March 03, 2016

Storm clouds gathering over Westminster

Storm Clouds over Westminster

3 March 2016 | Mike Sagar | Vice President, Sales – EMEA

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, wants government departments to reduce budgets by up to 40%

BUT……

The Government is also committed to improving Public Services.

IS THAT POSSIBLE??

Reducing budgets that have already been placed under exhaustive scrutiny while striving to improve the quality of services to the stakeholder community is no easy challenge. Some would argue that paradoxically it’s impossible.

A recent article in Computer Weekly, authored by Rory Canavan, poses various options for managing public sector IT costs as one way to approach the budget cuts. One example discussed is turning Oracle off and migrating to a lower cost platform – but he points out the “eye-wateringly” accurate project management that would be required. It isn’t a given that such a migration would effectively reach the goal when considering new implementation and learning curve costs.

Another example discussed is implementing a software asset management (SAM) best practice might drive cost savings while preserving a desired level of service. Such a practice can result in building and maintaining a software catalogue. This catalogue would inventory assets and could help identify licenses that have never been used. The inference suggests savings in ongoing software support costs should this “shelf-ware” be removed from the support contracts.

A SAM catalogue could also better position an organization for a third-party software maintenance alternative. The third-party market has grown in popularity in the private sector where it has proven to cuts costs by at least 50%, often even more when the shelf-ware is taken into account.

Spinnaker Support can help many government organisations achieve the seemingly impossible; a reduction in costs with an improvement in service. This program is backed by Crown Commercial Services awarding Spinnaker Support a place on the Enterprise Application Support Services Framework Agreement 1032.

This Framework Agreement provides pre-approved savings of at least 50% on SAP, JD Edwards, and Siebel annual software support. However, cost reduction is not the only benefit to a third-party software maintenance alternative; at the same time, Spinnaker Support often improves service levels with faster response times from local support engineers with nearly 19 years of application experience.

An endorsement by Spinnaker Support customers as to the quality of service provided: 98.3% satisfaction rating per the 2015 annual customer satisfaction survey.

We would never claim to have a solution that is right for every installation, although we can quickly determine if our service can be a valid option. The potential savings can be dramatic; and we would welcome any opportunity to determine if we can help.

Learn more about our third-party software maintenance option for the UK public sector.