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 its 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.
How do you recommend strategic handling of
people and physical assets?
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, has 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 the practice director of supply chain management at Pomeroy IT Solutions, Inc. in Cincinnati. Reach him
at (603) 498-1332.
