High BPO delivers game-changing business outcomes
The benefits offered by BPO have long been clear, and have centered on the increased efficiency that comes with standardizing and streamlining processes and driving out cost. But as impressive as such gains are, companies can pull the same levers of labor savings and process improvements for only so long before the benefits begin to sound less impressive. Today, organizations are asking their BPO providers a bold new question: What else can you give me? These new forms of business value such as improving customer satisfaction, increasing working capital and revenue generation, and optimizing costs and profit & loss performance are already emerging in the most progressive client/ provider relationships. Such outcomes are arising from BPO providers ability to use the business and operational knowledge gleaned from a long-term outsourcing relationship, to go deeper into their clients value chains. The earlier forms of value generated by BPO solutions will continue, but they will be delivered in the context of business outcomes based on more extensive analytics-based insights, application of industry expertise, and the scale and experience a provider gains within and across multiple industries. Following are a number of nextgeneration business outcomes for Accenture clients that provide concrete examples of how Accenture has helped organizations, from an array of industries, achieve game-changing advantages through analytics-backed BPO. 2
Care Management North American Healthcare Payer Accenture aligned with Radiant to bring Care Management BPO Services to a North American healthcare payer to help them reduce administrative costs. The company was able to ramp up operations with highly-skilled resources, including US-licensed nurses in just 13 weeks and achieve a savings between 35 and 55 percent per full-time employee. The clinicians are responsible for helping manage the review and authorization of medical services, and the company was able to redeploy its retained staff to other customer-facing activities. North American Healthcare Payer Accenture aligned with Radiant to bring Care Management BPO services to help a leading North American healthcare payer improve service quality, productivity and compliance by managing the processing of its electronic requests from service providers related to patient care. By meeting and exceeding the 95 percent target for quality service level agreements and the 99+ percent target for turnaround-time compliance, this enabled the company to meet government requirements. Business Outcome: Improve Compliance and Risk Management Finance & Accounting North American Provider of High Tech Products and Services By conducting in-depth analysis of credit terms and introducing dynamic collection strategies, Accenture F&A BPO optimized working capital performance for a leading US provider of high-technology products and services. The reduction in the number of days it takes to process payments (day sales outstanding) helped optimize cash flow, and released an additional $9.4 million into the business and a $430,000 P&L impact. Business Outcome: Improve Working Capital HR (Recruitment) BPO British Telecom Faced with significant challenges regarding headcount control and cost containment due to divergent systems and regional processes, Accenture HR BPO teamed with BT Global Services to implement a centralized approval tracking and control process as part of our existing onboarding services. The Global Services unit is seeing significant reduction in unapproved hires and is able to better project and regulate the flow of new hires coming into the business to match costs with incoming revenue. Business Outcome: Improve Workforce North American Healthcare Payer A leading North American healthcare payer significantly reduced the administrative costs of handling electronic requests from customers. Accenture aligned with Radiant to bring Care Management BPO services to introduce program efficiency improvements resulting in a 200 percent increase in productivity compared to client targets, and a reduction in the number of staff needed to support the service and region. 3
European Supermarket Accenture HR BPO enabled significant improvements in workforce productivity for a European supermarket company by making back-office processes more efficient and effective; the program freed up over 45,000 hours per year for store managers. Time spent hiring qualified candidates was reduced, and less time was spent on executing HR administrative tasks such as CV screening, scheduling interviews and preparing new hire documents. Accenture improved the speed-to-hire by 50 percent, reducing the time it takes to fill a vacancy from an average of 10 days to just five. The recruitment capabilities were strengthened, and processing efficiency increased by more than 30 percent. Store managers time has been freed up to focus on improving customer service and generating sales. Levi Strauss & Co. Levi Strauss & Co. needed to transform its recruiting process, improving its ability to hire talented retail professionals to work during the annual back to school and holiday seasons. In the past, Levi Strauss & Co. store managers recruited new hires by literally walking the halls of retail centers with paper applications in hand. Accenture developed an online, cloud-based recruiting and hiring capability, supported by a team of experienced recruiting professionals. Now Levi Strauss & Co. can advertise job opportunities on social media and careers sites, and enable candidates to apply online with Levi Strauss & Co., freeing