Avanade Business Intelligence in the Netherlands

Atieh Sadat Esmaeili Eraghi

Avanade Business Intelligence in the Netherlands

Student number: 10344306

Professor: John Cullen

Amsterdam Business School

1 Project Introduction ... 3

1.1 Avanade ... 3

1.2 Business Intelligence: ... 4

1.3 Avanade in Business Intelligence ... 5

2 Characteristic of study ... 5

2.1 Project statement: ... 6

3 Literature Review... 6

3.1 SWOT Analysis: ... 6

3.2 The positioning school by Michael Porter ... 7

3.3 RBV Theory – VRIO by Barney- Inside out strategy ... 9

3.4 The core competency of the corporation, Prahald and Hamel 2001: ... 10

3.5 BCG Matrix: ... 11

4 Company information Methodology... 14

4.1.1 Method adopted ... 14

5 Discussion, Findings and analysis ... 15

5.1 Discussion ... 15

5.2 Main findings: ... 15

5.3 Description of the work ... 18

5.4 Interviews: ... 19

5.4.1 Meeting with sales and marketing: ... 20

5.4.2 Meeting with technical people: ... 21

5.4.3 Meeting with BI managers and service line leads: ... 21

5.5 Document studies: ... 22

5.6 Workshop: ... 22

5.7 Assumptions and areas not part of research ... 23

6 Conclusion ... 35

6.1 Conclusion ... 35

6.2 Recommendations ... 36

1 Project Introduction

1.1 Avanade

Avanade Inc. was founded in 2000 as an evenly split joint venture between Accenture and

Microsoft to serve an untapped market for Microsoft-focused consulting services. The company provides IT services focused on the Microsoft platform to large enterprise organizations.

Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the company has 70+ locations worldwide and employs more than 19,600 professionals. Today, Avanade is majority-owned by Accenture, with 80% of the shares owned by Accenture and 20% Microsoft. Avanade has become very big in a few years by acquisitions and with financial support of the parents companies. It is not very often that companies grow to around 20,000 employees within 13 years, unless there is substantial support.

Avanade has experienced much success during these years. Based on the results of customer satisfaction, Avanade has realized 95% satisfied customers, which shows a high level of commitment from clients; most of Avanade clients are working with them for more than a decade.

Avanade Netherlands was first established 10 years ago in the Netherlands, it started form 8 people and it grew to over 360 employees. Presently, 600 employees are working as offshore employees, mostly in India, China and Croatia. They are working in India to support the contracts and clients in the Netherlands with lower wages in comparison with the Netherlands. Avanade launched its offshore branches to decrease costs and increase their revenue and use of the expertise around the world in IT.

Avanade in the Netherlands has 7 service lines:

1. Technology infrastructure application development 2. Customer relationship management

3. Enterprise resource planning 4. Business intelligence

5. Collaboration 6. Managed services 7. Delivery

Business intelligence (BI) started 4 years ago in the Netherlands, so it is still very new and has much potential to grow further.

Avanade provides services to the clients through two different channels. Most of the clients for Avanade are introduced by Accenture, which Avanade labels indirect sale. The other channel is through Avanade itself and their network clients which is called direct sale.

1.2

Accenture describes Business Intelligence as the capability of collecting and analyzing internal and external data to generate knowledge and value for the organization. This includes business process decision support at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. According to Avanade, BI is an expansive category of capabilities that enables an organization to gather, store, analyze and provide access to information to help organizations make better decisions.

Gartner defines three category of capability for BI tools. The first category is BI integration, which means gathering all the data from different part of the organization into the same format. The second level is ETL, which means Extract, Transform and Load data from all data sources. The next level is analysis and transforming the data into information, such as the development of dashboards, scorecards, ad hoc reports and many other uses of the data at hand.

SQL Server combined with Office and SharePoint, helps companies deliver BI across their organization through the familiar Office user experience. It provides a rich set of platform capabilities to ensure credible, consistent data. Furthermore, it supports today’s analysis, data warehousing, and Big Data needs. BI is supporting big developments in the world like cloud computing and big data.

In summary BI can be the ability to deliver right information at the right time to the right people. It is actually leveraging your data assets into a competitive advantage. Business Intelligence is for businesses that want to have a good method of decision making in their organizations and make it possible for everyone in the organization to share, collaborate analyze data within the

firm and make them into information from a centrally managed, more secure source. Enterprise grade yet attractively priced, BI supports IT professionals, information workers, and developers, and empoIrs organizations of all sizes.

1.3 Avanade in Business Intelligence

Globally Avanade has more than 100 intelligent warehousing projects delivered in the past 3 years, which can be a very good source for the Netherlands in order to learn from other companies. It also can reduce the cost of development of different solution for Avanade, the good part of being global is reusing and replicating the knowledge from different part of the world, instead of starting from scratch.

Avanade global has developed More than 300 dashboard/scorecard/reporting projects delivered in the past 3 years. Avanade and Accenture have a combined market share of 5% Microsoft BI services in the world (Avanade alone has 2%).

2

This paper is about the analysis of challenges that Avanade faces in the Netherlands. The challenge at hand in Avanade was to identify opportunities and create recommendations that would help the BI service line. There were some key findings that help to frame this work, such as:

- less dependency on Accenture

- decrease the dependency on only few accounts

- explore the part of high growth BI market in the Netherlands - strengthen the Avanade branding as a BI provider

This paper also will provide an overview of the Dutch BI market, the businesses that are active in this industry, the trends, problems and new opportunities. These Ire identified through academic research, market research, survey questionnaires and interviews. The project study involved interviews with many Avanade employees who have broad experience and a good understanding of the Microsoft BI solution and its respective market. They Ire responsible for representing Avanade Group to the outer world in terms of capabilities.

