Accenture Communications Solutions

Corporate Operations
Supply Chain Transformation
An end-to-end strategy for re-architecting the supply chain at lower cost—aligning supply chain strategy with
business needs, generating new synergies, and prioritizing cost savings and service improvements.
Challenges and opportunities
Many communications companies have
grown in recent years through mergers
and acquisitions. However, because such
companies are often unable to effectively
integrate the supply chain across the new,
larger organization, they are not taking full
advantage of the scale they have acquired.
Regional, fragmented approaches continue
to limit their effectiveness.
Yet, coordinating operations across
business units is more important than ever,
since a convergent marketplace means
that traditional product lines are blurring,
and cross-functional, cross-geography and
inter-corporate supply chain coordination
is essential.
Companies in the communications and
high-tech industries are now seeking to
reposition their supply chain for significant
and sustainable value creation. To
successfully transform the supply chain, a
communications company needs to:
• Realign by using the supply chain as a
means to create competitive advantage
in the marketplace.
• Redefine by increasing the scope of the
supply chain from functional domains to
a more holistic view (i.e., cross-functional
relationship with other internal units, and
extended supply chain).
• Rebuild by creating sustainable
positioning, deploying an appropriate
balance of internal and external
capabilities.
How Accenture can help
To drive the supply chain efficiencies
necessary to achieve high performance in
today’s communications and high-tech
marketplace, Accenture has created a
supply chain transformation offering. This
solution involves an end-to-end strategy
for re-architecting the supply chain at a
much lower cost structure.
Accenture’s offering helps companies to
generate new business value from their
global supply chain. The following activities
take place as part of the solution:
• Aligning the supply chain strategy with
the evolving business environment of the
communications industry, migrating away
from a model in which organizations,
processes, facilities and services are
36 Accenture Communications Solutions
segmented by business unit or material
category, and toward an operating model
that segments operations by customer or
demand type.
• Finding and generating synergies by
leveraging supply chain capabilities across
business units and material categories.
• Evaluating and prioritizing the cost
savings and service improvements made
possible by the new cross-business-unit
supply chain approach.
• Implementing programs in asset
optimization and enhanced, supply
chain-wide visibility that provide
immediate funding for the ongoing
transformation process.
For a typical communications company
with US$50 billion in annual revenue, these
programs have been demonstrated to yield
savings of up to US$400 million—savings
that can then be used to fund initiatives
with longer payback periods.
The Accenture supply chain transformation
offering is underpinned by a set of assets
and solutions that allows Accenture to
help communications companies develop
and implement new strategies on an
accelerated timeline:
• Supply Chain Strategy Formulation:
Benchmarks and leading practices by
function and by material category to
quickly assess performance, gaps and
opportunities. We also have developed
network and device supply chain
operating models, organization models
and technology blueprints. Custom
business case frameworks identify both
quick-hit savings opportunities as well as
transformational cost-saving initiatives.
• Supply Chain Modeling: A pre-built,
advanced suite of modeling tools, and a
dedicated pool of modeling professionals
available immediately to provide
capabilities for our clients.
• Functional Experience: Key performance
indicators for device, network and indirect
supply chains, as well as functional
process models and toolkits by material
category. We also have deep, ongoing
relationships with third-party logistics,
repair and supply chain service providers.
High performance delivered
As one of the world’s largest and most
successful supply chain management
groups, Accenture has the experience,
capabilities and insight to help companies
and governments develop world-class
supply chains that drive high performance.
For example, at Siemens Network (now
Nokia Siemens Networks), the company’s
supply chain was inhibiting its drive to
reduce costs while enhancing service.
Accenture helped Siemens Network
transform its supply chain using a
prototype of SAP Advanced Planner and
Optimizer to improve demand forecasting
and enhance collaboration, providing
a platform from which to achieve high
performance.
This Accenture implementation, and the
concurrent redesign of related processes,
helped the company achieve impressive
improvements in business performance:
• A 33 percent decrease in target
forecast errors.
• A 50 percent reduction in
nonconformance costs, resulting in
savings of US$5 million.
• A new ability to perform statistical
forecasting at an aggregated level.
• Better and more streamlined data flows
between forecasting and planning.
Why Accenture
Accenture has extensive supply chain
experience in the communications
industry. We currently are engaged on
supply chain projects at a number of
global communications companies and
leading carriers worldwide. We have deep
experience in strategies needed to drive
costs out and drive up service performance
in network and consumer supply chains.
Our global supply chain management
practice is a market leader, with more than
15,000 professionals around the world
engaged in helping our clients advance
toward high performance through a stronger,
more flexible and dynamic supply chain.