Have you ever spent hours preparing a solid business performance report, complete with interactive charts and your software’s finest functionality, only to find some of your core business information has changed overnight? Or worse, you’re unable to submit it in a timely way due to one necessary fact you simply can’t track down? Complex operational report environments are common for any large and growing business—but they often lead to these kinds of frustrations.
It’s something we recognized was happening across our own enterprise at Accenture. We realized that every day, client account teams and business unit leaders were working from corporate reporting that was often difficult and slow to use and was historically based. That impacted making timely, strategic decisions.
Our teams needed information that was accessible online, in real time—information that was consistent and secure. By giving our teams rapid and continuous understanding of both client and portfolio performance, they could make better sales and commercial decisions that would drive growth for the whole business.
A modern solution
Here at Accenture’s global IT organization, we need to keep pace with a keen business demand for technology to support our client teams. In terms of reporting, it was clear that there was an opportunity to create a modern solution that would bring together key financial and operational data in a new way. It’s an approach around building applications that seamlessly adjust to business and technology change that Accenture calls “Future Systems.” In March 2017 , we launched the foundation of a new streamlined, cohesive, and intelligent information platform called Manage myBusiness.
The platform consists of a common back-end and data architecture that brings together key business information from a number of different sources within Accenture—sales, financial, and operational enterprise systems. We also designed a front end which was easy to use and could be simply personalized. And we rolled out a change management program across Accenture to introduce and drive adoption of the platform, which was essential for the success of the transformation.
Actionable insights
Manage myBusiness is now used widely across our organization. And it’s not going too far for me to say that it has changed how our executive teams work. With some cultural shift, they are far more insight-driven in their management behaviors. As one executive commented on the platform: “Manage myBusiness is fantastic. We can now move away from heavy, disparate reports to real-time evaluation. It allows me to drive behaviors immediately, gaining a huge leap in efficiency."
So, let’s take a closer look at the tangible benefits of using this intelligent information platform:
We can better anticipate business outcomes: By using consistent and universal information, tailored to individual needs, our teams can ultimately take actions on decisions in real time.
We can work faster and smarter: We’ve gotten rid of the administrative aspects of reporting and put more focus on driving client account performance, faster.
We save on operational costs: We found plenty of savings through a rationalization of the legacy reporting landscape and by redirecting the time from reporting to business management.
Introducing Manage myBusiness is part of our strategic business services vision and roadmap related to our overall business transformation. We believe that our company’s growth will be better realized as an insights-driven enterprise. And we’ve invested heavily in digitizing core technologies. Now, we want to unlock new, post-digital value.
I am inspired by the adventure of enterprise transformations and enjoy seeing our passionate, expressive, and multi-talented teams challenge the status quo and push boundaries. We’re achieving our goals one step at time.
If the story I’ve told in this blog is something you can relate to in your own organization, take a look at our case study. Alternatively, I’d be delighted to talk you through the processes and performance milestones along the way.
Patrick Engelking is a Director in Accenture’s Internal IT organization, Digital Business Transformation, Enterprise Analytics.