As the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances, this consumer products manufacturer achieved annual sales in 2009 of approximately $17 billion with its 70,000 employees in manufacturing and technology research centers around the world. It markets major brand names to consumers in nearly every country.

With its revenue and net income growth decreased by 2.6% and 36.4% respectively, this company recognized that significant changes were required on the IT side in order to implement the powerful set of strategic business objectives designed to cut costs and increase revenue. The company appreciated the fact that the practice of Enterprise Architecture (EA) held the key to get the value flowing. But with no existing EA practice, multiple powerful system integrators in place, and an endless list of possible directions, knowing where to begin was the challenge. It was at this point that Quality Deployment (QD) was engaged to provide the needed expertise in evaluating these objectives and developing a plan of action.

The first step to achieving that goal was to create a business case for why it made sense to invest in EA. QD demonstrated how simplification, standardization, and functional improvements could reduce costs and increase revenue for this company. To manage operating costs, spend was allocated to the IT elements of IT-enabled Collaboration, Lifecycle Cost Efficiency, Business Case Discipline, Strategy and Planning, Business Continuity Planning, and Technology Roadmaps. The return on investment in each category was defined and documented.

Our consultants then quickly assessed the current state of EA and identified the areas in most need of additional support. QD designed an EA delivery framework for categorizing and tracking progress towards a prioritized set of EA deliverables for the business domains of Sales, Supply Chain, Product Development, HR, Finance, Legal, as well as the technology domains of Portal/ECM, Analytics/Data, Integration, Security and Infrastructure. We provided direction and focus for several of the technology domains, driving the effort to achieve the level of EA delivery capability required to meet business demands.

The QD team managed the program by coordinating the efforts of major vendors including Cisco, Accenture, AT&T, IBM, and Keene, along with 150 of the company’s internal resources. As a result of QD’s expertise and leadership, this company received 5 major EA matrices, 74 context diagrams, and catalogs for 600+ applications, 1900+ servers, 1300+ databases and 2700 interfaces. The Enterprise Architecture deliverables created for each domain included:

• Current state context and analysis
• Confirmed business drivers
• Objectives and goals
• Functional capability models
• Roadmaps
• Deployment plans
• Operating models

The combined enterprise architecture roadmap detailed a plan that would reduce the number of applications by 70% and the number of servers by 40%. The strategies outlined in the deliverables demonstrated that simplification of the architecture layers and investment in the right projects would reduce manual processes and process complexity. Additionally, these initiatives would provide agility, flexibility and resiliency while increasing customer retention and accelerating innovation. Once implemented, the net result of this initiative would be the achievement of the company’s strategic plan to increase revenue growth, increase net margin with lower COGS, and create greater cash flow.

About Quality Deployment:
Quality Deployment is improving profit and cash flow at the world's most successful companies using our proprietary approach to performance improvement through cash flow analysis. Combining unmatched industry depth, technology breadth, and implementation experience, we join forces with customers to help leading businesses become even better. With delivery successes in the US, UK, EU, and Asia, the company serves a wide variety of Fortune 500 sized commercial and public sector organizations. Contact us to learn more.