Getting the IT Organization fit for the Digital challenge

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Being digital: the pressure is onThese days, nobody is a stranger to the term “digital.” But how do we translate it into practical, everyday strategies? That’s still foreign to many business leaders—CIOs included.

Increasingly, digital is all about convergence—how businesses can bring together the battery of technology forces to fire up new growth as well as deliver higher efficiency. IT leaders and their business colleagues are learning how to…

…harness social media (how things are discovered)…

…and cloud (how things are delivered)…

…connecting them to developments in big data and analytics (how insight is created)…

… and in mobility (how things are consumed).

Thus far, CIOs have known IT largely as a force for efficiency—for streamlining, cost reduction, and process improvement. But things are different now that business strategy and IT strategy are converging so quickly. There is a widening awareness of technology’s propulsive

power for growth—energizing everything from new forms of product development to unprecedented levels of customer intimacy.

That awareness is no longer limited to the IT group. The word “digital” appears 30 percent more often in the 2013 annual reports of Fortune 500 organizations than it did in 2011.

Business leaders now have high sky-high expectations. They want tools that can help them meet the demands they face. They already use smartphones to take their work with them wherever. Their kids –and their new employees—are wise to the ways of social media. Business leaders don’t see the cloud as an alien “system” to be viewed with caution—they see it as an incredibly flexible and effective tool to be used to the fullest.

The upshot? If CIOs and their teams don’t find ways to lead their organizations toward the new digital horizons, their business colleagues soon will.

The pressure is definitely on.

Past Future

Business

Requirements Enabling

Technology

Business BusinessIT

• IT Strategies are derived from business strategies

• IT seen as enabling

• CIO reacting to business agenda

• Emphasis on new and innovative solutions is driven by the business

• Fundamentally changes by integrating digital into enterprise business models to drive new value and growth

• Technology Innovation is increasingly driving business opportunity

• Emphasis on innovation is driven jointly by business and IT

• Needs new strategy and planning processes spanning business and IT

Evolution of technology and business

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Five crucial questions highlight what needs to happen next

1. How do we devise a strategy to create value with digital technologies?

More than ever, innovation is part of what top-performing IT leaders emphasize every day. They never lose sight of IT’s invaluable capacity for making existing business processes faster, better, cheaper. But that’s not what these IT leaders spend most of their time on. Today, their emphasis is firmly on the growth side of what digital IT can now do. They understand the goals of the business very well. They see clearly that converging digital technologies—social media and mobile, analytics and cloud—are exactly the kinds of resources that can take their organizations further than anyone imagined just a decade ago.

Our IT strategy services help address this question by working to define and execute a practical digital agenda that will aim to drive business value. We work to align business and IT priorities and develop strategies that are detailed and actionable, reflecting our deep industry, IT and business process acumen and our ability to implement as well as plan.

Client example: Healthcare sector

Accenture helped a leading international healthcare company to capitalize on today’s technology shifts in preparation for its next phase of growth. As part of this strategy, the company’s new CEO and executive team developed an ambitious vision for 2020 requiring them to manage complex patient relationships at an unprecedented scale. The team realizes technology will play a key role in achieving this goal—especially a strategy to integrate the data and information—which industry-wide remains a largely untapped opportunity. The company brought in Accenture to help define a vision of healthcare technology in 2020 and identify the technology capabilities and key principles required for success.

Client example: Health and Public Services sector

We helped a large international insurer to develop an information management strategy and roadmap and to evaluate and prioritize its IT project portfolio. Working with the insurer’s leadership, we helped establish an information management center of excellence framework, an organizational operating model, and data governance processes and capabilities. We also helped create a multiyear deployment plan for core initiatives, including the development of a customer-centric enterprise data warehouse, design and deployment of an analytics data lab, a master data management/data governance program, and other quick wins to drive early business value and support the client’s consumer-driven business model.

Client example: Retail goods sector

Accenture is helping one of the UK’s largest general goods retailers develop a five-year digital transformation program which will transform its technology environment, creating an enhanced customer digital experience for its more than 100 million customers across all sales channels, from mobile apps to stores. The strategy provides the chain with retail technology insights and capabilities to differentiate it from its competitors in a fiercely competitive marketplace. It includes a clearly defined technology future state to deliver the required capabilities and a roadmap to get there, along with an assessment of the IT organization that will be required to deliver and maintain these capabilities.

