The Australian National Broadband Network is an A$37.

4 billion dollar project designed to help Australia become one of the worlds leading digital economies. In late 2009, the Australian Government created NBN Co to build and operate the network. Facing considerable construction challenges, NBN Co needed to build a skilled workforce, technical infrastructure, a robust finance and procurement system, supply chain and asset management solutions, project management capabilities, and health and safety policies within tight deadlines. Working together, Accenture and NBN Co designed and implemented these new capabilities in record time.

Business situation
In early 2010, NBN Co employed fewer than 50 staff and was working to an aggressive 14 month timeline to design and build the technical infrastructure necessary to support the production, operations and maintenance for the companys core business capabilities.

A rigorous financial planning and operation system needed to be implemented for the A$37.4 billion network to coincide with the new financial year. And with construction estimated to peak at daily installations worth A$11 million per day, NBN Co urgently needed a supply chain strategy and asset management system, as well as robust project management capabilities. NBN Co also required a flexible HR function capable of recruiting 60 to 80 staff per month, and a health-and-safety system that could maintain the highest possible workplace safety standards on hazardous sites. Last, to maintain control over costs and delivery, NBN Co executives required systems to provide visibility on all aspects of project finance, construction, risks and procurement performance.

Workforce NBN Co and Accenture jointly devised a HR strategy, whereby NBN Co retained strategic HR decisionmaking while outsourcing all highvolume HR transactions to Accenture, including recruitment and payroll. In only 12 weeks, an Accenture Business Process Outsourcing team designed, built and tested a hosted web-based recruitment platform solution to manage an end-to-end recruitment service for NBN Co. During the same period, Accenture developed an outsourced payroll service which was later integrated with the companys finance and procurement applications. Finance NBN Co and Accenture designed a financial and procurement management system based on the Financial Management and Advanced Procurement modules of the Oracle E-business Suite. They also developed a phased deployment

How Accenture helped

NBN Co and Accenture formed a series of joint teams to develop core NBN Co capabilities.

strategy to deliver the core system including general ledger, accounts receivable, cash management, fixed assets and core procurement capabilities. To fast-track delivery, Accenture customised some of the Oracle modules, enabling the team to deploy core corporate finance capabilities in a record 57 days. Subsequent 90-day rolling deployments provided additional financial management capabilities as operations expanded.

Health and Safety During 2011, Accenture helped NBN Co select, customise and deliver a web-based system (iSafe), which enables NBN Co to manage incidents, hazards, risks, audit and compliance, and disseminate safety updates. By integrating the iSafe platform with NBN Cos employee database, Accenture helped remove the need to manually transfer data between systems and installed additional security features to protect casesensitive information. Business Intelligence NBN Co and Accenture designed an integrated business intelligence solution based on Oracles Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g (OBIEE). By customising out-of-the-box capabilities, the joint team rapidly gave NBN Co executives excellent visibility on all aspects of project finance, construction, risk and procurement performance. IT Platform NBN Co and Accenture developed a staggered, two-stage IT infrastructure strategy that combined a package standard approach with virtualised private cloud services. The team supplied numerous production and non-production technical environments at very short notice, while a gating process ensured solutions performed as intended.

expenditure during the 10-year construction period. Transparent financial reporting With finance systems deployed prior to construction, NBN Co can account for every item of capital expenditure. Up-to-date information on network construction combined with comprehensive and transparent reporting helps executives retain public and government confidence in their ability to manage A$27.5 billion of taxpayers money. Exceptional people management By outsourcing HR services, NBN Co was able to build a skilled workforce, recruiting new staff at a rate of over 80 staff per month. This enabled executives to focus on core activities building the network. In-built flexibility Business intelligence capabilities provide NBN Co executives with realtime support so they can quickly and efficiently adapt to fresh challenges. With information gathered from every construction site, health and safety policy is continually refined and NBN Co can take all precautions required by Australian law. Underlying all its new systems, NBN Co has an agile, IT platform based on cloud infrastructure that requires minimal capital investment and has shortened project delivery times.

Supply Chain and Asset Management In six months, NBN Co and Accenture designed and implemented materials forecast and inventory management systems, and an asset tracking system to capitalise assets in accordance with their location and material type both based on E-Business Suite solutions from Oracle. The systems help NBN Co log, track and account for network assets which helps the NBN Co finance team to properly manage the capitalisation and depreciation of network equipment, as well as reconcile and identify asset discrepancies. Project Management A joint NBN Co and Accenture team built a single integrated project management platform based on Oracle Projects with Primavera P6, and Oracle Procurement with Primavera Contract Management. Accenture designed and deployed an innovative program and portfolio management capability, and integrated the existing Primavera Contract Management application NBN Co used to manage third-party contracts.

High performance delivered

Today, NBN Co executives have the operational capabilities to help keep construction on track and drive maximum value from Australias biggest public infrastructure project. With integrated project management systems, they can manage more than 4,000 network construction projects and maintain tight control over billions of dollars of

With these systems and processes in place on time, NBN Co is well positioned to successfully deliver Australias first national broadband network to all Australians.

Contact
To find out more about Accentures capabilities, contact: accenture.direct@accenture.com, or speak to your Accenture representative.

This is an introduction to seven case studies demonstrating how Accenture helped deploy key capabilities for NBN Co. Copyright 2012 Accenture All Rights Reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.