This paper will also provide recommendations on how Avanade can have more clients from the direct channel, based on topics like marketing, branding and training the people within Avanade.

In the end of this study I try to look at how Avanade can get sustainable competitive advantage in managing Microsoft BI product and how the capabilities arising from it can be leveraged to gain market share through Potter generic strategy and Market segmentation

2.1 Project statement:

Avanade is Microsoft’s preferential partner for all the service lines. Most of Avanade clients are through Accenture, so Avanade is very dependent on Accenture. Avanade’s BI service line is most dependent on Accenture, with around 95% of the revenue of BI coming from Accenture. HoIver this percentage is 60% - 70% for the other service lines.

Project Statement: Develop a business plan, how to increase the sale of Avanade BI service line and to reduce dependency on Accenture, and how to find opportunities in Dutch market for BI solution.

3 Literature Review

3.1 SWOT Analysis:

SWOT analysis is use for strategic planning of an organization, in order to evaluate the firm internal and external environment. For the internal environment, it reviews the Strength and weaknesses of a firm. For the external environment study, it discusses about opportunities and threats within the market.

This technique is credits to Albert Humphrey, which made a research in Stanford research institute, in the 1960 and 1970. The background to SWOT stemmed from the need to find out why corporate planning failed. The data from Fortune 500 also helped to develop this research.

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses,

opportunities, and threats involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieving the objectives of a firm.

Strengths: Current factors within the organization that brings the outstanding performance of a

firm. These are the company’s core competencies, which help the company to achieve its goal.

Weaknesses: are characteristics within the organization which is harmful to achieve goals. They

are conditions that can lead to low performance of the firm.

Opportunities: external opportunities, which can help the organization to achieve its goals.

Opportunities are outside conditions which company can turn it into advantages.

Threats: External conditions that is harmful for the organization to achieve its goals. Threats can

be about current or future conditions may arise to the firm.

SWOT analysis can evaluate the factors which influence the business. These factors can be either internal or external. It can also give a good guidance to make a better decision for the

organization. SWOT analysis can be a good tool to scan the condition of the firm from internal and external aspect.

It is not simply enough to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a company. In applying the SWOT analysis it is necessary to minimize or avoid both weaknesses and threats. Weaknesses should be checked in order to convert them into strengths. Likewise, threats should be converted into opportunities. Lastly, strengths and opportunities should be matched to optimize the potential of a firm. Applying SWOT in this fashion can obtain leverage for a company.

3.2 The positioning school by Michael Porter

Early developments of the Positioning School and Potter generic strategy – Outside-In.

Starting with the external approach, Michael Porter is the main representative of the positioning view. He sees the selection of a competitive strategy as a game of positioning the company to achieve a favorable market position through generic strategies and sustained barriers to competition ("How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy", Harvard Business Review, March/April 1979. p. 143). In the 5-forces-framework Porter outlines market forces a company has to consider when intending to achieve a competitive advantage over rivals. These are the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, new entrants into the market, product substitutes and current rivalry. The weaker these forces, the higher the potential to earn profit. By using the strength of the company and weakness of the market, a company can achieve a favorable position enjoying less pressure on profit margins. By following generic strategies, such as cost leadership, differentiation or focus on a niche, companies can influence these forces and build barriers to competition.

This project used Porter’s generic strategic plan to gain market share. Michael Porter has described a category scheme consisting of three general types of strategies that are commonly used by businesses to achieve and maintain competitive advantage. These three generic strategies are defined along two dimensions: strategic scope and strategic strength. Strategic scope is a demand-side and looks at the size and composition of the market you intend to target. Strategic strength is a supply-side dimension and looks at the strength or core competency of the firm. In particular, he identified two competencies that he felt Ire most important: product differentiation and product cost.

Porter discussed that companies can have sustained competitive advantage by following three main strategies: cost leadership, differentiation, and market segmentation. Market segmentation is narrow in scope while both cost leadership and differentiation are relatively broad in market scope2.

A general finding suggested by Porter is that firms with a high market share are highly profitable and have higher profitability with low operation cost through efficiency in production. The firms

with low market share focusing on niche market can also have high profit margin on their investment. The least profitable firms were those with moderate market share. Firms in the average market share were less profitable because they did not have a viable generic strategy and less profitability with high marketing and operations cost.

According to Potter, the organizations that doesn’t follow the three options in generic strategy i.e. cost leadership, differentiation and focus, the organization will stuck in middle and will suffer below average performance. Potter was strong supporter of Outside-In perspective and advised organization to look for external environments and position the organization in a way to defend itself against five forces.

3.3 RBV Theory – VRIO by Barney- Inside out strategy

Barney is discusses about inside out strategy, in RBV school of thought. It is about how the resources within the firm can help to grow and flourish. Barney discusses that massive rent comes from resources with special characteristics, which he defines a model for it. This model is famous as VRIN model, which includes the following characteristics:

Valuable: the resources, that make value for company, it makes the processes more effective and efficient. It makes higher benefit and lower cost in compare with similar resources in the market.

Rare: it is rare in terms of existence; these resource is not accessible for all the competitors. If a specific resource is commonly used by many competitors it would be hardly a source of

competition.

