The strategic vision of an organization
as it relates to its underlying technology infrastructure should be “to support and enhance business objectives with
a robust, secure and standardized high-availability computing environment while
keeping technology spending and support
costs to a minimum,” says John Schertell,
practice director of supply chain management at Pomeroy IT Solutions, Inc.
Outsourcing to a strategic partner enables
an IT organization to focus their attention
and budget dollars on delivering strategic
applications to meet business objectives.
Smart Business asked Schertell about
his vision for strategic sourcing.
What should that vision be?
To achieve strategic objectives, the environment must be planned, controlled and
standardized with identified optimal refresh
cycles for each type of technology. When
implemented with defined, measured service levels for product requisition, approval,
scheduling, delivery, installation and ongoing support, the result is lower total IT costs,
improved end-user satisfaction and the
desired environment is manifested.
The CFO, CEO and procurement management should be involved. Implementation of these initiatives is far more
effective when the business stakeholders
understand and support IT best practices.
Who determines best practices?
Industry organizations or consultants
such as Gartner and Forrester determine
best practices by studying IT organizations’
effectiveness and cost structure. ITIL
(Information Technology Infrastructure
Library) is a library of IT best practices
maintained by the United Kingdom’s Office
of Government Commerce. Pomeroy has
more than 25 years of experience in driving
efficiencies through best practices for IT
organizations and consequently lowering
costs.
People and physical assets are involved. How
do you recommend strategic handling of each?
Strategically, the user community must be required to live inside IT-determined
standards and provisioning guidelines.
Management at all levels must be educated
to, and then embrace, the concept that the
lowest purchase cost does not always
equate to the lowest total cost of acquisition and ownership. If an organization
must absorb the many costs of planning
and holding inventory, issuing multiple purchase orders, managing the configuration
and deployment process, and supporting
basic levels of infrastructure, its costs are
much higher than just the purchase price.
Assets should be deployed with standard
images and asset tracking tools. The
refresh cycle should be determined at the
beginning of the asset’s useful life and
planned accordingly. Service levels for provisioning, repair, support and disposal
should be defined, communicated and
measured. Efficiencies and utilization of
technical staff can be attained by working
with a supplier that can leverage resources
and best practices across multiple organizations. The focus of IT should be on delivering strategic value, not infrastructure.
What level of service should a firm expect?
Every organization is at a different stage
in its evolution. Consequently, service levels should be set to reflect the needs of the
organization. Volume commitments will
also drive the ability of the supplier to
design effective programs. A company
with less-refined processes and procedures will need higher acquisition service
levels [quick turnaround] than a more
mature organization that has its new-hire
process integrated into its IT provisioning
system, allowing the supplier to have a
view into the pipeline of requests.
Assuming an organization has committed
to a procurement contract at a fair profit
margin for the supplier, embraced product
standards and has reasonable internal
processes in place, it should expect to
receive a fully configured and imaged server, desktop or laptop system within five or
six business days from placement of order.
Expedited freight or on-location inventory
can result in three-day or even same-day
deployment. Planning and coordinating
deployment of equipment to meet the
scheduled installation date is actually the
better practice.
Midrange systems and internetworking
equipment are typically more project-oriented. They can be planned and scheduled
on a predetermined schedule.
What are the cost considerations?
When organizations focus on the base
price of a unit from an OEM, they do not see
the full picture; there are other services that
must be performed, either by internal IT
staff or by a service organization, such as
Pomeroy. Comparing all costs an organization will bear internally if purchasing direct
from the OEM to the cost of services of a
reseller/integrator will normally result in a
lower total cost of acquisition from the latter.
Not only will service costs be less due to
efficiencies and utilization of resources,
but resellers can purchase from the OEM
at the same or lower negotiated OEM pricing, and then leverage programs and incentives available only to authorized resellers,
further driving prices down.
JOHN SCHERTELL is practice director of supply chain management at Pomeroy IT Solutions, Inc. Reach him at (603) 498-1332.