WWT and Centric Consulting Worked Together to Standardize Processes and Prepare People for Massive Growth

World Wide Technology (WWT) is a St. Louis-based, $10 billion technology solution provider with 4,000 employees globally. Over the past 27 years, WWT has become one of the largest and most successful privately held companies in the country.

They are nimble, entrepreneurial, and treat every customer as unique. This has resulted in the highest levels of customer satisfaction and employee pride, and has led to the company historically doubling in revenue every four to five years.

Today, WWT is at a critical point in their evolution. To continue their aggressive growth and maintain the highest levels of customer satisfaction and world-class culture, the company must transform their business processes, technologies, and organizational structures and become more scalable.

For that to happen, WWT must embrace standardization and predictability. They must depend less on customization as they prepare for future growth while maximizing the bottom line.

Enter Centric: A Business Transformation Strategy for Process and Cultural Needs

WWT partnered with Centric Consulting’s St. Louis office.

Our approach was twofold: First, we helped WWT envision and execute a five-year business transformation strategy referred to as the Business Process Innovation, or BPI, program. Then, we embarked on a change management journey to implement the BPI program and help WWT’s culture adjust and sustain continued change and growth.

BPI Program: Scaling Business Processes for Success

Together with us, WWT established the BPI program to support their 2020 vision to “Simplify, Standardize, Automate and Scale” core operations while maintaining customer flexibility and an employee-centric culture.

The 20-person Centric team manages the overall effort and WWT’s implementation team of approximately 250 people. We lead all aspects of program management, business process architecture, change management, program marketing and communications.

From a core operations perspective, WWT, Centric and Infosys (the Systems Integrator) are working together to:

  • Redesign and simplify most business processes from opportunity to cash
  • Re-implement Oracle to leverage ‘out of the box’ functionality, moving aspects of finance and supply chain operations to Oracle Cloud
  • Evolve the company’s supply chain operations through improved material resource planning, manufacturing execution, and warehouse management systems
  • Design and implement a series of business process improvement projects resulting in critical operational behavior changes and annual cost savings in advance of the larger system implementation

Change Management: Embracing Change to Maximize Growth

The BPI program reflects what our project team is doing from an operational perspective, but it only tells part of the story.

As part of the BPI program, we are working closely with executives, WWT’s 175-person project team, and their 150-person change network to ensure the organization is ready for the next generation of WWT. We are helping to articulate where the company is going in the future, to ensure business readiness, and to fundamentally evolve how WWT works as an enterprise.

Updating business processes and systems is one thing; understanding how to move away from customization is another. This requires influencing how people think and behave.

To this end, our efforts also include:

  • Establishing enterprise and process-level vision statements, guiding principles, and desired outcomes
  • Designing and implementing a ‘Change Network’ to create sustainable change. This network is responsible for owning, assessing, and monitoring change before, during, and after the program is rolled out
  • Implementing an ongoing ‘Process Owner’ organization for long-term continuous improvement. Process Owners work in concert with executive leadership, the business and IT to implement, maintain, govern, align and technically enable end-to-end process solutions across the enterprise.
  • Redesigning structural components of the organization for better alignment toward enterprise goals
  • Redefining how WWT’s business and IT work together to accomplish the work of the enterprise

The Results: Business Transformation Efforts Expected to Achieve Millions in Savings and Supply Chain Efficiency

Once the business transformation program is complete in 2020, WWT expects to save tens of millions per year (in the form of headcount growth avoidance) and achieve a 50 percent increase in supply chain efficiency.

Through simplified, standardized, and automated processes, WWT will establish a scalable platform of ‘growth without growing’ that will support the organization’s go-to-market strategy.

The new platform will offer a friction-less customer experience, seamless partner engagement, and a consistent WWT experience for all.