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Two years ago, 68 percent of business executives surveyed by Accenture and HFS Research said they believed their core enterprise processes would not be delivered as-a-Service for five or more years.
One year later another HfS survey found that 56 percent of senior business leaders want to adopt as-a-Service features, such as intelligent operations, within two years.
Why the acceleration? A few dynamics are behind it. One is competition, as more and more organizations find success with as-a-Service, onlookers realize they’re increasingly dissatisfied with the way their major functions and processes run.
Additionally, as-a-Service offers improved agility and speed to business leaders seeking to get ahead of shifting markets and fast-moving customer demands.
Companies now using an as-a-Service model for one or more functions are reaping the benefits of partnering with an as-a-Service provider for more sophisticated and more intelligent services.
Accenture is working with a leading independent energy producer to implement technology linking field assets to a network of cloud-based offerings, with consumption-based pricing focused on reducing cost, boosting production and simplifying technology.
Entire industries are consolidating amid increasing mergers and acquisitions. With increased M&A activity, however, comes increasing complexity, as well as the costs of integrating and maintaining an extensive operations infrastructure.
This can slow business down. With as-a-Service, a company can trim weight off its infrastructure and make better use of assets. Agility also arises from the flexibility in scaling transactional volume up or down as business needs change.
With as-a-Service, clients tap into world-class capabilities in a matter of days or weeks, not months.
For example, Accenture is helping a large grocery wholesaler in South America to deliver a cloud based, as-a-Service sales and service platform to drive growth in their new digital business. Accenture built an end-to-end, turnkey as-a-Service solution that helped enable the company to quickly launch its new digital business and gain a competitive first-mover advantage in the market.
As-a-Service isn’t just about processing transactions and capturing data. It also leverages data analytics and deep industry expertise to provide insights to drive better performance.
For DollarTree, a leading discount store, Accenture used analytics to develop an energy reduction strategy for the company using more than 300 performance models to drive scenarios from big data. Pulling from more than 12 million data points, the models gave real-time insight into each of the store’s geographies and the energy used in specific locations. Accenture developed a technology roadmap that showed how energy and money could be optimized across 13,000+ retail stores.
Here we come to the heart of the as-a-Service value proposition: It’s designed and delivered around a company’s desired results, whether that’s more revenue, better margins, enhanced customer service, faster innovation or new market expansion.
We can also aim for improved performance at a functional level, such as greater speed-to-hire or faster finance and procurement processes.
Services are then paid for based on the value delivered through the as-a-Service contract and can be purchased as they are consumed.
Many companies begin with the technology component, as part of migrating functions to the cloud. They may start with a single function, then expand to others. At that point, the jump to as-a-Service is shorter.
Others take an automation angle. They need to be more variable in consumption of services. RPA as-a-Service enables a rapid upgrade in quality and efficiency, while keeping needed investments as low as possible.
There are several other pathways to explore. Whichever you choose, know that as-a-Service is beyond the testing phase; it’s here-and-now. You can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and watch opportunities pass by.
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