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The Hackett Group & Symphony Ventures Announce Global Partnership to Enable Enterprise Digital Transformation Via Robotic Process Automation and Intelligent Automation
The Hackett Group, with Symphony Insight, to Launch New “Digital World-Class” Standard at its U.S. Best Practices Conference in Atlanta, May 1-3
MIAMI & LONDON, April 20, 2017 – The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT) and Symphony Ventures have announced a global partnership that will enable enterprise digital transformation by integrating The Hackett Group’s best practices and research data with Symphony’s strategic and technical capabilities in robotics and intelligent automation.
The partnership is expected to offer clients the ability to further improve the ROI of their Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Intelligent Automation and other digital transformation efforts in finance, HR, procurement, and other business services areas by combining Symphony’s global leadership enabling digital transformation with The Hackett Group’s deep empirical knowledge about how to assess and optimize processes for both efficiency and effectiveness.
The Hackett Group has also announced that it will launch a series of new “Digital World-Class” standards and metrics for various business services functions at its U.S. Best Practices Conference in Atlanta, May 1-3. The standards will detail the supplementary improvements to efficiency and effectiveness possible for companies that combine world-class performance with RPA and other digital transformation approaches.
As part of the partnership, The Hackett Group will help clients target their digital transformation efforts by assessing the automation potential of functions and processes, evaluating them against leading practices, and quantifying the overall opportunity. The Hackett Group will provide clients with evidence-backed best practices and insights, and its extensive benchmarking, advisory, and transformation work with Global 1000 companies will enable companies to focus on the areas with the highest ROI.
Complementing the insights of The Hackett Group, Symphony Ventures will bring to this partnership its extensive background and experience in assisting global organizations design, implement and support their digital operations strategies. Symphony works with leading digital tools and has mapped, modeled and implemented thousands of business processes in the world’s leading organizations, including in Banking, Insurance, Healthcare, Logistics, Beverages, Manufacturing, Entertainment and more.
The two companies have collaborated on a new Point of View research paper, “A Blueprint for Getting Started with Robotic Process Automation,” which is available free with registration at this link: https://bit.ly/2oS0ooi. The research estimates that the total efficiency improvement achievable through holistic transformation using RPA can result in 50-75 percent cost reductions over baseline. The result will be a new “Digital World-Class” standard for process costs optimized in this fashion, which will be lower than those achieved by world-class companies in The Hackett Group’s benchmark.
The research paper outlines six steps that are key to setting a rapid and successful course for integrating RPA into business services: think “transformation before tools”; define automation objectives; identify areas of high potential; establish the right governance; plan for transformation; and conduct a pilot or proof of concept.
According to The Hackett Group Chairman & CEO Ted A. Fernandez. “Robotic Process Automation has rapidly moved to the top of the business services agenda. It offers unprecedented potential, and it’s tempting for companies to focus on a narrow scope and immediate savings. But RPA drives much greater value when it is used to support broader transformation of end-to-end transactional processes. Organizations must be prepared to redesign processes and transform their legacy workforce at the same time they introduce new automation tools.”
“To truly optimize RPA, companies need to carefully consider their automation objectives,” said Mr. Fernandez. “A key part of this is using benchmarks to ‘size the prize’ and understand how their current processes compare to peer and world-class performance. We believe that RPA and other digital technologies have the potential to allow companies to move beyond world-class performance and create a new bar – Digital World Class.”
According to Symphony Ventures Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer David Poole, “Symphony was founded on the principle that true transformation begins with good process design and measurement. The Hackett Group shares this belief. Together, we bring process excellence and a digital ecosystem of tools to bear, along with an unrivaled team of experts and practitioners. Our collective services are what enterprises need to excel in this digital age and usher in the future of work. What we’ve built here is a partnership based on an aligned vision and commitment to the power of transformation and best practices. Symphony and The Hackett Group have melded our time-tested frameworks, creating a holistic approach to helping clients achieve positive change, leveraging a modern toolkit of software and services.”
“We believe this partnership can dramatically improve the ROI our clients will achieve, and the speed with which they can realize results,” said Mr. Poole. “The benefits of digital transformation come in many forms. Lower transaction costs, increased speed, and increased accuracy are just a few. When properly implemented, digital transformation can also drive greater insight, and improved customer and stakeholder experience. Finally, by automating transactional tasks, staff can be redeployed to more strategic and value-adding activities.”
About The Hackett Group, Inc.
The Hackett Group (NASDAQ: HCKT) is an intellectual property-based strategic consultancy and leading enterprise benchmarking and best practices digital transformation firm to global companies, offering digital transformation including robotic process automation and enterprise cloud application implementation. Services include business transformation, enterprise analytics, working capital management and global business services. The Hackett Group also provides dedicated expertise in business strategy, operations, finance, human capital management, strategic sourcing, procurement and information technology, including its award-winning Oracle and SAP practices.
The Hackett Group has completed more than 17,850 benchmarking studies studies with major corporations and government agencies, including 93% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 90% of the Fortune 100, 80% of the DAX 30 and 57% of the FTSE 100. These studies drive its Best Practice Intelligence Center™ which includes the firm’s benchmarking metrics, best practices repository and best practice configuration guides and process flows, which enable The Hackett Group’s clients and partners to achieve world-class performance.
About Symphony Ventures
Symphony Ventures is a specialist consulting, implementation and managed services firm passionate about helping clients harness ‘Future of Work’ technologies and techniques. Founded in 2014, Symphony is a recognized global leader in enterprise digital transformation leveraging robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, robotic BPO and other inspired delivery models to help organizational leadership reduce costs, improve customer experience, repatriate work and unleash resources to fund growth and shareholder value. Symphony has been ranked an RPA service leader by HfS Research, a leading service delivery automation-focused service provider by Everest Group and a Cool Vendor by Gartner. Headquartered in London, Symphony also has offices in San Francisco, Boston, and Poland. For more information, visit www.symphonyhq.com/ and follow the company on Twitter at @SymphonyVenture.
Cautionary Statement Regarding “Forward Looking” Statements from The Hackett Group
This release contains “forward looking” statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements including without limitation, words such as “expects”, “anticipates”, “intends”, “plans”, “believes”, seeks”, “estimates” or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are not statements of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Hackett’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward looking statements. Factors that may impact such forward looking statements include without limitation, the ability of Hackett and Symphony to market their respective service pertaining to robotic process automation against competition from other consulting and professional/trade associations/companies who may have or develop in the future, similar offerings, the commercial viability of such service offerings and changes in expectations regarding robotic process automation, the ability of Hackett to attract skilled employees, changes in collections of accounts receivable, risk of competition, price and margin trends, changes in general economic conditions and interests rates as well as other risk detailed in Hackett’s reports filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Hackett undertakes no duty to update this release or any forward looking statements contained herein.
