Cost

Software as a Service as a Catalyst for Application Rationalization

Posted: 07/01/2017 - 05:56
Author: Erik Beulen

Today many organizations still struggle to simplify their application landscape. CIOs leverage Software as a Service (SaaS) as a catalyst for application rationalization. First, SaaS functionality is well documented. There is no decision-making ambiguity regarding the match of SaaS functionality and the business requirements. Second, SaaS data migration effort is minimal.

Reverse Auction: Friend or Foe?

Posted: 06/30/2017 - 06:30
Author: Phil Przeklas

Procurement organizations have been using reverse auctions in sourcing events for decades as a means to reduce spend, introduce new vendors into the supply base and remain competitive in the market. While reverse auctions have flourished since the mid 1990’s, they have also been heavily scrutinized. Trends such as these have forced suppliers to adapt to competitive business practices or become inconsequential. As procurement tools become more streamlined, practices like reverse auctions are more commonplace in sourcing events; however, they continue to harbor negative connotations.

Three Considerations for Optimizing Your Hybrid Cloud Environment

Posted: 06/14/2017 - 07:20
Author: Gina Murphy

Cloud adoption is on the rise. According to a recent Gartner prediction, the worldwide public cloud services market will grow 18 percent in 2017 to $246.8B, up from $209.2B in 2016. As more and more organizations move to the cloud, many IT teams are tasked with identifying the right infrastructure framework to ensure they meet their business and operational requirements – a challenging task considering there are so many options.

Q&A: Danny Ertel, Vantage Partners

Posted: 12/27/2016 - 11:16
Author: Danny Ertel

Danny Ertel is co-founder and Partner at Vantage Partners, a global consultancy firm that's exerted a fair degree of influence over the evolution of the sourcing space as we know it - not least thanks to the thought leadership of 'Professor Danny'... In October we got together with the Professor at the SIG Summit Fall 2016 in California: if you're looking for a summation of the space in 2016, you could do worse...

Why South Africa can capitalise on Brexit

Posted: 12/03/2016 - 03:33
Author: Gareth Pritchard

Recently I attended the Brexit & Global Expansion Summit in London, an event that brought together politicians, businesses and investors for discussions on the investment implications of Britain’s tectonic decision to leave the EU.

One of the sectors we discussed in depth was offshoring and outsourcing. No one has a crystal ball, but what is clear is that Brexit has challenged so many fundamental economic assumptions about the value proposition for a British business operating a customer service centre in the UK.

Does location really matter when offshoring your IT services?

Posted: 11/04/2016 - 19:52
Author: Ashutosh Agarwal

Not too long back, many global IT service providers were known to move delivery of IT services of their clients to offshore locations (like South Africa, Latin America or India) without informing their clients. This was seen as an internal lever to make customer contracts more profitable in a multi-year deal as services were first stabilised in a high-cost onshore delivery location before being shipped to an offshore location.

The future is here now

Posted: 10/27/2016 - 00:03
Author: Peter Dickinson

The first driverless cars in the UK are now being tested on the streets. “Cognitive robot” Amelia is proving to be a more popular service interface with residents of the London Borough of Enfield than her human predecessors. Technology that was once the preserve of science fiction is now becoming a daily reality. The future is here, ahead of time.

TBM: from measurement to a core business function

Posted: 07/09/2016 - 09:53
Author: Nigel Hughes

IT reaches far and wide within organisations, particularly in the case of large enterprises, but it can be difficult to understand exactly what it does and how it is having an impact, especially when it comes to measuring return on investment. Enter Technology Business Management (TBM).

Simply, TBM provides an end-to-end view of the delivery of IT, capturing how both resource and cost are being consumed by the business. This facilitates more informed conversations around IT spend and helps demonstrate IT’s strategic value to the rest of the business.

IT budgets are increasing - but not as we know them...

Posted: 04/20/2016 - 20:30
Author: Matthew Headford

Respondents to our latest CIO and IT Leadership survey are reporting a 40% increase in their IT budget, over the past year. However there is something really interesting in the underlying data which suggests that the pressure to commoditise is like never before: IT budgets that have given back savings year on year are still under pressure for a more cost-effective solution. So why do we see this discrepancy? The answer lies in one of the fundamental parts of the survey: two-speed IT.

Implementing a successful multisourcing model

Posted: 04/09/2016 - 03:10
Author: Amanda Pilkington

A multisourcing contracting strategy is designed to break entrenched relationships with key technology providers and create a suitably tensioned environment where the business can access a wider range of service providers offering greater innovation and price competition, but without compromise to continuity of service or service integration. Significantly, it recognises at the outset that different providers will be involved in the end-to-end services, and addresses both the challenges and opportunities this presents.

One vision, 360 degrees

Posted: 04/05/2016 - 13:20
Author: Jamie Liddell

Last week I had the great and highly enjoyable privilege of hosting a webinar given by Jeff Seabloom, Alsbridge’s Chief Revenue Officer, entitled ‘A 360-Degree View of IT: Six Key Questions’.

The Delivery Engine: rediscovering lost lessons on corporate governance

Posted: 02/19/2016 - 20:59
Author: Ron Wiens

Over the past 40 years something extraordinary has been happening in organisations. The staff and management who populate them have been getting progressively smarter, at least when measured by their education, ongoing training and number of books read. Paradoxically, the organisations themselves seemed to have become dumber.

Britain’s transport industry: seeking solutions from the supply chain

Posted: 02/03/2016 - 04:36
Author: Sarah Baxter

Across all sectors of the UK economy, consumer-facing businesses are finding themselves caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, consumer expectations are inexorably rising; driven ever higher by rapidly evolving technologies and an ‘at your fingertips’ service culture. At the same time, however, the hangover of the recession together with competitive markets means businesses continue to squeeze more out of fixed (or more likely, reduced) budgets. The transport sector is no different.

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