Inimitable: it is difficult to be imitated from competitors. For example if one person is doing a valuable work in a company, maybe other firm can copy. But if the work is done by a high performance team then it would be very difficult to imitate. Firms can make their resources not imitable. In many situations the big change would be easily copied for competitors while, smile changes would not be easily traced by competitors.

None substitutable: This resource is not easily substitutable by other resources. This can be similar to not imitable.

It can be different In terms of recourses, like patent, technology, properties or relationship, however many scholars believes that is only for intangible recourses which explains the

heterogeneity performance among other firms, and they are the source of competitive advantage for the firm.

Every firm and organization strives for the best to achieve VRIN resources. VRIN resources defines their true position in the market as more is the success in acquisition, better grows the firms position in competitive business industry. However, difference can happen in the resources amongst various units like patents, or properties, also technologies or relationship etc. therefore, the firm adds organizational modifications by bring together business or other activities on location.

3.4 The core competency of the corporation, Prahald and Hamel 2001:

Prahald and Hamel are talking about inside out strategy. Looking at the firm within inside the firm and see the capabilities. Core competency is derive from the ability to build at lower price and more speedily to the market than competitors.

Core competency is a unique ability that a company acquires from its founders or develops and that cannot be easily imitated. Core competencies are what give a company one or

more competitive advantages, in creating and delivering value to its customers in its chosen field. Core competency is also called core capabilities or distinctive competencies. See also core rigidities.

Business units should further help to make a core competency. There are three ways to identify the core competency:

1-provide potential access to a wide variety of markets

2-should make a significant contribution to the perceived customer benefits of the end users

3-should be difficult for competitors to imitate

Lots of companies try to cut costs in where they have core competency. They do not see some of their competencies as what they have to invest on and keep it within the company. Outsourcing is a good way to cut cost. However, outsourcing can provide little learning within the company and to build the needed skills within the company.

The drive to identify core competencies moved in line with the growing popularity of

outsourcing. When companies were suddenly able to outsource almost any process that came under their corporate umbrella, they needed to know what lay in the hard core of activities that they were uniquely Ill qualified to carry out, the activities that it made no sense for them to hand over to a third party. In some cases the answer was very few

The tangible link between identified core competencies and end products, is what Prahald and Hamel called Core products. It is the physical characteristic of the core competency. As an example Honda engine is a core product. Core product is the component that helps to create value for the end products. It shapes the skills and competency of the product.

Prahalad and Hamel are mentioning the differences between core competency, core product and end product. For example for Honda the core competency is ability to design and develop engine, core product is engine and end product is the cars.

3.5 BCG Matrix:

The BCG matrix is based on market share and market growth. This matrix is one of the most well-known portfolio management tool, this method is based on product life cycle. This method was first developed by Boston Consulting Group in the early 70s, it helps to determine, what priority should be given to each product portfolio. To ensure the sustainability of growth and profitability of a company, companies need to have different portfolio, the portfolio should consist of high growth products, which they are in need of cash and low growth products which

generate a lot of cash. The Boston Consulting Group Matrix has 2 dimensions, market share and market growth. BCG matrix divided portfolios into four different categories:

Stars: (high growth, high market share) it’s on upper left quadrant. Grow rapidly and use large amount of cash to keep having high growth, however they also generate high amount of cash. They are leaders in their business. They have the best profit growth in the company and investment opportunities in the company. To maintain the competitive effort, large investment needed in different times to keep the star alive. If the growth slows, as it happens in all the business, a large amount of cash would be obtained, which it drops to lower left quadrant to become cash cow. It can happen if the attempt is not like making lots of cash in a short amount of time.

Cash cows: (low growth, high market share) it has a big market and low cost. It has a high profit and generate large amount of money, because of low growth, reinvestment is very low. Cash cows can help the company to pay the expenses of overhead, dividends and interest. They are the foundation that the company rests on.

Dogs: (low growth, low share) they font represent a good situation. They have a poor

competitive situation in the market. The growth is very low, so there is very little chance if they want to gain more market share. Unfortunately the cash required to maintain this business is much more than the profits created. Any further investment in this business should be avoided

Question marks: (high growth, low share) it has the worst cash situation of all, because of high growth it needs lots of cash. There should be try to change the question mark to star because if it doesn’t happen it absorbs all the money. If it grows slow it simply turns to dog.

As industries grows and become more mature they all go through different industry stage, usually all the business starts with question mark and then they become star, next stage will be cash flow and finally they become dogs.

However there are many arguments and opposition around BCG Matrix, which not all the companies going to be dog, and not definitely they go through all the stage, some companies never experience some of them.

4 Project Scope and Methodology

BI Solution

According to Techopedia Business intelligence (BI) is the use of computing technologies for the identification, discovery and analysis of business data - like sales revenue, products, costs and incomes.

BI technologies provide current, historical and predictive views of internally structured data for products and departments by establishing more effective decision-making and strategic

operational insights through functions like online analytical processing (OLAP), reporting, predictive analytics, data/text mining, benchmarking and Business Performance Management (BPM). These technologies and functions are often referred to as information management

4.1.1 Method adopted

This task is quite wide and it can be a wide project, in doing so I defined some scope in working on this project.

Product Scope

As a result of industry analysis, I identified attractive industry opportunities in healthcare, insurance, banking, and retail and I would like to have a thorough research on that. In doing our research I need to limit ourselves in a limited area, otherwise the focus would be too broad and diffuse.

Project Scope

At the beginning I had to define, how I would like to approach and solve this case, there were many tasks and many aspects that I could work on and I had to bring many analysis on that. Our

project scope was based on approaching this case based on different aspects of branding and marketing. I decided not to enter in technical recommendations because of a lack of sufficient knowledge on the technical side.

