Four Finalists Also Named: Adecco and HCR ManorCare for Smart Automation; Pfizer and Vodafone for Analytics

The Hackett Group (NASDAQ:HCKT) today announced that HP and Shell are the winners of its 2018 Digital Awards, which spotlight companies that are on the cutting edge of digital transformation, including smart automation, robotic process automation, cognitive computing and advanced analytics.

HP won the award in the automation category for its Finance Digital Transformation implementation, while Shell won in the advanced analytics category for its Data Science Center of Excellence project.

Four other companies were also recognized as finalists. In the automation category, the finalists were HCR ManorCare and The Adecco Group. For advanced analytics, the finalists were Pfizer and Vodafone.

The Hackett Group’s Digital Awards (formerly the Aecus Automation Awards) spotlights and celebrates companies on the cutting edge of using smart automation and advanced analytics to solve business problems. This year’s winners and finalists came from a range of industry sectors, including pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, oil & gas, computing technology, health care, and staffing solutions.

“Digital business solutions continue to evolve and mature at a rapid pace and are playing ever-greater roles in making companies leaner, more agile and more intelligent,” said Paul Morrison, Managing Director, The Hackett Group. “While cost reduction and transactional automation are still the primary focus for many organizations, more and more companies are using these rapidly implemented, cost-effective and disruptive tools to drive a broad array of powerful business benefits – including boosting customer satisfaction, shrinking the time it takes to respond to and solve issues, improving quality, reducing risk and identifying and avoiding problems entirely.”

“This year’s Digital Awards winners and finalists are real pioneers and have shown significant skill at identifying the best opportunities for digital transformation and then systematically going after the benefits using a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics and more,” said Mr. Morrison. “They’ve demonstrated real innovation and creativity in identifying and integrating a diverse array of tools and technologies to achieve their goals, and the results they’re already generating are truly impressive. These programs demonstrate how the benefits of digital transformation radiate outwards, impacting suppliers, employees, patients and customers for the better.”

The winners and finalists for 2018, and some information on their smart automation or analytics projects, are as follows:

HP Inc. - Smart Automation Winner – Transforming Finance - In its journey leading disruptive change, HP Finance Controllership has been automating processes leveraging robotic process automation (RPA), advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence among other emerging technologies. This enables HP to lead in digital innovation and positions Finance as a forward-looking strategic adviser. This is noteworthy for its strong vision, effective eco-system, and best-in-class culture creation. HP has deployed a significant number of robots achieving strong process efficiency and enhancing accuracy. Employees are an integral part of this journey. Controllership is certifying its workforce in intelligent automation pivoting from “debits and credits” to “bits and bytes.” They are building an innovative culture through social media crowdsourcing, skills of the future, and digital fluency. HP’s “Digital Controllership” is committed to making bold moves, growing their people and amazing their customers.

Shell – Analytics Winner – Data Science Center of Excellence - Shell’s goal was to create and leverage a common, cloud-based data science platform and the associated digital capabilities to fill its “data science skills gap” and solve a multitude of business questions, from rightsizing inventory to improving supply chain, and from predictive maintenance to optimizing operations in downstream manufacturing units. The Analytics Network in Shell now has more than 1600 members, and more than 400 of those are actively building digital solutions using the technologies deployed in the Digitalisation Lab — supported by a team of 120 data scientists and data engineers within its Center of Excellence. Initial results have been impressive. Shell now uses predictive analytics to optimize the ordering, storage and utilization of pieces of spare part inventory for onshore/offshore oil rigs - ranging from well heads to pipeline parts. The project has delivered millions of dollars in benefits and paid for itself in under 4 weeks. Similarly, Shell is using machine learning to predict trips or failure events on critical equipment such as valves and compressors. Leveraging the same core technology set, the team were able to deliver multimillion-dollar benefits in the first few weeks after deployment. These are just some of the initial results of Shell’s efforts. Technologies and partners used included: Alteryx, Databricks, Microsoft Azure, MATLAB, TensorFlow, TIBCO Spotfire, Power BI, and SAP HANA.

