Serving the New Consumer
25 Aug 2008
EDS Designed for Run Strategy Helps Clients Protect the User Experience
It all starts with the customer.
From busy airlines and major financial institutions to global retailers and government agencies, a positive user experience can make all the difference between growth and stagnation. And in today's “always on” world, that means enabling customers to have personalized transactions anywhere at anytime using their choice of methods for electronic interaction.
If that user experience fails, customers need just a few seconds to take their business elsewhere, as the competition is only a mouse click away.
With accelerated globalization, the proliferation of edge devices and the continued demand for self-service customer interfaces, the strain on information technology will only grow in the years ahead. To keep up, enterprises must modernize their operations and reorient their business model to the user experience. They need modern applications running on industrial-strength, global infrastructure and a commitment to zero outages backed by the most experienced IT professionals. They need IT systems and applications that are Designed for Run.
The New Consumer Demands More from IT
Over the past forty years, the pace of technological innovation has quickened, and customers have increasingly found themselves taking control of their own business interactions – large and small. Today, there's no need to stop at a toll booth when an electronic tag will allow you to speed right through. Thanks to the ATM, bank tellers aren't necessary for making a withdrawal or deposit. And at the gas station, full-service fueling complete with an oil check and a window washing has long since given way to self-service pumps with a quick swipe of a credit card.
But while these technical advances have made many of life's tasks quick and convenient, they have also drastically altered customer expectations. Immediacy, reliability and simplicity become increasingly essential the closer an enterprise's business processes come to direct contact with the customer. Ultimately, an organization's public interface must be as capable and intuitive as the cell phones and digital music players most people routinely carry in their pockets. The new consumers simply refuse to accept anything less, whether they be paying a toll or applying for a mortgage.
Unfortunately, many veteran organizations face complex challenges in meeting the demands of these tech-savvy patrons. Built for the 20th century, their business models and processes lack the resiliency and flexibility to fulfill the requirements of the 21st century.
At the time many of today's largest business entities were first getting started, the regional nature of their organization and their customer base permitted company leaders to hold perfect knowledge of all of their daily operations and the status of their supply chain. Businesses enjoyed a high level of intimacy with their customers, and most if not all of the enterprise's vital operations were contained in-house. As the business grew, the only way to scale the operation was to break it up and replicate the same model in additional regions or by product line or function. Before the age of networks and systems, the ability to faithfully recreate the original model and repeat its success in new geographies was the key to expansion.
As these enterprises grew, their IT systems took on the same decentralized characteristics. Hard-sided components were installed to support autonomous functions with little ability to communicate with other parts of the business or adapt to changing market conditions or performance needs. Years later, these expensive and inflexible components and applications now make up the legacy IT systems that support today's largest enterprises.
Rigid Businesses Cannot Satisfy Agile Customers
Today, the business world has changed. Problems arise when these rigid organizations meet agile customers and business partners. The need for strong external relationships has grown exponentially, and none of those would-be associates want to do business with dozens of decentralized variations of the same company. Relationships with customers also must grow more intimate if enterprises are to survive the fickle nature of the marketplace.
Large, veteran organizations are realizing the need to use technology as an enabler for returning to centralized business processes and systems with improved visibility of operations and an increased ability for collaboration. In the meantime, brittle legacy IT systems are making it difficult for them to satisfy customers and collaborate with partners, and the same aging systems are costing more and more to operate and repair each day.
Modernizing to a more agile state has now become the most critical work enterprises face over the next decade. Unfortunately, the time, expense and risk necessary for correcting the situation puts the most rapid fix ” a massive IT overhaul - firmly out of the reach of most organizations. Instead, a multiyear plan for measured, incremental modernization must be put in place, enabling legacy systems to continue supporting the host organization's operations while new applications and infrastructure are developed.
The EDS Designed for Run™ strategy provides enterprises with a clear path for transformation and modernization while controlling costs and reducing risk. It considers the function and expense of the client's IT system and applications as a whole. It charts a complete course to meet the organization's goals and implements a measured modernization process while anticipating the client's total cost of operating the final collective system. It effectively bridges the gap between the IT systems organizations currently have and the applications, infrastructure and business processes they will need in the future.
IT Integration is the Key to Future Success
Consider the multiple processes that keep a major airline flying. Flight operations, baggage handling, ticketing ” all of these functions must work together to satisfy the customer. If one piece of the organization fails, service collapses. Suitcases are lost, planes are late and seating is overbooked. Most importantly, customers are angry, and they don't care which part of the process was responsible for the trouble.
Just as the pieces of the airline must come together, so, too, must the pieces of an enterprise's IT system. Each part connects to another to form a full stack of integrated elements ” from the foundation of a secured network up to a suite of applications and business processes that directly touch the customer. Security, systems integration, testing and enterprise service management span the length of the stack, holding the entire structure together. Remove any single piece and the stack collapses.