5 Discussion, Findings and analysis

5.1 Discussion

In this project, I used mostly in-side out perspective is used to provide recommendations for Avanade case. I used inside out strategy to see what Avanade capabilities are and how I can make it works better. In doing so I came with recommendations that helped Avanade in finding more clients for BI.

My focus was less on outside in strategy, to see, what is going on in the market or what the opportunities in the market are that I can make use of them. As an example, observing that there are 20 retail company and 10 are having BI solution, so then I can provide strategy to work with them, so this is outside in strategy.

5.2 Main findings:

Market for BI services:

Market Size:

According to “Gartner All Enterprise Software Market Share, Worldwide 2011-2012” report, the total BI market in Netherlands was estimated to be $243.9 million in 2012, which experienced a growth of 6% from 2011. Based on Gartner studies it is expected that the Dutch BI market will achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.21% through 2014, it is also expected that this grow will remain steady until next 5 years.

Based on Gartner study Netherlands is one of the BI leader countries In Europe, so it is a very good opportunity for Avanade to be part of this market.

Based on Avanade survey from top 500 executive managers in the Netherlands, BI and analytics is the first priority plans for them to invest in 2014.

Some facts on Avanade and BI based on Avanade survey:

• The first IT investment priority in private and public organization is Business Intelligence analytic

• 43% of BI decision maker reported upcoming investments on data integration and harmonization and 34% for master data management

• 40% of the BI decision maker in public sector indicated near future project on developing management reporting

• Capgemini has the largest top of mind for integrators on Microsoft platform • Avanade has the 5th top of mind on Microsoft integrator

Avanade Competitors

Competitors for Avanade BI are in two groups, one group are the competitor for Microsoft software and another group is Avanade competitors, in terms of companies providing IT

consulting services for BI. In the following I will define the differences between this two groups:

In the following chart you can find Microsoft competitors, From the chart below it can be recognized that Microsoft is not the preferred software for all of the firms In compare with SAP, IBM and Oracle which they are having more than 50% of the market altogether. However I found out that Microsoft is improving business Intelligence software and also it is much cheaper than SAP, Oracle and IBM, so Avanade can take advantages of having cheaper software in recession time.

Microsoft is a providing very good services on data warehousing, but unfortunately it is not very good in providing consumer Interfaces, so many companies buy data warehouse from Microsoft and for the rest they go with other competitors like SAP.

Second competitors are Avanade direct competitors, which they all are also providing IT consulting services for business intelligence for the clients which are like Capgemini, Infosys, Wipro. This companies are doing better job in terms of brand awareness for the market, however

at the moment they are all challenging with economic situation and recession, which Avanade is having a good situation at the moment, because of Accenture support.

Focus Industries for BI:

In a research about industries I found out they are different demands for BI from different industries. It can bring a good Insight to know what industries are more using BI solutions and where is more possibility for BI to grow. From the graph below I could say that there is high demand in education Industry, however education industry are not very rich to pay lots of money for Avanade services.

After education Industry banking and financial services and manufacturing and natural resources are in the second, high demand for BI.

5.3 Description of the work

The solution for this case study are provided from different sources, first is desk research about Avanade, competitors, BI and market. There are many information within the organization that is not always easy to find with desk research, which is tacit knowledge and tacit information about

15% 2% 3% 16% 5% 1% 16% 20% 10% 6% 6% Banking and securities Education Healthcare Providers Mfg & Natural Resources Transportation Wholesale Trade 18

Avanade. For that Information I interviewed many different people within the organization. In the following you can find different type of methodology that I took for solving this case.

1. Document study, From Accenture and Avanade internal knowledge sharing website, magazine, Avanade documents and Avanade surveys and books

2. Internet research

3. Interviews (more than 25 in Avanade) 4. Focus groups

5. Workshops for vision development. I hold a workshop to ask the senior managers idea about where do they see Avanade in 3 years’ time from now

6. SWOT Analysis

7. If I were Erwin I would …., I asked employee that what you would do if you were the service line lead in confidential way. I achieve many interesting results by that.

Timeline:

The project is started from first of April, which, I started with market analysis for Avanade, and from the internal and external analysis for Avanade I found out SWOT analysis, which becomes the basis for all my research. To see what is Avanade drawbacks and what is our strength from inside Avanade and from outside.

5.4 Interviews:

At the beginning of the investigation I started with conducting Interview with many people in the company. The reasoning for Interview was that nobody has better understanding about the business better than the people that currently work with it. So I decided to talk to different people In different position within the Avanade, the Interview was with BI service line lead, BI

managers, employees, sales and marketing, finance and also other service line leads. I had many findings and insights through our interviews. Desk research can be a very good tactic to get to

know a company very well, however if it is combined with interacting with employee it would give a better result.

I tried to come up with a new type of questionnaire for employees. I had more than 25 interviews and each took us around 1 hours to interview. The good point about my interview is that, I found out that managers does not involve all the people in decision making and also involving them in the processes.

5.4.1 Meeting with sales and marketing:

Marketing is not a topic which has been taken seriously by Avanade, Avanade grow by 20% each year, which, in the recession, not many firms have the same situation in the Netherlands, so it was never the been a need to have more sales. Although it is obvious that, Avanade should find a way to keep growing without Accenture, because the policy of Accenture would not

necessarily remain stable in the future.