HCR ManorCare - Smart Automation Finalist – AP Automation Transformation - HCR ManorCare operates a network of skilled nursing, assisted living communities and home health and hospice offices. HCR was experiencing high costs and error rates associated with the unique aspects of medical invoice processing, in part due to a highly fragmented but largely local supplier base. The company set out to create a flexible option they could configure to their specific needs which included transforming an entirely manual and paper-based world to a streamlined and automated one. After only a six month roll out period, the project was hugely successful. Cycle time was reduced and on-time payments improved, incentivizing suppliers to adopt the process. Duplicate invoices were eliminated, which is particularly significant, as previous recovery audits had uncovered $2 million per year in errors and duplicate invoices. The accounts payable function within HCR changed dramatically. Instead of manual labor managing repetitive paper processes the employee workforce - which shrank over time from 38 to 4 people - were focused on managing exceptions. Technologies and partners used included: Basware.

Pfizer - AI-powered Patient Engagement - Digital technologies are increasingly important to Pfizer’s commitment to bring therapies to patients that significantly improve their lives. As part of that effort, Pfizer created a proprietary scalable cognitive platform to take advantage of the rapidly growing range of healthcare data by leveraging improvements in computing technology and advances in artificial intelligence (AI). This new capability, designed to mine and combine insights from over 400B data points, enables Pfizer to better to understand dynamics in healthcare that are not easily predictable and may even be counter-intuitive. In the first year of operation, Pfizer has already used this platform to improve upon existing outreach programs based on the organization’s ability to recognize subtle differences within segments of patient populations.

The Adecco Group - Smart Automation Finalist – Digital Transformation in the World of Staffing - Adecco, a leading global HR solutions provider, set out to create a new digital experience for job seekers, enabling them to more efficiently and effectively connect with job providers, improving the speed and quality of job matching and providing an analysis of patterns of demand and supply. Their Adia solution combines the power of digital with a context- and location-aware, uberized staffing and matching algorithm to create a transformational platform for just-in-time recruitment staffing. At the core of the Adia platform is an adaptive matching engine that matches the most suitable candidates based on the attributes most sought after by employers. Adia is designed to deliver value in a wide array of ways, including: improvement in revenue and efficiency management and more rapid global scale up. Adia is zero touch for its core operations - eliminating any need for manual intervention, right from order placement, to hiring, timesheet management, and payments. Technologies and partners used included: Infosys.

Vodafone Procurement Company – Analytics Finalist – SCM Control Centre - To eliminate inefficiencies in its massive purchasing operations, Vodafone built the SCM Control Centre to bring full transparency into how the procurement process is actually functioning. The SCM Control Centre works as an X-Ray Big Data Machine which uncovers hidden inefficiencies in less than 10 seconds. This out of the box analytics tool enables more than 600 members of Vodafone’s supply chain management (SCM) to understand focus areas to bring further business excellence across efficiency and compliance levels by advance analytics, AI and predictive modeling capabilities. This digital solution has already powered SCM to reduce time to market by 20 percent, yielded a cost savings of 11 percent and creates a “single version of the truth.” Technologies and partners used included: SAP HANA and Celonis.

This year’s Digital Awards were presented at The Hackett Group’s 2018 European Best Practices Conference in London. The awards were established by Aecus in 2014. Aecus was acquired by The Hackett Group in May 2017.

About The Hackett Group

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, smart 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 15,000 benchmarking studies with major corporations and government agencies, including 97% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 89% of the Fortune 100, 87% of the DAX 30 and 59% 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.

More information on The Hackett Group is available at: www.thehackettgroup.com, info@thehackettgroup.com, or by calling (770) 225-3600.

The Hackett GroupGary Baker, 917-796-2391Global Communications Directorgbaker@thehackettgroup.com

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