up 60,000 store manager hours. In addition, Accenture applied analytics to identify opportunities to improve demand forecasting and sourcing and hiring performance. The outsourcing arrangement has fundamentally changed how Levi Strauss & Co. manages its recruitment and hiring 4 function, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the hiring process; improving the quality of candidates and new hires and creating an enhanced user experience for both the hiring managers and the candidates. Insurance BPO Global Insurance Company In order to improve customer satisfaction and retention, Accenture is piloting an innovative automated Speech Analytics solution as part of an Insurance BPO project with a global insurance company. This solution will analyze speech patterns, word choices and intonations, correlate that information against agent data and experiences, and identify key agent responses that cause customers satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The information will be used to coach agents to improve their performance, and is anticipated to result in improved customer satisfaction metrics, first call resolution, retention rates and the overall customer experience. Business Outcome: Improve Customer Satisfaction Learning BPO Global Provider of Next-Generation Business Collaboration and Communications Solution A global leader in providing unified communications, real-time video collaboration, contact center, networking and related services was challenged to meet revenue objectives in its IP and Convergence groups. Accenture Learning BPO collaborated with the client and designed a training solution that combined Data and IP Telephony courses, streamlined the standard curriculum, and condensed all existing courses into a 25-day program adapted to Caribbean and Latin Americas regional needs. As a result of this improved training, IP and Convergence sales increased by 35 percent in six months. Telstra Telstra teamed with Accenture to redesign their new hire induction program in order to improve speed to competence, customer service and staff retention. Accenture designed an innovative blended training program that allowed new hires the opportunity to take live customer calls or make site visits during training, and introduced Team Leaders to co-facilitate and provide coaching support during the process as opposed
to providing this once hired. Staff trained under this program were 30 percent more productive in their first four to six weeks. Stores with a higher percentage of these specially trained staff outperformed others in sales and customer service, and attrition dropped by 21 percent. Business Outcomes: Improve Workforce ; Optimize Costs and Profit & Loss Accenture helped Telstra improve its field workforce productivity by 51 percent through a major business transformation project. Accenture not only redesigned the training, which included creating and updating 57 course hours and delivering more than 12,000 hours of training, but also introduced process improvements such as optimizing service routes to reduce transit times between service calls. As a result, Telstra has seen an increase in field workforce skills and an overall improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of meeting customer service requests. Global Products Company To improve the productivity of its sales workforce in China, a global diversified products company, collaborated with Accenture Learning BPO to design and implement an innovative talent development program addressing knowledge, skills and behaviors. The development of the talent program was based on insights from a combination of sales, employee performance, and business KPI data. Introduced across four regions in China the solution blended elearning, virtual learning, and classroom events combined with three months of frequent reinforcement activities providing sales reps the opportunity to practice the needed skills and behaviors over a period of time. As a result, the campaign increased sales by over 2 percent, and had paid itself back in two months. The program also resulted in increased sales rep engagement and confidence. Business Outcome: Improve Revenue Generation 5
Looking to develop a competitive advantage and implement a new operating model for the Russia Belarus and Ukraine market, this global diversified products company collaborated with Accenture Learning BPO to improve sales behaviors, execution excellence, and create a continuous improvement culture. Accenture worked with the leadership team to identify the key knowledge gaps, performance gaps and business issue areas through insights gained from analytics on business, employee and performance data. The solution consisted of a blend of elearning modules, workshops, coaching and classroom sessions for the sales personnel. The program resulted in increased sales by over 3 percent, and 89.6 percent of sales representatives indicating the program directly helped their confidence and performance. Business Outcomes: Improve Revenue Generation; Improve Workforce Marketing BPO Procter & Gamble We have been supporting the expansion of Procter & Gamble s digitization agenda through our BPO services. We help increase the scale, agility and speed of the delivery of broad-based digital marketing and virtual reality services to the business. By running and operating P&G s virtual reality studios around the world, we help the brand and sales teams with virtual imaging for new product development and planning for retailer share of product. We just reached a milestone of 150 virtual store builds. When we started executing digital marketing