Avanade: An Amalgamation Of People And Technology

Digital transformation is not a destination, but it’s a journey. The corporate world is a dynamic landscape that keeps hurling a new set of disruption towards modern businesses compelling them to change with time and technology. However, fueled by innovation, a digital transformation is not merely limited to driving results or engaging customers. The modern definition of digital transformation has evolved beyond the parameters of business value to inspiring corporate workforce and spurring new business models to life. Taking this definition as the core principle, Avanade, a leading digital innovator, marks its niche in providing organizations with digital ready transformations and agile mix of thinkers, makers and doers that can create appropriate digitization roadmaps for them. As a provider of innovative digital and cloud services, business solutions and design-led experiences Avanade brings unparalleled expertise of its workforce and the Microsoft ecosystem.

Established in the year 2000, Avanade was created during the pioneering time of digital by two industry-leading giants–Accenture and Microsoft. The organization was conceived with a single goal of delivering innovative services and solutions to enterprises globally by leveraging the Microsoft platform. The company has been witnessing a phenomenal growth as one of the technology industry’s most successful joint ventures. With Collaboration at the heart of its culture and the business layout, the company’s strategic approach is significantly built around the client’s business and their IT priorities and is highly based on the latest thinking about digital and cloud solutions, business applications and technology services.

"Inspired by the organizations shared desire to make a genuine human impact, Avanade brings exceptional skill in driving innovation coupled with passion, purpose and excellence in design"

Avanade employs a unique blend of professionals who bring bold, fresh thinking combined with technology, business, and industry acumen to help fuel transformation and growth for its clients and their customers. With over 30,000 digitally connected people across 24 countries, Avanade brings its clients, the best thinking through a collaborative culture that honors diversity and reflects the communities in which it operates.

As a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, Avanade understands the importance of collaboration to achieve success in today’s world.

In addition to its alliance with Microsoft and Accenture, Avanade has developed a powerful set of relationships, teaming with leading technology providers and thought leaders around the world to offer the most innovative digital solutions on the market. The company’s technology ecosystem includes companies such as Adobe, Akumina, Blue Prism, Docker, and Sitecore which help Avanade in expanding the scope of its solution offerings. Irrespective of its client’s business challenges, Avanade builds relationships to ensure that it can find and deliver the right results for its clients.

Excellence in Agility

Along with collaboration, Avanade also strongly advocates an organization’s ability to adapt and change rapidly which can be a critical differentiator and source of competitive advantage for organizations working in today’s cloud-first digital world. However, achieving agility is a difficult endeavor. A multitude of companies today are focused on agile methodologies for connecting the dots between business and IT organizations. Although, more often these dots are found to be not always aligned and hence deprive businesses of being more flexible, responsive and competitive. Avanade brings the simple, concise and to the point approach to agility. The company uses small footprint framework and non-prescriptive guidelines and focuses on engineering practices to support the whole project lifecycle of its clients. The company ensures that its agile assets are high value and high impact with an unwavering focus on automating engineering practices that enable developers in adding value rather than on executing manual, time-consuming bills, deployment and testing tasks. Leveraging its agile stronghold, Avanade came enabled of the leading energy traders – AGL. As deregulation in the energy sector in 2001 paved the way for a number of new energy utilities to enter the market, AGL was trading in a more dynamic and competitive marketplace. This new economy benefited customers by greater choice of retailers and more flexible cost-saving options. High customer turnover followed, and demands for more efficient modes of energy production increased, as customers looked to retailers to provide green energy offerings and more sustainable cost-effective solutions.

For leading retailers like AGL, even though the new climate meant that customer churn was at an all-time high, it also presented opportunities unprecedented in the industry. In a highly competitive market, AGL knew that it needed to compete not on price alone.

Therefore, in order to ensure that it retained its leading position, AGL sought to differentiate itself from competitors to reduce customer turnover and to implement new strategies to retain their already strong customer base. The project involved a number of solutions. The first was to build a common platform that could meet both internal and customer-facing needs which involved consolidating 50 independently managed business websites into one consolidated platform. Avanade helped identify the functions and the requirements for each site and ensured that all the needs would be met. The solution also included using Windows Azure cloud technology to run the Sitecore-based solution, again to maximize AGL’s existing investment in Microsoft technologies. Cloud technology facilitated efficiencies and scalability ensuring the stability of the platform and supporting high activity at peak times. The existing self-service technology was migrated to the Sitecore in Azure platform, so customers can easily pay their bills, view their account activity or plan for a house move. The highly streamlined solution delivered by Avanade and Accenture delivered significant gains for AGL.

Today, the new platform offers AGL’s customers with personalized usage reports and 24-month energy management plans enabling them to choose how to manage their energy consumption. As a result of these new features, home page visitors are 47 percent more likely to go directly to AGL’s energy plans page to consider AGL as their energy provider.

Avanade’s approach to innovation has offered immense potential for its customer, besides the culmination of power of people meeting the Microsoft ecosystem serving them to embrace the change the right way. The company prides itself in efficiently redefining workplaces and re-imagining the possibilities of life. Bringing bold thinking and passionate people together, Avanade has empowered companies like Henkel, and their journey to a digital workplace along with enabling firms like Delta and its employees to reform their ways of executing work. The company has been instrumental in guiding educational organizations like open universities Australia by offering them with the understanding and vision of the future. Avanade is creating the retail experience of the future by transferring the power of knowledge in the customer’s hands. The company is enabling employers to see technology through the eyes of their employees literally. Avanade strives to propel towards a future where AI and humans come together to do the impossible, where innovation meets inspiration and empowers the next generation. Bring diverse perspective to its clients and new opportunities for young people and their community across the globe, the company focuses on current technologies and their ability to drive business value and create a change every day for the clients. Inspired by the organizations shared desire to make a genuine human impact, Avanade brings exceptional skill in driving innovation coupled with passion, purpose, and excellence in design.