From marketing perspectives they are looking for top 500 top firms in the Netherlands as potential clients, so their plan is not to approach smaller firms, they have a motto that, sell more to smaller amount of clients than small contracts with lots of firms. Accenture has targeted the top 150 firms in the Netherlands as potential clients. Avanade should be aware that they should target Accenture clients, because Accenture is a big stakeholder and most of the money comes from Accenture, so there shouldn’t be any conflict between them.

Avanade does only little marketing, but competitors does lots of marketing,. Avanade has some marketing with formula one campaign, which It doesn’t include all the target clients. Not every client is like going to formula one campaign. For BI specifically, there is no campaign or any marketing has been launched.

Avanade is not a famous brand company for ordinary people, which it should not necessarily be. Avanade is a Business to Business company so they need business people to be aware of them. According to Avanade survey, only 11% of managers have awareness about Avanade in the

Netherlands. But the awareness about Avanade BI is much less according to the observation from Avanade employees. BI need a lot work to do on its marketing and branding.

5.4.2 Meeting with technical people:

Technical people in BI are very less business oriented, so they do not have a clear view about the value that they create for the clients. They are very good technicians, which they are valuable recourse for Avanade. On the other hands clients for BI are mostly CFO and CEO of the companies and they do not know what they want in terms of technical offering, they only care about business value.

Technical people believe that they are not engaged enough from management team and they would like to participate in decision making. They mentioned that in many cases, the solution that they provide is very different with what clients want from them. From technical point of view, they believed that clients are not educated enough in IT, so they do not know what they want, however, Avanade must try to understand client better, and understand their business need in order to bring them technical solution.

Avanade is also highly depend on the success of Microsoft software and hardware, if Microsoft does not produce a product, that clients like it, so Avanade is also cannot be successful. For example, the reporting part in BI is not really successful by Microsoft, which, clients also prefer to buy that from other vendors. However, they said that there are a lot of ways to modify the Microsoft software and make it better for clients.

5.4.3 Meeting with BI managers and service line leads:

In the meeting with service line lead, he was telling us that they are doing well in indirect sale, unfortunately very little direct clients. They have very good employee, with too much technical experience and knowledge, which is rare to find them in the Netherlands. All the people are having chargeable role, (when employee works in client side it calls chargeable, it means that they can charge the clients) in most of the time, and the problem is that if they want to expand business they do not have free people.

The service line lead is very supportive of ideas that come from people, so people are quite free to give ideas and he is also open to them. A good and positive point is that the people are very friendly within the service line, which can bring a positive atmosphere for the people. They all believed that they like to work here and they find it a very good place to improve themselves. People admitted that they can work very well together and they like working tin Avanade.

5.5 Document studies:

According to management survey, 2013, executive of top 500 firms, BI and analytics is the first investment plan in private and public top 500 organizations for executives in the Netherlands, so there is a plenty of opportunities within BI in the Netherlands. 43% of BI decision makers in top 500 Netherlands companies reported upcoming

investments on data integration and harmonization and 34% for master data management in the coming year.

If the BI decision maker in public sector indicated near future project on developing

management reporting. With all the above facts I found out the huge opportunities for BI In direct sale.

5.6 Workshop:

One of the means of my research was, conducting a workshop with senior managers of BI service line. The goal of the workshop was to define where they see this service line in 1 year and 3 years from now. This helped to define the strategic plan to achieve the goals.

It is very important who is defining a goal for a company, many consulting companies are defining goals for their clients and the result does not always brings commitment to goals. If the goals are not define by decision maker it would not be a 100% guarantee that they are committed to It. the idea of workshop was based on the fact that all the decision makers are participating on developing a vision.

A very important fact about vision development is that, if a company does not have a vision, so in most of the time every member of the company have to follow their own vision, which It might be in contrast with each person or with company interest. The idea is that vision of a

company should be vision of every members of the company. It leads to having all the efforts in one direction, which can bring synergy to the company.

Before the workshop pre work has been send to every member, so they had to pitch their idea for their idea on vision in the workshop. The reason behind pitching the idea was to show that, people are not following the same goal, so they are not putting their efforts into a same direction. In this meeting the same issue happened and we developed a shared vision

together. In the following you can find the shared vision:

• BI service line has growing revenue by 20%, a good growth in revenue which is mostly through indirect channel.

• Avanade BI wants to increase its sales via direct channel, and grow its own network of clients independent from Accenture.

• BI should be known for the CTO of top 150 companies of the Netherlands in 3 years.

Setting a goal is very important it helps companies to identify their intentions, objectives and priorities, so they can measure their performance in order to achieve their goal. A 2006 Workforce Intelligence Institute study found increases in worker and business performance when organizations effectively set and tied individual employee goals to the company's overall strategy. Conversely, the study found workers in the low-performing companies did not clearly understand the relationship between their individual efforts and their company effort.

5.7 Assumptions and areas not part of research

SWOT analysis

A review of the internal and external environment of the firm is an important part of strategic planning for the company. Internal environmental factors can be classifieds into strength or weaknesses and external factors can be classified as opportunities and threats in the organization. SWOT analysis helps to match the firm capabilities and recourses with the current capability of the firm.

