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Supplier Discovery
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Supplier Analysis
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Strategic Sourcing
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SRM
IT Supplier Management
Strategic sourcing services and supplier management strategies that put you in the driver’s seat with IT suppliers.
Why IT Supplier Management?
Strategy alignment: Greater visibility of supplier inventory allows alignment of suppliers with strategic outcomes.
Supplier accountability: Benchmark suppliers and run compliance reviews against stated performance obligations.
Operational improvement: Improved documentation and understanding of supplier service commitments, deliverables, and obligations.
Why now?
Procurement team cuts: As procurement teams and budgets are being cut back, IT Supplier Management can help you do more with less.
Protect your investment: Understanding your supplier portfolio is critical to maintaining a positive ROI on your supplier expenditure.
Cut costs: Apply strategic sourcing practices, renegotiate contracts, and establish renewal processes to optimise spend and reduce TCO.
Why Invictus Partners?
Proven results: We’ve saved our clients more than $1 billion in enterprise software costs since 2014. Your suppliers won’t tell you if you’re paying too much, but we will.
Extensive experience: We have decades of experience optimising supplier portfolios across the entire supplier lifecycle.
Supplier-agnostic: We don’t have vested interests in any IT supplier organisations. Our advice is always objective, honest, and in your best interests.
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Top 3 reasons clients engage us for IT contractor and supplier management.
Procurement team cuts
As companies deal with inflation, high interest rates, and recessionary pressures, many have tightened their procurement function. Invictus Partners augments the expertise and resources needed to handle supplier relationships, negotiations, and contract management, ensuring our clients’ IT supplier bases are managed efficiently, with or without an in-house team.
IT cost optimisation
A fragmented or poorly managed supplier ecosystem often leads to inefficiencies, duplication of services, and inflated costs. Invictus Partners specialises in identifying cost-saving opportunities across the supplier lifecycle and implementing optimal cost models. We support clients through contract renegotiations to modify charging mechanisms and drive material value from deals and relationships with IT suppliers.
Newly-appointed CIO
New CIOs are often under pressure to reduce IT costs quickly and supplier rationalisation and optimisation can provide such a cost lever, however trying to understand existing supplier arrangements and contracts can be a full-time job in itself. Invictus Partners can audit the supplier landscape, unlock efficiencies, and conduct in-life contract renegotiations on our clients’ behalf to free up time and budget for the CIO to work on priority change programs.
Are you a new CIO wanting to make an impact quickly?
The unwieldy and inefficient supplier portfolio you’ve inherited represents an opportunity for you.
Now is the time to develop a business case for rationalising your supplier base in order to optimise costs and get on your CEO’s good side.
Make a lasting impact by tackling supplier management head on.
Why a cost-cutting focus undermines effective IT sourcing and supplier strategy.
Procurement teams have traditionally focused on negotiating lower upfront pricing with suppliers to achieve immediate cost savings. This approach may work in the short term, but it does not take into account the multitude of other costs incurred throughout the supplier lifecycle.
A KPMG study revealed that in organisations where strategic sourcing is considered one of the most mature capabilities, only 25% of negotiated savings actually translate to the bottom line*.
The lowest-price supplier is not necessarily the lowest-cost provider. Upfront percentage discounts almost always result in a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) as organisations are caught out by hidden costs and tricky financial terms. Direct and indirect costs incurred throughout the supplier lifecycle far outweigh any initial savings captured.
Transforming procurement and supplier management requires a value-based way of thinking.
Most organisations have a significant opportunity to drive improved value on lean procurement cost structures, but a shift from a cost-based to a value-based way of thinking is required to make that a reality.
Invictus Partners treats IT supplier costs as investments rather than operational expenses. Instead of applying blanket cost-cutting measures, we work to weed out the poor investments and drive more value from the good ones. This approach helps our clients regain control of their budgets and external spending in a way that doesn’t harm productivity or expose their organisations to risk.
Value creation is at the heart of our IT Supplier Management offering. Our team takes a holistic look at your supplier ecosystem to determine which suppliers should and shouldn’t be part of your future, and implement top-line improvements that radically simplify your supplier operations, optimise cost structures, and grow your profit margins.