After more than 45 years in the IT arena, EDS has developed a deep, broad knowledge of the world's key industries. Along the way, EDS has learned that most organizations within a given industry share very similar IT requirements. Every airline needs a ticketing system. Every manufacturer needs a process for controlling inventory. With this industry-specific knowledge and packaged solutions coupled with extensive expertise in infrastructure, networks, security and more, EDS is already positioned to address many of the key concerns any organization may bring to the table.
A problem lies in the fact that many of these organizations hope to buy 21st century IT solutions by way of a 20th century purchasing model. They have become accustomed to buying in silos or towers, one business process at a time to address one need or problem at a time. But as we've already seen, the successful modern business model requires a full stack of integrated services. Buying in towers makes the purchase of IT solutions easy, but the implementation and operation of those solutions is extremely difficult. Enterprises cannot expect to buy in towers and somehow insert those purchases into an end-to-end integrated stack.
Plan Your IT Before You Purchase It
The Designed for Run strategy provides a method for organizations to break the cycle of tower-based purchasing. Drawing on EDS' unmatched knowledge of legacy systems and industry-centric solutions, EDS clients gain an overarching plan for the gradual transformation and modernization of their IT systems. This long-term plan enables the client to envision how every purchase and improvement contributes to forming a final, fully-integrated IT system. That means each part is optimized for maximum performance and assured to integrate with existing systems while still moving the organization toward its future state. In turn, the client can see how every dollar of investment counts in completing the final, collective IT system.
When mainframes first came to form the backbone of IT systems, engineers were careful to design those systems for maximum utilization. The expense and complication of adding additional mainframes to gain more capacity dictated that engineers design for 80 percent to 90 percent utilization of IT assets.
With the dawn of the client-server era, the emphasis on design was lost. Additional servers were cheap and easy to install, making it relatively simple for an organization to add to its system's capacity when necessary.
Today, the need for careful planning and thoughtful systems design has come back to the forefront. Poor asset utilization of the client-server era is exacerbated by the always-on surge needs of a self-service model. High energy prices no longer make it economical for an enterprise to operate multiple servers running at less-than-optimal utilization. Enterprises must be capable of extracting value from their IT investments. That means running the most effective, efficient and economical integrated systems possible.
Starting the Designed for Run Journey
The EDS Designed for Run strategy empowers enterprises to plan, build and run the IT systems they need to increase productivity, improve reliability and encourage cost savings. EDS is the only IT services provider capable of marshalling the expert knowledge base, proven methodologies and global resources to develop and deliver such a holistic IT approach.
EDS starts the process by assessing the client's existing IT applications, infrastructure and business processes, determining the system's level of maturity and using existing industry frameworks to develop a blueprint for the client's system of the future.
EDS ties the client's IT strategy to its business context, ascertains the applications needed to support the business, determines the infrastructure required for supporting those applications, decides the organizational structure and skills for implementing the necessary elements and recommends the funding and governance critical to supporting the IT transformation.
Even with a long-term IT plan in place, enterprises need a strong IT ally to help them bring those plans to fruition. The best blueprints are of no use without the proper tools to make the concept a reality. EDS has the vast resources to meet the needs of the client. With proven, globally consistent processes, quality work can be performed around the world by the right people in the right locations to deliver the right price for the client.
EDS begins the transformation and modernization effort by correcting underutilization through server consolidation and virtualization. The dead code is removed and redundant processes are eliminated, leaving a smaller IT footprint on which the organization's future infrastructure may be built. This means new applications may be installed much more quickly and easily, accelerating the pace of improvements in the overall IT system. Plus, clients realize improved quality, stability and speed from their legacy networks once these antiquated pieces have been eliminated.
Moving forward, EDS sticks to a “design it big and deliver it small” approach, always keeping the big picture in focus while bringing incremental change to the client. Once the client's transformation is complete, the expert planning at the beginning of the process pays off in the form of accurately anticipated operational costs for the finished IT system.
Clients and Customers Find Benefits
EDS takes an active role in every step of the end-to-end implementation of the client's new IT solutions, guarding against outages and eliminating obstacles along the way. That means the EDS Designed for Run strategy keeps customers happy with a positive, uninterrupted user experience while the hard work of transformation and modernization is underway.
Whether working in cooperation with the client's own internal IT organizations or a host of providers within a multisupplier environment, EDS and the Designed for Run strategy enables the client to implement change without becoming distracted from the enterprise's core business or mission. EDS serves as the prime or operational integrator, coordinating all transformation and modernization efforts and assuring that every element of the work fits precisely into the Designed for Run plan.
The end result is a vastly improved IT system that delivers cost savings to the client and a much improved user experience for the client's customers. The new consumers get the products and services they want in a manner that meets their changing needs and higher expectations. Clients gain the renewed customer intimacy and loyalty they need for cultivating a promising future.