programs for P&G, we were delivering the service to 44 brands. Today the service has grown to cover over 90% of the brands. And we jointly continue to evolve and innovate into new digital service areas such as search engine optimization. We performed 6 an SEO audit on Super Savvy Me that resulted in 102 percent improvement in the search audit score. Business Outcomes: Improve Revenue Generation; Acquire and Retain New Customers Network BPO Global Telecommunications Company Accenture Network BPO has partnered with a leading telecommunications company to improve the speed with which it provides customers with new products and services. By implementing system and process improvements, Accenture has reduced the time it takes customer service agents to fulfill customer requests, resulting in a 41 percent productivity increase. This has allowed the company to redirect agents to support new businesses in support of their growth strategy. Pharmaceutical BPO Global Life Sciences Company Accenture Pharmaceutical BPO worked with an international life sciences company to improve its response time in managing fatal and life threatening safety cases. With Accenture s help, the company improved its responsiveness by handling 98 percent of cases within 24 hours, ensuring that quick and appropriate actions are taken to help prevent further health problems for patients, and improve drug safety overall. In addition to improving response time, Accenture also helped improve the quality of case management, reducing error rates to 2 percent, thereby reducing rework, improving patient service and leading to improved compliance. Business Outcomes: Improve Customer Satisfaction; Improve Compliance and Risk Management Procurement BPO Global Communications Company A global communications company partnered with Accenture Procurement BPO over a five-year period to manage direct material categories sourcing activities, drive bottom-line savings and improve working capital. Accenture applied on-demand category expertise and analytics to create multiyear category strategies and a prioritized list of sourcing opportunities. By applying category knowledge and expertise, an industrialized sourcing process and best-in-class technology, Accenture helped generate 16 percent of bottomline savings. It also implemented a Vendor Management Inventory program that reduced inventory levels by 50 percent, freeing up floor space for office expansion. Business Outcomes: Improve Working Capital; Optimize Costs and Profit & Loss Supply Chain BPO North American Aerospace and Defense Company Leveraging sophisticated spare-parts inventory analytics, Accenture Supply Chain BPO helped a leading North American aerospace and defense company to optimize its working capital performance. By scientifically calculating optimum inventory across the company s parts distribution centers, the program managed to simultaneously raise product availability from 59 percent to 81 percent. Business Outcomes: Improve Working Capital; Improve Revenue Generation; Optimize Costs and Profit & Loss
Loblaw Companies Limited Loblaw Companies Limited, a large national grocery retailer, needed to improve supply chain performance for over $1 billion worth of general merchandise by reducing stock outages, stock overages, and errors, such as shipping the wrong product to a store. While cost was an important consideration in provider, the ability to improve performance was the client s main criterion. Accenture applied our domain expertise and analytics capabilities to determine that the client s legacy forecasting tools were inaccurate, and built a custom forecasting tool that used logic to forecast better year-round and seasonal products. Accenture also built analytics tools for category management, and used the data to re-design business processes. As a result, Accenture was able to help the client increase the distribution center stock fill rate by over 1000 basis points and improved inventory currency. Error rates were also reduced by up to 50 percent, leading to less rework and improved efficiency. Business Outcomes: Improve Revenue Generation; Optimize Costs and Profit & Loss Utilities BPO North American Utility Company Using a transaction compliance and analytics tool, Accenture Supply Chain BPO helped a North American Utility Company identify significant working capital and cost saving areas of opportunity within their Procure to Pay cycle. By analyzing 18 months worth of spend, Accenture recommended changes that could lead to $30 million in working capital benefits as well as $2 million in cost savings within the Accounts Payable function. In addition, the team proposed several transformational initiatives to update the client s Accounts Payable function that could realize an additional $1 million in cost savings. Business Outcomes: Optimize Costs and Profit & Loss U.S. Retail Company Targeting increased revenue, a leading U.S. retail company worked with Accenture Supply Chain BPO to achieve a 10-15 percent improvement in forecast accuracy. Applying analytics, the program improved forecast accuracy for more than 500,000 products across multiple categories such as apparel, foods, general merchandise and pharmacy, resulting in improved inventory management that contributes to overall revenue improvement. Business Outcome: Improve Revenue Generation 7
About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 249,000 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$25.5 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2011. Its home page is www.accenture.com. Copyright 2012 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.