A strategic supplier management framework that has a tangible business impact.
At Invictus Partners, we view IT Supplier Management (also known as IT Supplier Lifecycle Management, or SLiM for short) as a strategic initiative aimed at maximising value from every supplier engagement.
We help you move from transactional to value-based partnerships with your suppliers. No more chasing short-term gains and marginal cost savings. With SLiM, your organisation has:
• An understanding of supplier expenditure and business value
• A defined contract lifecycle management system and renewals calendar
• A scorecard system to monitor performance and keep suppliers accountable
• A process for quick identification and resolution of supplier issues
• A single source of truth for your supplier inventory.
As is the case with all of our services, IT Supplier Management is customisable to your organisation’s needs. Many of our clients choose to hand over the end-to-end management of their supplier ecosystem to us as a fully managed outsourced service. If an outsourcing arrangement isn’t possible or preferable, we can assist you in designing and implementing an in-house supplier management organisation as a hybrid model or with resource augmentation.
Download our IT Supplier Management Services datasheet
The core tenets of an effective global supplier management program.
Effective IT Supplier Management requires a proactive approach to segmenting, rationalising, and optimising the supplier portfolio to align suppliers with strategic outcomes.
Supplier segmentation
Supplier segmentation is the process of allocating suppliers into groups based on certain criteria. When dealing with a vast network of IT suppliers, it’s more effective to evaluate the portfolio as a whole rather than concentrate on individual supplier relationships. Taking a broader view enables you to distinguish between different partnerships, understand their interdependencies, and prioritise the relationships that offer the greatest value. We help organisations segment suppliers into strategic, important, and transactional categories, and prioritise their management accordingly.
Supplier rationalisation
Supplier rationalisation (a.k.a. supplier consolidation) is the process of reducing the number of suppliers an organisation works with. Many enterprises have an excessively large supplier network, making the true number of suppliers unclear. Consolidating your supplier base significantly reduces the administrative burden, streamlines spend, and enables your team to have more productive relationships with the suppliers that remain.
Supplier optimisation
Supplier optimisation is the ongoing process of assessing and improving the performance and efficiency of the supplier network. This involves analysing spend data, benchmarking suppliers, identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement, and implementing optimisation strategies.
Our IT Supplier Management Solution breakdown:
Our IT Supplier Management offering covers the end-to-end monitoring and management of suppliers, their agreements and obligations from the inception of the supplier requirement through to supplier offboarding.
These services span four areas, available as an end-to-end service, or as separate engagements.
IT Supplier Discovery and Supplier Spend Analysis
The first phase involves identifying and categorising IT suppliers based on strategic importance and operational impact. Invictus Partners conducts a thorough supplier audit to assess capabilities, financial stability, and alignment with business objectives.
In this phase, we:
- Understand your strategy, desired outcomes and how these align to the supplier inventory.
- Identify current suppliers and perform a spend analysis.
- Obtain an understanding of the procurement process (centralised versus decentralised).
- Provide an overview of your supplier inventory, summarising key details in a single view.
- Outline the completeness of documentation.
- Document supplier numbers, composition, spend and services provided.
IT Supplier Analysis and Supplier Consolidation
In this phase, we analyse and rationalise your supplier base in line with your business strategy and goals.
This involves:
- Documenting supplier agreements, taking note of critical data points such as expiration dates, total cost, billing and product/service description.
- Identifying product/service duplication and opportunities for consolidation.
- Identifying opportunities for savings, operational uplift and risk reduction.
IT Strategic Sourcing and Procurement
Invictus Partners helps you go to market, research and select suitable IT suppliers and partners, develop RFx documentation, evaluate responses, and negotiate the best deal.
Our strategic sourcing services help you:
- Identify opportunities to align products and services with your requirements and strategy.
- Negotiate service uplifts, improvement in risk posture, and cost reductions via targeted sourcing exercises.
- Control and optimise your procurement process by reviewing and consolidating purchasing arrangements across your suppliers.
- Conduct end-to-end assessments of costs incurred across the supplier lifecycle.
IT Supplier Relationship Management Strategy
Invictus Partners can help you create equity in your IT supplier relationships, whilst ensuring the arrangements are productive and mutually beneficial.
