Learn how CEOs can promote enterprise strategies to develop information that helps increase speed and productivity, creates a stronger foundation for decision making, cuts out time spent on unproductive tasks, and over time produces more efficiency, tighter cost control, and a more effective climate of innovation.
SAP INSIGHT
THE CASE FOR
INTEGRATED PROCESSESTable of Contents
CEO Notes 1What are Integrated Processes? 3How Do Integrated Processes Create Value? 4Conclusion 8THE CASE FOR
INTEGRATED
PROCESSES
by Don ByrnesCEO NOTES
Most CEOs have developed strategies that push their The core IT team at a consumer productscompanies to achieve the following goals: company has enjoyed an estimated US$3million in operational savings by integrating 150Develop faster time to market of products and supply chain processes, which improvedservices services, reduced order cycle time, andIncrease sales, revenue, and income eliminated 85% of the legacy systems. InImprove customer service and customer addition, the company discovered US$2 millionsatisfaction in "reverse logistics," efficiencies gained afterImprove operational efficiency and reduce costs integrating point-of-sale activities such asof operations customer service, field service, and spare-partsImprove employee productivity and satisfaction management.
But few CEOs will attest that their companies have A global transportation company has developedmade much progress. Why? Because theirs is a 21st- integrated processes through its Web portal tocentury vision being held back by 20th-century connect it with partners all along the valueorganizational processes and IT systems. The chain, helping to increase informationmissing ingredient: information. It's information transparency and process efficiency throughthat helps increase speed and productivity, creates a more productive knowledge management. Thisstronger foundation for decision making, cuts out company developed digital workplaces fortime spent on unproductive tasks, and, over time, improved end-user productivity, facilitatingproduces more efficiency, tighter cost control, and a technology convergence. A Voice over IP (VoIP)more effective climate of innovation. infrastructure supported by the portal platformThe truth is that integrated processes hold the key has reduced employee process costs by up toby facilitating the flow of that information. 80% through mandatory employee self-services.Integrated processes provide information access to end users across the enterprise that's fit for the right A large national utility company found thatpurpose and delivered in a format they can use. A integrating processes improved its cost-positionmore horizontally-structured company, with visibility for finance resources and increasedintegrated processes across each value chain, is the user satisfaction with financial reporting. Thewave of the future. But while many executives company is experiencing fewer problems withrealize this fact, few companies have risen above the data integrity from corporate acquisitions andsilo structures that still remain from a myriad of has redeployed finance and HR personnel tomergers - legacy systems that neither communicate more value-added work, while makingnor integrate with one another, and cultures that improvements in payroll processing anddo not share information or analysis in any reducing hardware and operating systemsubstantive way. platform costs.
But a few forward-thinking companies have begunto change this picture in very dramatic ways, asfollows.
1A global manufacturing company achieved Access to and sharing of information across thesignificant time savings in transaction-based organization's end-to-end business processesprocesses by an average of between 45 and 65% Information to provide a holistic view of(or between ?4.50 and ?9.00 per transaction). customers, suppliers, partners, and/or businessWith an expected annual volume of processes and operations approximately 30,000 transactions per Better understanding of business process steps -integrated process, the company believes its and how each impacts the others - to improveinvestment in integrated processes will pay off the overall effectiveness of each business processin the next two to four years. In addition, the and realize valuecompany can reduce its applicationdevelopment costs by 30 to 50% because the This SAP Insight discusses what integrated processesopen technology means that developing and are, how they create value, specific cases ofintegrating cost-effective, in-house solutions is companies succeeding with integrated processes, asmuch faster and simpler than buying well as a checklist to determine how integrated yourreadymade software. own comp... [download for more]
