Accenture Joins Blockbuster For Online DVD Service

Five years after Netflix cornered the online DVD rental market, this summer the in-store rental giant launched its Blockbuster Online subscription service, combining online and in-store DVD rentals. Fighting to regain its foothold, Blockbuster turned to Accenture and Vickery to help build and deploy the redesigned Blockbuster online site, where the service is offered, and the infrastructure behind it.

From the Ground Up
Accenture was contracted to consult on building the systems and software to support the service, define and implement the product allocation and inventory-management functions, launch the distribution centers and design the business operations to support the logistics.

Although Shane Evangelist, senior vice president and general manager of Blockbuster Online, didn't want to name the technology specifics for competitive reasons, he did speak on a high level about Accenture's role in the project. "Accenture helped us from the requirements to the design, development and deployment of the new service," he says. "More specifically, Accenture helped with the front-end Web presence, back-end systems, smart engines around logistics and CRM pieces."

Vickery adds that the technology basically included "a combination of Web-based, batch and thin-client architectures based on the leading market relevant platforms."

Accenture was tapped for the job to replace a partner that could not complete the work. Evangelist declined to name the company, but says that Accenture was brought in to pick up where the work left off and "hit the ground running." The project was completed in about nine months, from the time Accenture came on board.

Evangelist says that the Blockbuster and Accenture teams brought on-site worked very closely. Piecing the technology solution together, Accenture recommended and guided Blockbuster with its technology selections.

"It was a very collaborative effort," Evangelist says. "They helped us to weigh the pros and cons and speed to market, as well as costs and standards within our own systems, and came up with the best solution possible. Accenture clearly helped us and guided us in many of those decisions."

Accenture was charged with turning the existing static Blockbuster site, which primarily listed new releases, store locations and other information, into an exponentially more complex, transactional business site. "There were a lot of moving parts involved," Accenture's Vickery says. "Customers needed to be able to sign up, manage information around their movie lists and manage account information."

Vickery says security was obviously important. "Before, the focus was mainly on maintaining content, but as soon as you start taking credit-card numbers, maintaining personal information and account information, the sophistication and skillset around managing that is much more critical," Vickery says.

He adds that there was a critical focus on making sure the business processes, organization and technology were in place to manage the transactions--and deliver on them.

"Our role was to build out all of the technology infrastructure to support pretty much every business process," Vickery adds. "That included the Web site's billing, order management, customer service, customer self-service, inventory management and the logistics to help Blockbuster lay out what their warehouses would look like."

All of this was achieved, Vickery says, with a variety of packaged solutions, as well as customized code. Avanade, a technology integrator for Microsoft solutions jointly owned by Microsoft and Accenture, also was involved.

Vickery explains that in Blockbuster's case, sometimes Accenture was charged with sourcing the technology and sometimes Blockbuster itself acquired it. Three distinct but combined teams performed the Accenture work, Vickery says. One was focused on the front office and anything customer-facing, another on the back office and anything not customer-facing, and a third on the warehouse design and work.

Communication Is Key
In general, Evangelist says that Blockbuster often outsources and looks to technology providers to help the in-house IT department implement solutions. In addition to a "really good price point," Evangelist adds that VARs make the cut through four key criteria: competence, honesty, commitment and quality relationships.

Open communication was something Accenture was very good at, Evangelist says, and there were limited surprises along the way as a result. From Accenture's point of view, Vickery says the No. 1 requirement before any project starts is that his entire team understand the business goals. "People make decisions on tiny things every day that they may or may not feel are important," Vickery says. "But it's key that they know the business goals and think of them when making those decisions to ensure everything is in alignment."

The second thing Vickery focuses on in a strong partnership relationship is trust. "The client becomes a partner and, in that [sense], takes ownership of the deliverables so that we are both working toward the same goal," Vickery says. "This way, if something comes up, there's no finger-pointing, rather a, 'Hey, we both missed this, let's address it.'"

Constant communication and making joint decisions also are important to any partner relationship, Vickery says. Making sure the roles and responsibilities of the teams involved are clearly defined up front and managed on an ongoing basis is crucial. "It's important to keep track of who has responsibility for what, and that you have regular get-togethers so everyone understands where their piece of the puzzle is and where it fits in," he says.