Gone are those days when businesses used to select IT vendors only based on getting maximum value with the lowest cost. Today pricing isn’t the only deciding factor if the service provided by any vendor cannot help the enterprise steer through a crisis. Therefore, businesses are now looking for stability and top of their commitment is also an important part of IT vendor management at any organization.
While let’s say cost factor still remains to be a key criteria at certain point, businesses are now evaluating other aspects on such as vendor’s long-term vision, internal resource management, remote support and many more other things.
Technology will play an imperative role for any successful business and investing in the right IT vendor is the key for the business growth. These are some interesting cases studies across various companies that have gained benefits with their IT vendor partnerships.
Partnering with IT vendors for a long time collaboration is important
DB Schenker, the logistics and supply uniting arm of German rail operator is prioritizing its investments to build a data driven machinery model which is future-proof. The German Rail Operator has a group of IT vendors which support its operations and internal process globally. Their focus is to deep develop digital value generators to reuse growth during the pandemic situation. While the visitor has invested in several IT vendors for multiple technologies such as IoT, Automation and many more.
“We have a lot of in-house team to build software on our own cost, but on similar lines we have invested in an IT partner ecosystem for more innovations. The strategy is to understand the value of the partnership among us, surpassing investing in any technology vendor. We have partnered with many global IT vendors including “Infor”, where our fundamental strategy surpassing the investment was to squint at the long-term goal and benefits post deployment. We believe that an ecosystem is very valuable, where we can innovate jointly and for this joint innovation, you need a upper strategic fit,” as per the Joachim Schaut, VP- Intercontinental Supply Chain, DB Schenker told Economic Times.
According to him, a long-term vision is very important for any visitor to partner with IT solution providers. Schaut looks for a strategic shift which can be driven by collaborative decisioning. While comparing IT vendors, his team builds a strategy to decode that vendor on the structure of technology, innovation, long-term motto and the value which this partnership is going to bring for both of the organisations. After this analysis, the visitor gets into traditional steps of understanding technology use cases, deployment challenges, post implementation benefits and many more.
According to the Schaut he shared the a recent experience with us that how the right IT vendor partnership can add value to your company and plan incredible support during the pandemic situation. While we have a partnership of over 10 years with Infor, and recently the IT vendor supported us with urging of a technology and tabbed predictive ETA. With our data capabilities and a system ripened by Infor, we managed to get a competitive wholesomeness globally. Amid Covid-19, where sales volumes overall in our market were lower compared to last year, we still managed to grow our purchase wheels management significantly. This is how we invest in IT vendors with such monetary driven strategy for technology.
Selecting Vendors on the idea of pay as you employ model
Angel Broking features a bandwagon of IT vendors for computing, analytics, and more. While the broker firm relies heavily on technology, Ratnakar Srivastava, Vice Chairman & Head of Angel Broking has streamlined the company’s investment wisely on Big Data & AI. For cloud usage, the corporate is taking support of AWS which is giving the advantage of scaling in and out. Srivastava chose AWS on the idea of the cloud flexibility and therefore the cost benefits of pay-as-you-use service.
“The pay as you go model has given us scalability which varies accordingly with the business performance and economical situations. So whenever things isn’t good a bit like the present depression , we will eliminate additional costs by scaling the server and software requirements. This setup with our IT vendors has resulted in getting a hold on business spends amid Covid-19,” Srivastava said in interview with Economic Times.
Other than the server and computing capabilities, the broker firm is using cloud-based data analytics, and therefore the ecosystem includes Kafka, Nifi for ingestion, S3 for storage, Qubole for all Data Engineering, Data Analytics and Data Science use cases.
“We evaluate multiple IT vendors on the idea of their support not only in terms of software or technology but most significantly resource allocation in developing that solution. We chose Qubole and other vendors on these factors for our data-driven technology projects like data visualization, data analytics, etc. The most important factor is that the collaboration and resources which the seller can commit which can support business during a longer run,” Sirvastava added.
PaaS vendors can become business enabler
Reliance General Insurance runs on a hybrid cloud setup which hosts a dozen approximately critical services and enormous applications running on the cloud and therefore the remaining ones in their On -Premise data centre. The strategy is to stay during a hybrid environment giving the simplest of both worlds – the value efficiency of an on-premise environment and scalability of the cloud.
The insurer has adopted an IT investment strategy which prioritises Platform as a Service (PaaS) model and increasing IT modernization.
“As we decided to migrate into the cloud, our team searched for many vendors. After exploring several use cases of multiple cloud providers, we partnered with Microsoft Azure for cloud-based services. the choice of Azure was supported POCs and therefore the global expertise which Microsoft adds to our IT setup. we’ve wisely worked on this decision before the investment and after stepping into this partnership, we’ve gained several business and technology benefits,” Rakesh Jain, ED and CEO of Reliance General Insurance said.
RGI’s move to the PaaS model gives their tech team the agility and adaptability to innovate. The migration journey was smooth and pushed new tech projects.
“We have adapted the Azure PAAS setup actively for integration services while building strong in-house capabilities. This investment has successfully supported the innovation at RGI. All of our new apps are now being developed using serverless architecture.
Jain is watching Covid-19 as a chance to further increase investments in IT. RGI’s Technology Capex spend is about to extend in critical areas by over 30% – 35%. and therefore the insurer is now focused on evaluating digital technologies and its solution providers for brand spanking new use cases which can add value to the business.
Source: Economics Times of India
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