2. How do we extract value from all of the information at our disposal?

Forward-looking IT leaders are operating way beyond discussions about Big Data. They know they have more data options than ever, so first they determine the data they need to create value, then they find out where to get it, and then they decide how to secure the data. In short, those leaders have clearly thought-out information strategies. Knowing that any current data structure will be a hybrid, they make informed decisions about what data resides within their organizations’ own data centers, what can “belong” to a customer or supplier, and what can be in the cloud.

Accenture provides answers with its Information and Data Strategy services. We help align business imperatives and information needs, starting with identification of the data we believe is needed to drive value. We then define the information and data architecture for improving the management, governance and security of that information.

3. How do we solve for the constraints of our legacy IT systems?

CIOs know better than anyone how complex and inflexible their layered legacy IT systems can be. They know they have many more applications, and more versions of those applications, than their organizations need today. The good news? Many “industrial strength” options are now available that can deal with application legacy problems faster and with less risk to the business than before. Trailblazing IT leaders are already taking full advantage of these solutions. They are far ahead with initiatives to rationalize and modernize their application portfolios. They are well along the path of identifying which legacy systems can be retired soonest, and how.

Our Enterprise Architecture and Application Strategy services help organizations solve their toughest legacy challenges. We help define the overall technology blueprint and transition plan which underpins the strategy by creating a flexible and actionable roadmap that guides the selection, deployment, operation and refresh of applications and technologies within the organization.

So what can CIOs do to lead the digital march? Accenture believes most CIOs are clear about where their organizations need to go, digitally speaking. Their overriding challenge is how to get there, given where their organizations are today. Five crucial questions help to point the way forward:

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4. How do we make sure our IT infrastructure is as agile as it now needs to be?

Putting it bluntly: organizations cannot easily become digital unless their IT infrastructures are truly agile. The good news: CIOs now have more access than ever to flexible, variable-cost solutions. Cloud computing is the epitome of those solutions. Cloud is no longer an emerging trend. It’s here and it’s now—and ready to go to work in ways that allow the organization to respond nimbly and promptly.

That said, those users, like everyone else, are going to have to live in a hybrid world for some time to come. Leading organizations are going for “best of” resourcing models—buying what they want in specified formats. Their use of cloud is inevitable, but it’s incremental. To function well in this hybrid world, many assertive IT organizations are recognizing the value of service integration—assembling an “orchestra” of service providers—on-premise, XaaS, multi-vendor, and so on—and then effectively “conducting” or managing that assortment of providers.

Accenture’s Infrastructure services help IT and business leaders design, build and run “intelligent infrastructures” that harness the power of emerging technologies while getting the most out of their legacy environments to drive high performance and facilitate the digital business.

5. How do we secure our IT systems in a time when data respects no boundaries?

Securing the digital business isn’t about reflexively developing and installing new firewalls. It is now a question of balancing access to the right information with the risks of doing so. Many far-sighted companies are rethinking their security strategies to balance the threats and opportunities inherent in new technologies such as cloud and mobile. A vital part of that approach is clear thinking—and smart implementation—when it comes to data access verification. Another part of that approach? A solid grounding in analytics—essential components of a “command bridge” concept where live data contributes to constructive and pre-emptive planning in real time against many more threats at the same time.

Accenture’s Security services provide the reassurance needed to answer that question. We help clients reduce risk, learn and adopt proactive security stances, and establish new business initiatives by defining and implementing the security strategies which support their business.

There’s one last imperative to consider: how do IT leaders need to change the way they think and behave to innovate in smarter, faster ways?

These days, there is no such thing as an orderly, sequential way to run a business. Everything has to happen concurrently—right away and all at once. Strategy does not precede implementation and operation; these once-discrete activities all happen together, with constant iteration and feedback between them. Hand-offs are fast and frequent. Change is non-stop. And everybody learns at speed—and learns by doing. This iterative “learning by doing” approach is anything but that. It requires careful organization design, fresh thinking about roles and responsibilities, collaboration and idea generation between the business and technology and tools and techniques that enable permanent flexibility. But it has the potential to lead to many benefits—like being able to jump on fleeting market opportunities before they’re obvious to competitors or makes it simpler to respond promptly to customers’ fast-changing demands.

