HP customer case study: Accenture turns to HP Project and Portfolio
Management Center to deliver more value to customers on global scale
Industry: Business Services
Optimizing IT
Accenture relies on HP PPM Center to help exceed customer expectations
“HP’s Project and Portfolio Management Center (HP PPM Center) allows us
to build our processes into a powerful application that automates their
repeatability, sweeping away those three-ring binders full of paper
processes that used to gather dust on our clients’ shelves.”
-- David Ehninger, Accenture Senior Executive, Outsourcing Growth Platform
Objective:
Increase value to global customers yet reduce
costs by achieving breakthrough improvements in
process design, enforcement, and automation.
Approach:
HP’s Business Technology Optimization (BTO)
offering for IT governance: HP PPM Center.
IT improvements:
• Using HP Deployment Management Extension
for SAP to manage the design/build of SAP for
multiple customers produced significant time
savings and quality improvements.
• Automated report data-gathering greatly reduces
the time and cost of generating reports for all
key stakeholders.
Business benefits:
• HP PPM Center provided Accenture’s clients with
real-time visibility into project status and demand
requests, increasing client satisfaction and
improving overall project outcomes.
• Using HP PPM Center to implement and enforce
standard project management processes has
improved project data integrity, helping
Accenture rely on the data captured in HP PPM
Center to make critical yet informed decisions.
• HP PPM Center and HP Deployment
Management for SAP Extension have greatly
reduced the cost and risk of maintaining SOX
compliance.
Accenture is among the world’s leading management
consulting, technology services, and outsourcing
companies. When companies hire Accenture, they
expect excellence—but Accenture knows that today’s
“excellent” can be tomorrow’s “mediocre” — unless the
organization keeps finding new, better ways to deliver
value to its customers. IT outsourcing is an important,
integral part of Accenture’s business. Because it’s a
business, Accenture recognizes it can’t exceed
customer expectations or make a profit with a “cost-
center” mentality.
When companies outsource IT, they expect to see
improved methodologies, processes, and discipline put
into place. They want their IT to work better, and in
most cases, they want it to be cheaper. “Success in this
business is all about building and enforcing repeatable
processes,” explains David Ehninger, Accenture Senior
Executive, Outsourcing Growth Platform, which serves
clients in energy and other industries. Accenture’s
Delivery Center in Houston considers many options in
its search to improve service delivery through effective
process design, enforcement, and automation.
“The collaboration and communication features in HP
PPM Center provide us integrated, reliable processes,
even when our teams are half a world apart.”
David Ehninger, Accenture Senior Executive, Outsourcing
Growth Platform
In the spring of 2001, while surveying software being
used by Accenture’s accounts, Ehninger learned about
HP’s Business Technology Optimization (BTO) offering
for IT governance—HP Project and Portfolio
Management Center (HP PPM Center). This software
solution provides the first integrated transaction system
Customer solution for IT—real-time IT governance to turn the dials and Accenture’s initial implementation of HP Deployment
make decisions. The Accenture Delivery Center in Management Extension for SAP tackled the
at a glance Houston initially purchased HP PPM Center dashboard, management of maintenance and design/build of SAP
Primary Software HP Deployment Management Extension™ for SAP®, for multiple customers.
• HP PPM Center dashboard and HP PPM Time Management module and has also
• HP Deployment Management Audit and SOX reviews
now added HP PPM Project Management module and
Extension for SAP With the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley regulations
HP PPM Program Management module. Accenture’s
• HP PPM Time Management coming into play, audit reviews of processes have
module Delivery Center in Houston began implementing the
become a way of life. With the use of HP PPM Center for
• HP PPM Project Management core products in July 2001 and has continued to
IT governance, the amount of time required to perform
module implement additional processes and functionality into
these types of audits has been significantly reduced.
• HP PPM Program Management HP PPM Center software over the years.
Office (PMO) module Audits that previously took several months to complete
As a result of the large scope of the implementation now are able to be wrapped up in just a few weeks.
with the Delivery Center in Houston, the need arose to
Another way HP PPM Center has delivered significant
perform continuous improvement reviews and to make
value to Accenture is by automating data gathering for
modifications to the processes implemented to account
reports. Ehninger estimates that what HP PPM Center
for changes within the business. Roger Buchanan, PPM
does for him automatically would require the several
Technology Lead within the Delivery Center, says, “The
resources to gather data manually, update
effort and time spent to review and make changes to
processes managed within HP PPM Center are much spreadsheets, hold meetings to consolidate and
smoother and faster to implement than they would be reconcile inputs, and format and build reports.
without using HP PPM Center, resulting in lower costs Ehninger says HP’s solution gives him more confidence
to customers.” that the numbers are accurate. The old spreadsheet
methods he used in the past were significantly less
A key outsourcing success factor for Accenture, both in reliable and required more time to complete.
terms of cost and customer satisfaction is the transition
process. “We spend a lot of time and money to
“Success in this business is all about building and
develop good processes, so my objective was not to
enforcing repeatable processes.”
do it over and over for each customer, but to have this
David Ehninger, Accenture Senior Executive, Outsourcing
pre-built to shorten the transition time,” Ehninger says.
Growth Platform
The HP approach: flexible yet rigorous
HP PPM Center is especially attractive to Accenture
Global reach
because of its flexibility. It can be quickly adapted to
Accenture’s business has long been global, but to
meet the demands of individual customers. Ehninger
deliver top value to customers in this competitive
says that when it comes to process, customers are
environment, more development is shifting to low-cost,
concerned about either the front end or the back end,
high-quality teams in locations such as India and
not everything in the middle. “There’s often something
Brazil. HP PPM Center makes this work seamless for
they want to change about the initiation of a request,
Accenture. “The collaboration and communication
or about user acceptance, but they don’t really care
features in HP PPM Center provide us integrated,
how it moves through your factory in-between.
reliable processes, even when our teams are half a
“HP PPM Center is so easy to configure that it lets us world apart,” Ehninger concludes. “The more we grow
meet these specific customer needs, while keeping this part of our business, the more important this
processes standardized from customer to customer.” global integration capability becomes to us.”

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4AA1-2034ENW, February 2008