Spanish Port Authority: IT Strategy and Transformation

Accenture helps a Spanish port authority develop a three-year information technology implementation plan and create a structured IT organization, strategically aligned with business needs and aimed at growth opportunities.

The port authority’s geographic location offers tremendous potential for growth. However, the authority began facing increased competition ever since Spain integrated with the European Union, thus becoming the door to Europe for international transport. The authority identified that it needed to:

• Evolve its business model to a concession model.
  
  
• Decrease its infrastructure investments and increase its infrastructure maintenance activities.
  
  
• Become the service and processes integrator for all the port community agents.
  
  
• Increase operational efficiency and quality.
  
  

The authority lacked the internal resources, skills and capabilities to align its information technology function with its business strategy and needs. It turned to Accenture to provide systems integration and technology consulting services.

Accenture worked with the port authority to:

• Assess its current IT function; service and governance model; and infrastructure and application landscape.
  
  
• Identify key infrastructure improvement initiatives and define project parameters.
  
  
• Develop a three-year IT implementation plan with investment estimation.
  
  
• Create a structured IT organization model and design the future application landscape within the IT plan.

The transformed IT function allows the port authority to achieve its business objectives and establishes the mechanisms needed to keep its IT function aligned with business requirements. Once the IT plan has been fully implemented, the port authority expects to reduce:

• Operating expenses by 10 to 15 percent.
• The number of incidents related to operating processes by 50 percent.
• The average response time to systems end users from 10 days to two days.
  
  

The new systems landscape will also let the port authority optimize business processes and improve the level of integration between all the port community agents.