ACI Worldwide Saves $4 Million with Jira Service Management

For organizations wanting to thrive in the digital world that is constantly evolving, they must be equipped with innovative technology and streamlined business processes that empower teams to perform their best. ACI Worldwide, a worldwide leader in electronic payments, processes over $14 trillion in payments and secure transactions per day. With almost 4,000 employees in 34 countries, our global client powers electronic payments and banking for more than 5,300 organizations worldwide, including 18 of the top 20 banks. 

“Customized technologies, while convenient in the short term, tend to create friction when reacting to change. They create and encourage organizational inertia, which in turn hinders enterprise agility,” Mitesh Mehta, SVP of IT at ACI Worldwide says. “ACI’s choice of the Atlassian suite of products, as well as using an implementation partner Praecipio Consulting, was driven by these considerations. Underlying the choice was ACI’s objective to be more responsive to customer and market demands. ACI’s increasing investment in Atlassian applications for development management, project management, case/ticket management and workflow management is evidence of that commitment.”

After working with Praecipio in 2018 to implement Jira Service Management for their global support team and subsequently realizing the power of the Atlassian products, ACI Worldwide engaged with our delivery team once again to develop a solution for implementing Enterprise Program/Project Management and ITSM methodologies with Atlassian tools. For almost a decade, our client used a major Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, to fulfill their project management and Enterprise IT service management needs. Because the CRM is not designed for the latter, ACI Worldwide needed a solution that aligned with their business goals and would enable them to drive enterprise agility through automation, collaboration, and improved service experiences. The overhead costs consumed an annual spend of $4 million in licensing, apart from additional maintenance and customization costs needed to support the CRM.

Prior to developing solutions, we held a week-long advisory engagement with the ACI Worldwide team to understand their current workflows, business processes, and overall goals so that we could help them map out strategies, timelines, and execution plans.

Because of the scale and preeminence of this project, we were presented with complex challenges.  The first challenge that we faced was having our enterprise client agree to entirely revamp their business processes. Praecipio specializes in optimizing processes to drive business, so we were insistent that our client avoid transferring any of their existing processes into the new system that we'd be developing, as it would prevent ACI Worldwide from achieving progress and improving their digital capabilities. 

Another unique challenge we experienced was that every group within the organization had a different way of working. We identified eight different workstreams. In order to create operational efficiencies, our delivery team took the proactive measure to consolidate processes within the workstream. This required all departments to agree upon standardized workflows, templates, data reporting, and processes.

Although we were implementing changes internally and between teams within the enterprise, the overarching agreement was the impact on ACI Worldwide's customers. Their user experience in the CRM could not change.

Over the course of a year, we partnered with our ACI Worldwide to improve critical business operations previously supported by the CRM, with Atlassian tools. We also simultaneously executed a complete overhaul of their business processes and workflows across the entire organization, as well as designing three custom training programs that the team at ACI Worldwide delivered to 850 users.

We replaced the CRM for their On-Demand and On-Premise Project Management groups by implementing Jira Software Data Center and Confluence Data Center, which required a deep level of technical expertise. Additionally, we implemented the Jira Service Management Data Center and Confluence Data Center applications in place of the CRM for their On-Demand and On-Premise Service Desk Operations teams, as well as the Help24 Customer Support groups. 

Because each department within their organization operated distinctly, we wanted to understand each group’s intricacies and unique processes. Our delivery teams, both technical and process, worked closely with each department to gain insight into their distinct workflows and data-reporting needs. Based on our findings, we consolidated and standardized workflows, issue types, and custom fields, as well as established a universal language that could be understood when working within and across different business functions.

In addition to Jira and Confluence, we helped ACI Worldwide implement 24 Atlassian Marketplace applications that enhanced the performance of their current Atlassian tools and met their specific business requirements. 

Our solution also required a third-party middleware technology, Workato, to support the Customer Support Team, which primarily handles the critical, priority 1 issues. Customers continued to engage with ACI Worldwide via a CRM e-portal, which helped maintain the customer experience, but analysts were now enabled to work within Jira Service Management. Workato provided additional flexibility needed for sharing information between Jira Service Management and their CRM tool.

This was a large project, one that involved numerous complex moving parts to help ACI Worldwide achieve a true business transformation. We leveraged Atlassian tools to implement Program & Project Management, IT Service Management, and Enterprise Service Management frameworks that improved business processes, generated operational efficiency, and drove enterprise agility.  

Additionally, we helped ACI Worldwide save over $4 million in licenses year-over-year, resulting in massive cost reductions and a significant proliferation in service management efficiency. This client was impressed with how impeccably planned and coordinated the project was: from the seamless knowledge transfer to the smooth delivery of the training programs, down to the successful execution of each go-live phase.

The professionalism and commitment to implementing the solutions, from both the ACI Worldwide and Praecipio teams, were unmatched and made this project a tremendous success. It is a testament to the extraordinary impact that can result from people, process and technology joining forces.