Read this article about IBM, one of our finalists, in the category Best Achievement in Operational Excellence to deliver Business Transformation, selected by the independent judging panel, for the 2019 Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards program. Click here to read articles on other finalists.

For over 100 years, IBM has restlessly reinvented its enterprise architecture and operating model to meet the challenges and demands of an ever-changing market and an evolving technological landscape.

In 2016, IBM announced a transformation to the premier Cognitive Enterprise Support model, reaffirming the company as the global leader and innovator in enterprise infrastructure and support delivery.  As a pillar of this transformation, IBM established the Composable Marketplace – a transparent marketplace built on a prioritized and flexible portfolio of support offerings and enabled by an innovative accountability model with new roles for Buyers and Providers to dynamically manage supply and demand.

The Composable Marketplace was founded on three principles:  Transparency, Choice and Accountability.

• Transparency: Categorized a significant portion of IBM infrastructure spending into a centralized, online catalog with clearly defined support offerings that can be reviewed and adjusted by an IBM Buyer.
• Choice: Established clear cost and consumption data for each of the support offerings, allowing a Buyer to visit a web-based Marketplace (pictured below) to make trade-offs between specific offerings that support the growth of the Business Unit.
• Accountability: Created a light-touch management system and tiered governance model that connects the Buyers with the Providers, promoting ongoing dialogue that creates alignment between supply and demand, builds a culture of collaboration and instills a service delivery mindset.

As the Composable Marketplace has evolved, it has provided IBM leadership with unparalleled transparency into the enterprise’s infrastructure support.  Today, the catalog consists of 194 offerings across ten Shared Services.  The Composable Marketplace gives the Business Units a voice in the process and empowers them to make decisions that will drive positive business outcomes.  The increased dialogue and collaboration with the Business Units has enabled the Shared Services to prioritize the highly valued offerings and realign their portfolio of services to deliver the required cost savings.

Operating costs have been reduced by 10% for the Shared Services and IBM has achieved a best in class spend to revenue ratio as a result of the Composable Marketplace.

The Composable Marketplace has disrupted the standard operating model for the Shared Services and has resulted in significant benefits for the Business Units.  It has been highlighted internally as an example across the company for cross-functional teaming and ‘uniting as one’ to deliver value to the business. Looking forward, as the Composable Marketplace seeks to integrate internal Net Promoter Score (service quality) and Cognitive forecasting (demand accuracy), this new model will remain a pillar for IBM’s position as an industry leader and innovator for enterprise operations.

Through the multiple phases of the Composable Marketplace, IBM has established, for the first time, complete visibility into its Shared Services spend and overall infrastructure support portfolio.  The model has empowered Business Unit leadership to make support decisions based on demand, instilled a service delivery mindset across the Shared Service organizations and created the building blocks and data insights to effectively respond to future transformations.