Outsourcer and consulting firm Accenture and SAP are expanding their global alliance by providing clients with end-to-end business systems running on the SAP HANA data processing platform.
The first new offering from the partners is the Marketing Performance Solution, which is sold by Accenture and which enables chief marketing officers (CMOs) to easily view and act on centralised key marketing performance data, such as sales figures, media spend and social reach "in near real-time", said Accenture.
Mark Willford, Accenture senior managing director for technology ecosystems, said: "Our new solutions are expected to provide ultimate flexibility for enterprises. They will have access to leading industry applications running on SAP HANA with all software and hardware components under a single contract.
"We believe this is a unique offering in the SAP ecosystem that answers our clients' growing demand for simplification."
The Marketing Performance Solution exploits analytics technology from both SAP HANA and Accenture. CMOs and marketing teams can access data from multiple internal and external sources, and quickly respond to shifting market demand and manage the ROI of marketing spend.
Tracking results of marketing campaigns, running simulations and promotions and making adjustments is enabled through a web-based user interface accessible from PCs and mobile devices.
Robert Enslin, SAP president of global customer operations, said: "This new level of collaboration is designed to offer unique solution packages and simplify the contract process so our joint clients can get up and running even faster."
The new CMO solution will initially be targeted at CMOs of retail and consumer packaged goods companies, who must address the complexity of changing consumer preferences, channel proliferation, and fragmented agency relationships. Accenture plans to launch additional functional solutions for other vertical industries.
Hosting services are also planned to be included in all end-to-end systems offered by Accenture and SAP, with a private or public cloud deployment option supported by global hosting and infrastructure providers.
Related fees will fall under a single contract structure with Accenture to help simplify contract management for clients, compared to handling multiple suppliers and contracts.
