Bosch implements group-wide IT financial management with USU

Change to a service provider for more productivity and innovation

In the course of the reorganization of Bosch Corporate IT (CI) towards a service-oriented IT service provider, the global IT controlling data and processes are to be optimized for a transparent IT financial management. For this, an overall solution was sought to support both the portfolio management as well as the planning, calculation and billing of the IT systems in an end-to-end and standardized manner. The goals of the program were the complete restructuring of the services, with the associated challenging bill of materials breakdown, the implementation of a service catalog and, based on this, the realization of the said IT financial management disciplines. After a comprehensive evaluation and decision process with several suppliers, various workshops, show cases and an intensive proof of concept based on demo systems, USU was able to convince the 20-man team from Bosch. In addition to the expertise of the USU team, the efficiency of USU IT Service Management, its modular structure, performance, integration capability and the possibility of using the system as a flexible development platform were decisive.

Transparency instead of black box

The focus of the first project phase was the definition and new structuring of the IT services. Up to now, around 35,000 of these services were mapped via a legacy system which in particular was no longer able to fulfill the high requirements with regard to transparency and standardization. Initially, the modelling of the services was done for the IT divisions CS (Client Systems) and IS (IT Security). For this purpose, the individual services were broken down into up to nine different service component levels down to the lowest assembly level. For this, bills of material structures with production factors and rules, for instance, linear or fixed dependencies, had to be defined. This was the prerequisite, for instance, for an effective demand planning on the business service level. The first step after the replacement of the legacy system was the implementation of the planning, calculation and billing processes in the USU solution. In the process, the system had to take into account in detail numerous special cases, for instance, country-specific prices or the Bosch “hub model”, in the mapping of the value flows. In a second step, the divisions DA (Business Applications) and OS (Operations) were changed over in 2021. Despite the complexity, the time pressure, the high specialist requirements and the coronavirus situation which necessitated remote working and virtual team meetings, there was a successful go-live start. The trusting and targeted collaboration between the project partners involved, Bosch, Cap Gemini and USU was the pivotal success factor in this.

IT financial management from one source

The first two months with the virtually seamless billing of all IT products and services in 2022 now also document the success in practice as well as the success of the project. For this, in each case, more than 1.5 million data records from more than 100 sources were processed and from this 3.5 million billing data records were generated in each case for several thousand recipient cost centers. The newly structured and standardized Bosch service range today incorporates a good 4,000 services with further country-specific service options. Transparent data and processes promote the common understanding of all divisions involved and the holistic view of the services. Overall, it was possible to reconcile the new service structure with all controlling and financial aspects and to map all corresponding requirements in the system. USU IT Service Management thus forms the basis for the effective planning, evaluation and management of the group-wide consolidated IT financial data and cost flows.