In the process of finding out the SWOT, it was first drafted after the interviews and desk research and after that it was reviewed by many senior employees within Avanade, this list helped us to have structure within the work and see how I can make better use of the strength within Avanade and get to know the weaknesses better if I can eliminate them or if only good to be aware of them. The same also with opportunities and threats. In the following it is the SWOT for BI Avanade

Strengths:

• Synergy from parent companies • Unmatched breadth of portfolio • Deep commitment to excellence

• Increasing revenue at rapid, steady pace • Global delivery network and system

• Having heavy Lighted clients like Shell which brings good references • Friendly culture, which bring more innovation

Weaknesses:

• Lack of enough consultants

• Weak brand awareness, Lack of awareness for Avanade as BI provider • Revenue comes from few customers

• Not getting the offer of end to end project • Dependent on Accenture and few direct clients

• Weak quality of offshore

• Lack of standardization to provide service management solution or industry solution (weak knowledge sharing)

• main focus on technical and less focus on business

Opportunities:

• Market share for BI in the Netherlands has a considerable potential for growth • Prepare for reality of utility building technologies

• Widening the scope of delivered project • Benefit more from alliances and cross selling • Collaboration with other service lines

Threats:

• Market share for BI in the Netherlands has a considerable potential for growth • Prepare for reality of utility building technologies

• Widening the scope of delivered project • Benefit more from alliances and cross selling • Collaboration with other service lines

If I were Erwin:

People working in a company are always having great Ideas of how the work can be done in a better way. There are always many barriers for people not to give their ideas to the managers. Barriers could be, some formality between managers and employee, or people thinks that managers doesn’t value their ideas. In doing so, in interviews with different people, I made sure that all the conversation is confidential.

Marketing within Avanade

Based on desk research and interviews with marketing people, I understand that there has been no marketing specifically for BI. However in Avanade there is very little marketing. The

problem in Avanade is that having client is easy through Accenture so far, so they do not see any need to pay money to get more client. However companies should be aware that whenever they are in a good economic situation they have to pay for marketing and luxury expenses. In bad time, basically companies do not have money to spend. So at this moment Avanade is like a cash cow, to keeping it they need to invest on that,

At the moment there are only 4 people in marketing department. There is also no decision for hiring new people and growing the department. Avanade also doesn’t believe in participating in events or hosting different events, marketing vice president believes that decision makers doesn’t come for big events. They believe that focus should be on marketing specifically for one to one client, like conducting workshops and roundtables.

Another finding that Marketing in Avanade is not really diverse for different type of clients and it is mostly via formula 1. Based on our desk research, racing car marketing is good, but It doesn’t provide a company good situation to enable them to socialize with clients. Another point is that mostly people who are decision maker in a company are less inclined to go for racing car.

Marketing in Avanade is for two different clients, one is marketing for indirect clients which is only Accenture, and basically Accenture has lots of technical partner, so Avanade should persuade them to choose Avanade as preferred partner. The other marketing is for direct sale, which this report is about expanding that. Avanade is also have clients from Microsoft, but Microsoft is considered as indirect sale for Avanade.

Branding

Branding is a very important element for companies like Avanade, however branding for Avanade is very different from commercial companies. Avanade is a business to business company, so they need different marketing than business to client companies. Avanade does not have a good brand awareness for ordinary people while, it has a better awareness for business people.

Avanade has 7 service lines:

Each of service lines are having different targets for revenue. This shows that Inside Avanade there is little coordination between service lines in order to split the revenue. At the end of each year the performance of each service line is measured by its revenue. So there is no incentive for different service lines to work together, in order to get more clients.

Avanade is trying to solve this issue by hiring business developers based on industries not based on service lines. Business developers role in Avanade are to find clients or selling more to current clients, basically they are sales people for Avanade. So for them the incentive is to get more project and it doesn’t matter which service line. The problem is that business developers are not having sufficient technical view, so it is difficult for them to market for the projects that they do not know them technically.

During the interviews I asked them what would you do if you were Erwin (Business Intelligence service line lead). The ideas was helps me a lot. After doing all the market research I come up with some Initiative for BI service line in order to grow more on direct sale:

1- Branding and marketing campaign – Website improvement

– Brochure/Magazine development, Article – Golf tournament

– Advertise in financial times NL

2- Develop a plan for different targeting for service lines

3- Train employees on the commercial aspects of the business

4- Build partnership plan with management consultancy companies

Branding and marketing campaign

One of the most important aspect for Improving BI on direct sale is boosting branding and

marketing campaign. It is obvious that Avanade need to strengthen on this aspect. If market doesn’t know Avanade, it is not reasonable to expect market to buy their technical solution from Avanade.

Avanade Is having is having less branding awareness, which many managers in Avanade believes that marketing doesn’t bring value for their

According to the Lenskold Group’s 2010 B2B Lead Generation Marketing ROI Study, the most common answer to this question of Do you know what profits a 10% increase in B2B marketing budget would generate. “I do not Know.”

Forty-four percent (44%) of qualified marketers have no idea what a 10% budget increase could do for their companies. Companies should look at it vice versa, what if they do not invest on marketing, which have a clear answer, that probably in few years nobody know the firm and they lose the market to competitors.

Another important issue about B2B marketing is that marketing for B2C is a lot about brand awareness and being known to the market, while marketing to B2B is more giving knowledge and contents. Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by

consistently creating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy.

Content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling them. Instead of talking about your products or services, you can tell about information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if I, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

Website Improvement:

At the moment Avanade BI Website has lots of room for improvement, BI website does not communicate all the competencies with BI service line. I did a thorough research about why website is important for a B2B businesses.

