CSC Goes Above and Beyond to Deliver Aon’s Promise to Shareholders
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Client:
Aon Corporation
Challenge:
A non-standardized, multiple-platform environment that was increasingly costly to maintain. New audit and regulatory requirements also made compliance difficult and expensive.
Solution:
CSC runs and manages voice communications, Web hosting mid-range servers, mid-range servers, and data networks, and also provides desktop, help desk, and other IT support services.
Results:
A focus on reducing physical infrastructure of the field/print environment; consolidating applications and bringing together disparate environments; streamlining processes to provide for systematic repeatable, consistent, documented processes to optimize the project delivery approach; creating appropriate outsourcing solutions; and reducing cost.
Related Information
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In 2003, the founder of Aon Corporation made a promise to stockholders to reduce costs by $200 million. With an information technology budget among the highest in the industry, IT was an obvious place to look for savings.
The Aon situation
For many years, Aon’s business units drove their own IT spending, which resulted in a non-standardized, multiple-platform environment that was increasingly costly to maintain. New audit and regulatory requirements made compliance difficult and expensive. Among the challenges faced by Aon in 2003 were:
- Duplicate application systems
- Server sprawl
- Disparate and decentralized environments
- High overhead.
Aon looked to Computer Sciences Corporation to provide the standardization and discipline needed to bring costs down. CSC brought key talent and strong teams to Aon. Of the top 150 managers at CSC, more than half have worked for Fortune 500 companies.
“CSC has a strong track record for large outsourcing contracts and they will help us achieve an IT outsourcing solution that offers benefits for Aon, our clients and shareholders,” said Patrick Ryan, Aon’s founder.
CSC’s innovative solutions
Under a 10-year agreement, CSC runs and manages voice communications, Web hosting mid-range servers, mid-range servers, and data networks, and also provides desktop, help desk, and other IT support services for Aon’s U.S. insurance brokerage and consulting business units. While Aon has the final say in IT strategy and infrastructure architecture, CSC created a three-component solution to reduce costs and improve operational excellence.
IT outsourcing and consolidation
The outsourcing and related consolidation of data centers and help desks, the first component, is designed to produce an estimated $400 million in savings over 10 years. Many of Aon’s IT professionals have transitioned to CSC, providing support for ongoing services while transforming the organization to the new business model.
Ryan said, “CSC shared Aon’s commitment to a smooth transition for our IT professionals and the processes they manage.”
To meet Aon’s business needs, CSC focused on:
- Reducing physical infrastructure of the field/print environment
- Consolidating applications and bringing together disparate environments
- Streamlining processes to provide for systematic repeatable, consistent, documented processes to optimize the project delivery approach
- Creating appropriate outsourcing solutions
Reducing cost.
This work allows Aon to focus on strategic IT functionality that will add value to the organization and its clients.
Flexibility
The second component is flexibility, another hallmark of CSC’s services. In the latter part of 2006, Aon and CSC renegotiated their service-level agreement to help Aon meet its cost objectives. Baljit Dail, Aon’s global chief information technology officer, said, “Our highest IT priority is to meet the needs of our business customers. As Aon’s business needs change, we value partners with the flexibility to change with us. CSC continues to work with Aon to find the right balance between service and cost.”
Tim Ellis, CSC’s account executive for Aon, said, “As Aon works to grow its core business, enter new markets and reposition itself for success in the marketplace, CSC’s flexibility has allowed those changes to happen rapidly and helped Aon to move to the forefront of the industry.”
Architecture changes
In 2006, CSC implemented two significant architecture changes to help Aon reach its financial goals.
Consolidation reduced the size of the physical infrastructure as well as the complexity and operational cost of the resident applications. This increased CSC’s ability to move, add or change servers in the environment and allows for the potential use of robust and flexible disaster recovery solutions.
CSC also consolidated certain applications, databases and infrastructure technology relied upon by several business applications across multiple business units. This consolidation reduced the number of personnel required to administer the servers, improved utilization of physical resources such as servers, power and floor space, and also avoided capital expenditures.
Another significant architecture change is underway to help Aon reach its financial goals. This change includes improvements to the physical infrastructure, complexity, and operational cost of the field file/print environment to improve scalability and availability of services. This means fewer local support technicians, less localized infrastructure, centralized backup and restore of files in CSC data centers, standardized solutions across the enterprise, and storage that allows for field file growth with centralized data center resources.
CSC: the extra mile
Aon’s strong partnership with CSC was evidenced when some of Aon’s legacy servers were infected by a software virus in the fall of 2006. CSC called on global resources to repel the attack.
Ted Devine, executive vice president and chief executive officer, Aon Re Global, agreed: “Faced with a serious attack on our IT environment, Aon and CSC resources from around the globe first identified the issue, quickly closing outward access of the worm to protect our data, kept our environment operating through 24-hour efforts to clean over 260 servers, developed a sophisticated patching solution to kill the virus, systematically tested and then rolled out the solution. This was done across hundreds of locations and applications.”
Devine thanked CSC “for being a terrific business partner.”
Ellis said, “Whether it relates to fighting off a virus attack or supporting a rapidly changing business climate, Aon has confidence that CSC will meet the challenge.”
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