So, Accenture emphasizes speed and agility as we put our wide-ranging digital capability into action—piloting programs, iterating and improving—to verify that the transition from digital strategy to implementation is seamless, quick and effective.

Client example: Financial Services Sector

One of our clients, a global financial institution, knows the benefits of Accenture’s Infrastructure Consulting services well. With an overall goal of improving its customers’ banking experience, the client selected Accenture to design, build and deploy a transformed global IP network and backbone for 7,500 sites in 60-plus countries. The transformation involved solutions consisting of video conferencing, IP services, mobility services, call center voice and network management, and implementation of unified communications-as-a-service and contact center-as-a-service. Working with Accenture, the client was able to cut its annual communications expenditure by more than $100 million. Workplace productivity has increased, and the client now can provide a more flexible and tailored banking service to its customers, who increasingly want to use the Internet and mobile channels for banking.

Client example: Capital markets sector

Accenture is helping a leading global capital markets company transform its information security environment by following a strategic vision and a transition plan for security. In this multi-stage project, Accenture defined and implemented a global security department, and helped establish consistent security services, governance, roles, responsibilities and processes. In addition, Accenture collaborated with the company to develop and implement new security solutions, while assisting in the onshore and offshore development of a custom suite of identity and access management applications with advanced functionality. As a result, the company reduced operating costs, mitigated risk, improved productivity through automation and increased its ability to comply with regulatory requirements.

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How Accenture can help

Increasingly, digital is all about convergence—how businesses can bring together the battery of technology forces to fire up new growth as well as deliver higher efficiency. At Accenture, we know exactly what it takes to become digital.

You need a digital business partner that can set the right strategy for your organization, based on an understanding of your industry and the available technologies.

A partner that you can leverage key capabilities from that seamlessly integrate into your business to launch your Digital Business faster and more effectively.

A partner that is connected to and can connect you with all the different parts of your ecosystem.

A partner that has the breadth of experience, footprint and people to bring your digital business to scale, no matter what your ambition.

YourOrganization

Your Digital Business Journey

Ecosystem

Accenture

Set the directionPlug-in

capabilities

Scale

Accenture’s value proposition

Working collaboratively with your business and IT leadership, we help define and execute a digital agenda to support your organization’s business strategy, harnessing the power of digital technology innovation while getting value out of your legacy environments to help the entire organization better compete, innovate and expand.

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Why Accenture

•We blend our business and industry insights with our technology know-how to help both IT and business leaders use digital technologies to identify and implement innovative ideas that create new value—and to deliver even greater efficiency and effectiveness across the organization.

•We have unrivalled industry insight, the better to quickly assess the business needs and pinpoint the greatest opportunities and fiercest challenges. Working with nearly 500 of the world’s largest and most demanding organizations, we are intimately familiar with the rhythms and routines of almost every industry. We also have a clear sense of market potential and competitors’ positioning.

•We start with business value at the forefront, translating our clients’ strategic agendas and industry best practice into IT initiatives that measurably improve performance.

Crucially, since almost no one has the luxury of a blank sheet of paper, we help our clients improve the design, efficiency and effectiveness of their legacy assets, systems and applications as an important step in getting to their digital destination.

•We have codified our cumulative experience, born out of decades of client service, delivery experience and industry insights, into a set of leading practices and proprietary, innovative tools that help our clients get the most out of their IT today and prepare for the future.

•We have an end-to-end view of the IT landscape, from strategy to infrastructure to applications to security, to help you drive technology transformation that can impact both the top and bottom line results of your organization.

•Our world-class delivery capabilities help us to deliver value anywhere along the spectrum from strategy to implementation and management—often spanning that entire spectrum for our clients. And we have true global reach, with a Global Delivery Network across 54-plus countries—the world’s largest group of technology, business process and outsourcing professionals.

•We employ the industry’s top talent—people with a passion for performance—and we work hard to foster our culture of innovation, collaboration and teaming.

•We take a collaborative, ‘one team’ approach, working arm in arm with our clients, our technology partners and inside our own organization to deliver everything from complex, long-term IT transformations to discrete projects or solutions.

About AccentureAccenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 275,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$28.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2013. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

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To learn more about how Accenture can help your IT Organization get fit for the Digital challenge contact:

Daniel Benton Managing Director and Global Lead of IT Strategy daniel.benton@accenture.com

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