{"id":1125,"date":"2014-07-20T12:08:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/projects\/horsesforsources\/accenture-ops-infra-merge_072014\/"},"modified":"2014-07-20T12:08:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T12:08:00","slug":"accenture-ops-infra-merge_072014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsesforsources.com\/accenture-ops-infra-merge_072014\/","title":{"rendered":"Accenture makes significant As-a-Service play by bringing together Operations, Cloud and Infrastructure"},"content":{"rendered":"
It’s time to wake up and smell the roses, people. The services industry is going through its most seismic challenge as increasingly sophisticated enterprise clients are looking to reduce their reliance on labor-based services and clunking archaic on-premise technology. \u00a0<\/strong>While some services and consulting firms have their heads buried in the sand, clearly in denial that the services model has already<\/em> entered into a fundamental shift, others are recognizing that they need to get ahead of this – and fast.<\/p>\n The services industry is going through a secular change and it will never be like it was<\/em>, where trillions of dollars were spent maintaining dysfunctional systems and funding huge armies of staff to fumble their way through managing non-standard and often obsolete processes. Those days are fading fast and that pie is shrinking for providers and consultants still feeding off the legacy enterprise operations beast.<\/p>\n We ran a study earlier this year that explored the role of technology when enterprises outsource their business operations, and the findings from almost 200 major enterprises couldn’t be clearer: half of today’s enterprises are expecting to take the leap to enable their business operations with new technology tools and platforms in barely a two-year<\/em> time-frame.<\/p>\n Click to Enlarge<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Operations leaders don\u2019t have the luxury of ten-year improvement programs anymore \u2013 corporate leadership expects to see tangible results in much shorter timeframes. You only have to look at the growing number of unemployed CIOs to understand what happens when functions become overly-operational and limited value and innovation is achieved.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the same for CFOs, CPOs, supply chain heads and other function leaders \u2013 most are under a renewed pressure to continue driving out costs, while delivering ongoing improvements to data quality and having greater alignment with front-office activities. \u00a0The old “we need to fix our ERP first” excuse just isn’t cutting it as much these days.<\/p>\n This is why 49% of today\u2019s enterprise buyers expect to move to a \u201cwide-scale transformation of business processes enabled by new technology tools\/platforms\u201d in just two years. \u00a0Yes, this may be a pipe-dream for some enterprises, but what’s clear is that many of those operations leaders failing to steer their enterprise away from legacy delivery models will get cast aside quickly in today’s tolerance-diminishing business environment.<\/p>\n Why the merger of Operations, Infrastructure and Cloud services helps address the fundamental shift to technology-driven services<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n One recent provider re-organization that quietly took place was the merger (see link<\/a>) of Accenture’s Operations with its\u00a0its infrastructure and cloud services division to create a ~$5.7 Billion (HfS estimate) business unit. \u00a0This follows on from the firm’s recent renaming of “BPO” to “Operations”<\/a>, where the intent was always to extend the service suite. Now this is significant.<\/p>\n Firstly, these are two very large divisions, so it will likely take some time for them to figure out how to work most effectively together, but the immediate benefits are already powerful:<\/p>\n Creating hybrid teams of cloud and process experts creates an “As-a-Service” culture<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n When you talk to buyers today, most will tell you that having to deal with the technology and operations\/BPO divisions of providers is akin to dealing with two separate companies. There is often very little synergy – and very different working cultures<\/em> – between those people which deliver business processes and those who design, develop and maintain technology solutions. It’s been a major impediment to the progression of the BPO industry, and one of the key reasons why 49% of enterprises today (see above) still find themselves trapped in a “lift and shift” purgatory. Having IT infrastructure and operational talent together should help to break down these barriers and create a culture of enabling technology-driven services, moving processes into an “As-a-Service” model and creating the skills and acumen that providers need to make the delivery of “As-a-Service” effective. \u00a0Simply put, BPaaS (Business-Process-as-a-Service) delivery is not as dependent on transactional processing scale, as most these processes are now full automated in the cloud; instead the successful providers will develop their BPaaS businesses around providing teams of analytical, creative and digitally-centric talent – areas where most enterprises already recognize they have real talent shortages<\/a>.<\/p>\n The “Cloud Conversation” can be quickly brought to the table with operational clients<\/strong><\/p>\n Ambitious and sophisticated clients are now seeing the huge benefits of shifting from on-premise to cloud delivery and need to talk to combinations of infrastructure and operational experts to understand what is possible, and to craft solutions that can work for them. And this isn’t something that is occurring in a few years, it’s already<\/em> happening<\/em> where our latest research shows close to one-in-three enterprises already using (or about to use) BPaaS \/ cloud as an alternative to legacy outsourcing in areas such as HR, industry-specific operations, finance and accounting and procurement:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n