Ranking the most effective content delivery channel for B2B businesses:

From the findings it was concluded that BI has to change the below topics on website:

• Videos about BI added value and satisfied clients, • Case studies and Success stories

• Adding name of the clients on website

• Services That BI can provide for the clients in terms of an offering • Content should be added to the website not only in brochure

Findings from Searchmetrics, approved that, video appeared most frequently being displayed in over 70 percent of search results. So it is important that BI add some videos about what they are doing, satisfied clients testimonial and how BI helped them to Increase their performance and also what BI can bring to firms and how it can add values to the companies.

Based on Searchmetrics, 75% of senior executives view work-related videos on business

websites at least once a week. 52% of senior executives watch work-related videos on YouTube once a week. BI decision makers in companies are mostly senior managers, so marketing should target this groups.

The most interesting content for End users and marketers is case study according to Marketing sherpa and knowledge storm. Most competitors have many case studies on their websites, which Avanade has lack of it.

Case studies often provide a structured problem and solution format, often including practical insights the reader can apply immediately to their own situation. Case studies demonstrate the solution provider’s approach to problem solving: methodical, creative, out of the box, disruptive. So it helps that client put him/herself in the same situation, and want to see the new technology Another important subject is that BI only offers very little offering to the clients on website, while clients are usually not IT people that they can guess what other offering can BI bring to us, so it is very important that BI, name the offerings and services that can provide to the clients and address that what problems will be solved with this offering.

Brochure/Magazine development, Article

Average magazines reader are key influencers for technology products. intelliQuest reports that heavy users if magazines are more likely to be decision makers for the purchase of their

company's technology products, even more so than heavy users of internet. Heavy users of magazines and the web are also more likely to be super Influential consumers for technology purchases. Including computers, mobile phones and new technology products and services.

In B2B knowledge businesses it is very important to generate articles in creditable magazines or websites, this is one of the best way to bring stronger brand. Because IT people in companies are trying to be In the know of newest technology so it will bring a good credit for them.

Google has a magazine that is twice year they are offering that to the special clients. I suggest that Avanade can do the same, twice a year, bringing a very special design magazine, with Important contents like articles on new technologies, industry trends, best practices and status of Avanade Status, new technologies and new services are introduce to clients plus increase the knowledge of the

The clients, In order to bring them that you are special clients for us and giving as gifts to the.

Golf tournament

Based on a report approximately 8 out of every 10 people that make decisions at companies play golf. There have been several studies that show completing a business deal while in this type of environment is over 85% more effective than other methods. This makes a corporate golf outing worthwhile.

While golf certainly cannot guarantee a deal will be closed, it is a great way to socialize with clients in a fun and relaxing atmosphere. New customers can be gained relatively easily as business is handled more casually in this outdoor setting. There is also no better reminder of a company brand than one of those personalized golf balls with the company’s logo on it, which many golfers collect as a keepsake in their trophy case. Sponsorship provides a great means for improving your company's image, prestige and credibility by supporting events that your target market finds attractive.

Avanade is very active in Formula one advertisement, which is racing car, that the audience is totally different with golf tournament audience. With conducting the golf tournament I can target different type of the clients. So I have targeted the clients which looking for adventure and racing

car and targeting clients for more relaxing sport. Another advantage of golf other than racing car, is that when playing golf is easy to communicate and discus while in racing car because of many noise communication is difficult.

Advertise in financial times NL

Business intelligence (BI)/analytics investment will address many technology gaps for the CFO, according to a joint study by Gartner. The study shows that 15 of the top 19 business processes that CFOs have identified as requiring improved technology support are largely addressed by BI, analytics and performance management technologies.

Study shows that a large percentage of CFOs own the IT function. This responses show that 39 percent of IT organizations currently report to the CFO," said Mr. Van Decker. "This high level of reporting to the CFO demonstrates the need for companies to ensure that their CFOs are educated in technology, and underscores just how critical it is that CIOs and CFOs have a common understanding of how to leverage enterprise technology." “CFO, as catalyst of change, Accenture)

"The survey findings would seem to suggest that the CFO prioritizes business applications higher than the CIO does," said Bill Sinnett, senior director, research at FERF. "If the CIO does not understand this, then there's a chance the CFO will sponsor his or her own initiatives, and not coordinate them with the IT organization. This demonstrates the trend that BI is becoming less of a CIO responsibility and more of a CFO and line-of-business responsibility. CFO, as catalyst of change, Accenture)

Based on all the research, I concluded that Avanade should do advertisement on, Nederlande financiele dag, the advertisement should be once in a month for one year, the idea is that, IT managers should choose the IT partner to help their company, however the CFO needs to confirm the company. If the CFO knows the brand, it is more probable that he/she will sign the contract

2- Develop a plan for different targeting for service lines

Acquiring new client is 6-7 times more difficult than selling new services and products to the current clients. It is easier for BI service line to sell their service to the current clients other than trying to find new clients. So BI can start contacting the current clients of other service line and try to bring value for them and persuade them to work with them.

One of the issues with companies like Avanade that it is divided into different service lines is that different service lines do not have a clear view about other service lines’ services, how they can add value to their services and their clients. So BI should not be reactive and wait if another service line brings them clients. Thus they have to proactively seeking for Avanade clients and see if they can start working with them.

Furthermore service lines does not have enough time when doing projects, to market for the other service lines,

Avanade sell their services through business developers, business developers are mostly business people. Sales people do not have clear view and technical view about, services that each service line can provide for the clients

Another point about Avanade is that, every service lines are evaluated by their own performance and their amount of revenue, so if Avanade expects cooperation, cooperative culture embedded in cooperative rules and context. If Avanade only appreciate the higher revenue of every service line, then people are not motivated to grow the other service lines revenue. Avanade should encourage the only goal for everyone should be maximizing Avanade revenue overall

In order to achieve this goal, BI service line should try to increase the knowledge of BI around other service lines and for the business developers, this can be done by conducting training for other business developers and other service line employees.

