on the topic of enabling high performance with next-generation infrastructure.
The survey confirmed that one of the top operational challenges for IT executives is consolidating and standardizing enterprise-wide IT infrastructure and improving service levels to the high-performance business.
Accenture marshaled a team from Accenture Technology Consulting, including specialists from the Data Center Technology and Operations (DCT&O) service line, to develop the infrastructure support services operating model and process manual. DCT&O focuses on driving cost efficiencies and operational effectiveness through the optimization of underlying infrastructure technologies, as well as the supporting operational processes, based on ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library).
Teaming with the pharmaceutical company, Accenture used its innovative Accenture Service Events offering—a tool to help convert ITIL concepts into actionable process flows to improve IT service delivery—to define and document 120 infrastructure support processes. The result was a comprehensive operating manual outlining a global set of infrastructure support service events.
Next Accenture managed the transition of all infrastructure support services to the pharmaceutical company's selected infrastructure outsourcing provider at each of the 200 sites in scope. To support the transition, Accenture implemented a Web-based transition management toolkit, including a work plan and consolidated view of the transition status of each site.
Teaming with Accenture, the pharmaceutical company is working to transition fully to the global infrastructure outsourcing arrangement with the selected third-party outsourcing provider, which will carve out $70 million of the IT operating budget year over year while maintaining the IT service quality that employees expect, regardless of their location.
Beyond these significant cost savings, the pharmaceutical company realized several additional benefits, including the ability to:
Overall, Accenture's combined effort of desktop standardization and developing the infrastructure outsourcing operating model and processes provided the pharmaceutical company the cost savings it needed to redirect into critical research and development. Becoming a high-performance business is not only in sight—it is now well within reach.