We can support you to implement ongoing best practices, including:
- Providing a “single source of truth” via an Invictus Partners owned and managed Contract Management System (CMS) and access to a contracts portal.
- Providing ongoing management of suppliers to agreed terms, analysis and reporting of compliance to commercial, operational and legal terms.
- Proactively managing contract renewals, reviewing supplier relationships and pricing for competitiveness, renewing, or exiting supplier relationships and/or contracts as appropriate.
Other ways you benefit from outsourcing your supplier management process.
IT Supplier Performance Management
Our team keeps tabs on your suppliers and makes sure they hold up their end of the bargain by monitoring their performance against contractual terms and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). We track performance via a scorecard system, providing you with continuous evaluation and objective comparison across your suppliers.
IT Supplier Risk Management
We help you manage risk associated with third-party IT suppliers by establishing contingency plans, diversifying your supplier portfolio, and having clear exit strategies in place. Our team can also set clear standards with your suppliers around security and compliance, service delivery, and performance, and conduct periodical risk assessments to ensure these requirements are met.
IT Supplier Contract Management
Invictus Partners can help you stay on top of the contract lifecycle by providing contract visibility, SLA and renewals management, expiration data management, and accurate demand forecasts.
IT Supplier Negotiation Strategy
IT procurement is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process, especially when it comes to strategic suppliers. We can handle supplier negotiations on your behalf, or upskill your team to handle negotiations confidently and competently. Our team deep-dives into supplier proposals and helps you make informed decisions based on optimal contractual and compliance terms, not just price.
IT Supplier Data Management
We centralise, digitise and maintain data records in defined systems, so you have access to accurate information about your suppliers when you need it. This provides you with actionable insights that allow for more informed decision making and greater cost optimisation across the supplier lifecycle.
The Invictus Partners difference: Strategic sourcing consultants and supplier management solutions provider.
Invictus Partners has a commercial advisory practice built on multiple decades of experience optimising supplier portfolios across the entire supplier lifecycle. Drawing on client-side commercial expertise, as well as decades of combined experience helping clients select and manage enterprise software suppliers and negotiate contracts to best meet business and financial needs, we have created our IT Supplier Management offering to help clients optimise their IT supplier portfolios.
With Invictus Partners, your organisation gets on-demand access to supplier-specific knowledge and experience that you may not have internally. Think of us as your IT supplier “brains trust” that you can tap into at any time.
In addition to IT Supplier Management, Invictus Partners provides a range of enterprise software advisory services across all of the major vendors including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Software represents a material component of all IT supplier expenditure and requires specialist knowledge to manage effectively. If required, the broader expertise within Invictus Partners can be leveraged to further enhance, complement and supplement our clients’ teams.
Mark Deves
Commercial Advisory Principal
Mark has a career spanning more than 25 years in business partnering, commercial and operational roles. Mark enables businesses to succeed in the achievement of their strategic objectives through diligent management of financial outcomes, application of strong commercial and change management skills and effective governance processes. Specialising in IT Commercial roles since 2010, Mark has performed a variety of roles encompassing Strategic Sourcing, Vendor and Contract Management, Project Delivery and Procurement. Through the application of his commercial experience, Mark works collaboratively with organisations to understand strategic drivers and goals and deliver beyond the boundaries of commercial management to drive improvements in financial position, operational uplifts, reduced risk profiles and achievement of strategic outcomes. Having proven experience in delivering solid commercial outcomes and cost reduction programs across multiple industries, Mark brings a wealth of knowledge to the Invictus Partners team to help clients achieve their financial and strategic objectives.
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Doug Gibson
Managing Partner
Doug is a 29+ year international IT veteran, having worked in executive and general manager roles with organisations including SAP, Oracle, and IBM across A/NZ, Asia Pacific, and Africa. Doug’s intimate knowledge of software vendors, licensing and auditing practice has enabled him to successfully assist clients in retail, manufacturing, utilities, the public sector, and financial services to achieve positive outcomes in their audits, along with assisting them during software contract negotiations. Heading up the team and the company, Doug embodies the relevant skills and mindset to grow this company into a worldwide organisation.