Another way to working with other service lines is that BI, try to bring offerings on top of other service lines offering, like if CRM is having a project in a bank, BI can bring analytics on top of CRM and try to bring more value to the clients, and convince other service lines to help them to show it to the clients. Also BI should keep in mind that other service lines are doing better in terms of direct sale, so BI is more needing them to expand their direct sale. So BI should act more proactive and invest if any investment needed

Avanade in Spain have a team which called CTO, this team is made by employees from every service line, so they have a thorough view of all the services that Avanade offers, this team generates offering from different service lines

Having technical people with view of every service lines in sales team Offering packages from collaborating between service lines

Clients should be as profit center and the goal is maximizing profit from clients

Bonuses all based on Avanade Netherlands operating income and all the efforts should be maximizing Avanade revenue. Target must be maximizing revenue based on clients.

3- Train employees on the commercial aspects of the business

Clients for BI are mainly CEO and CFO, so they are less technical people, the people who wants to market for BI they should know that the clients are not very technical, so they need to have more training on business side of BI offering.

More interaction with clients and translating their business needs to technical needs. So they need to translate the needs of the clients to technical needs, so Avanade need more technical view people to be enable to translate the needs of clients. People need to be able to show the value added of the projects not only on technical part, which clients does not understand most of the time

4- Build partnership plan with management consultancy companies

BI can explore opportunities with consultancy firms in order to provide a thorough package to the clients and make use of mutual network of clients. Decision of what kind of report should be generated and what kind of information should be kept in a company for a typical BI project is depends on business model development, which consultancy firm can help with it.

Companies wants to have BI for competing on information and information superiority They need to know what data is useful and what data is not, so for that Avanade cannot help because they are very technical and on direct sale client, Accenture is not involved, so Avanade should look for a partner to help with business view.

Benefit for Avanade

Avanade will be enables to offer a value added project, which can be more understandable for the clients, because in this kind of project both technical and business sides are considered. Projects would meet more based on company needs and expectation, because business people can better translate the needs and expectation of the clients which many times doesn’t happens at the moment. Furthermore Avanade can use another company network of clients.

Learning point for Avanade to strengthen the business side of their people

Management consultancy can fill the lack of business view of BI employee, and they have better view about business aspect of the work and they have better view about business aspect of the work.

6 Conclusion

6.1 Conclusion

As you can see, a lot of research and analysis has gone into creating our recommendations. To reiterate once more, Avanade should work more on the marketing and branding side, Avanade also needs to have more one to one session with clients and try to be more informative. Another

recommendation is that Avanade should change its focus from technical focus to more business focus. By being technical focus Avanade cannot make a good relationship with the clients.

6.2 Recommendations

I would like to give my recommendation to Avanade as below:

Avanade need to change its focus from only technical to more business view.

If Avanade wants to have less dependent on Accenture they should invest on making Avanade a brand or invest more on marketing

Avanade should act more proactive than reactive. Avanade will lose the market if they are waiting for clients to come instead of shaping the demands

Avanade should start hiring more business people to help changing the technical perspectives

Avanade can bring a huge difference to its performance by changing their view from totally technical oriented to more business focus. They can also create better relationship with clients and showing them the value in their business.

Appendices

Appendix 1:

Pre-work for BI Shared Vision Development Workshop:

How would you like to see the BI service line evolving in 2016, in terms of different areas of improvement such as:

 Brand awareness

 Clients (Direct channel)

 Human Resource and chargeability  Revenue growth

 Project scope

Feel free to come up with further improvement areas or suggestions, other than the ones mentioned above.

Please think in terms of strategic improvements, not at the operational level (e.g. buying 40 computers until 2016 is an operational decision, not strategic one).

Be prepared for 2 minutes pitch of your vision for BI service line in the workshop, based on your pre-work (please do not write more than half a page).

Apendix 2:

1. How do you see Avanade BI department at the moment?

2. How do you see BI department in 3 years? What should happened in 3v years that you consider it

3. What are the 3 most important barriers for success of BI department 4. What are the three drivers for BI to make it successful?

5. What are the strength of Avanade BI? 6. What are the department weaknesses?

7. What are the Avanade competitive advantage?

8. What are the opportunities and threats for BI department

9. Who are your competitors? Do you think you will have the competitors in 3 years? 10. What would you do if you were Erwin?

11. What do you think I should keep in mind for planning the strategy

Apendix 3

Apendix 4, How I find the initiatives:

June 20th Developmen t of finalize initiatives

April

19

July 12

April 1

References:

http://www.swotmatrix.com/swot-analysis-planning-tool.html http://datamining.com.sg/BusinessIntelligence_FAQ.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/solutions-technologies/business-intelligence.aspx http://www.ehow.com/facts_5124938_swot-analysis.html http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/B2B_Content_Marketing_2012.pdf http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/ http://www.slideshare.net/hschulze/b2b-content-marketing-report Esri: Using location optimization to Maximize Value of BI

http://www.stfrancis.edu/content/ba/ghkickul/stuIbs/btopics/works/swot.htm

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/google-makes-a-magazine-in-print-with-actual-paper/242488/

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2488616 CFO, as catalyst of change, Accenture

Gartner All Enterprise Software Market Share, Worldwide 2011-2012 Forrestor Wave: Big Data Predictive Analytics Solutions, Q1, 2013