Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study

Software-plus-Services Helps Increase Margins and Deliver Greater Value to Customers

Customer: Steria Web Site: www.steria.co.uk Number of Employees: 19,000 Country or Region: United Kingdom Industry: Outsourcing Partner: Nimbus Web Site: www.nimbuspartners.com Customer Profile With clients including the BBC and the National Health Service (NHS), Steria is one of the biggest outsourcing and services businesses with headquarters in the U.K. It has a turnover of U.S.$2.8 billion. Software and Services Microsoft Office

Because Nimbus hosted the solution for the first year, we were able to show these customers the real value of Control before we made a long-term investment.
Sean Murphy, Head of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Performance Improvement, Steria

Outsourcing business Steria wanted to standardise processes and provide clients with a transparent view of performance improvements. It selected business process content management software Control from Nimbus, which initially delivered the software as a service for the pilot client account. After successful testing, it was migrated to systems hosted by Steria where it is helping the company deliver the standardisation and transparency required within a collaborative environment. Business Needs
For the past 40 years, Steria has delivered essential services to large businesses, including the BBC, BT, and the NHS. With more than 19,000 employees in Europe and India, and a turnover of U.S.$2.8 billion, the company offers business process optimisation, recruitment and training, and IT services. When Steria agrees to deliver a client process or technology, one of the biggest challenges is capturing and managing the documentation that supports the process, while at the same time starting the transformation process and developing improvement strategies. Sean Murphy, Head of Business Process Outsourcing
(BPO) Performance Improvement at Steria,

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Windows Server 2003

says: We compete in a sector that has extremely low margins. Its essential that we standardise our documentation and processes to maximise efficiency for our clients. Another important responsibility is the companys audit capability for accounting, payroll, and other financial services. Murphy says: We frequently need to provide audit trails and evidence of due diligence for our clients. Many are in the financial sector, and the economic crisis has put them under pressure to make their processes even more transparent.

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In recent years, businesses have also set more complex goals for outsourcing partners such as Steria. The drive to reduce staff costs, for example, has been replaced by a desire for more detailed service charging that can be configured precisely to the needs of the customer. Murphy says: We wanted to do this by offering clients transactional pricing, providing a clear, detailed view of the value being delivered through the contract. The company needed a process management application that would smooth the transition of services and support more sophisticated pricing models.

There was no question that this was our ultimate goal, says Murphy. But it meant we could prepare internally for a swift transfer when the time was right. Based on Microsoft technologies, Control is closely integrated with the Microsoft Office 2007 suites. For example, any activity box on a process diagram can link to any Microsoft Office document. The document management function in Control takes advantage of Office SharePoint Server for integrated content management and enterprise search. In addition, employees use Microsoft Office Excel 2007 to aggregate performance metrics. Control is also highly interoperable with other important Steria systems. Our business and its customers need one version of the truth. By connecting Control with other applications, such as our service level agreement reporting tool, we achieve superior knowledge management. We have just one place to go to understand what we do, and how we are performing, says Murphy.

Solution
Murphy and his team researched the market, which involved discussions with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Nimbus. We were immediately struck by how its technology matched our requirements, he says. Called Control, the Nimbus software is a Web-based application that integrates with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. It offers advanced process modelling and content management to Steria by: Increasing visibility of processes Defining individual roles and responsibilities Communicating corporate strategy Increasing collaboration among departments, functions, and clients Providing change management and governance for content, helping to comply with regulation such as Sarbanes-Oxley

Benefits
Steria gained a number of advantages by asking Nimbus to host Control and deliver the solution using the software-plusservices model. Our clients and colleagues have a healthy scepticism when it comes to the promises of new technology, says Murphy. Because Nimbus hosted the solution for the first year, we were able to show these customers the real value of Control before we made a long-term investment in the technology and brought it in-house.

needed. We can also enrich the mapped process with hints, tips, and reminders, which make the product more personal. Accurate audit trail. Following the successful deployment of Control, Steria can provide a full audit trail and evidence of due diligence whenever required. Transactional pricing available to clients. Steria can better demonstrate the value of its services by charging for the number of transactions carried out on behalf of a customer. More transparent pricing also helps retain clients and attract new ones. Better support for managers. Control helps managers compare performance of individuals and teams in different parts of the business. If a team in one office is taking longer to carry out the same function as other teams, we can quickly address the discrepancy, says Murphy. Faster capture of client process. When Steria takes over a business service for a client, it is under pressure to capture the information required to deliver the service successfully. Murphy says: Using Control, Steria has built a best practice process blueprint for each of our services and can quickly assimilate the relevant information during the transition period. Weve also mapped processes throughout the contractual life cycle. Increased business margins. Steria can now monitor and align its own processes more effectively. In a competitive and economically challenging market, the company is still on track to increase its margins.

Most importantly, Nimbus delivered Control as a hosted service based on a softwareplus-services model, so Steria employees could start using the service far more quickly than if the company had opted for a full in-house deployment. It also meant that Murphy and his team could work with Nimbus to refine and configure Control before migrating it to Steria computers.

Greater business and employee flexibility. Murphy says: Now that we have a uniform, documented process for many of our clients, we can easily move employees to where the resources are

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published November 2009