Three main audiences benefit from Blazent’s solutions: service providers, enterprise IT, and sourcing advisors. They all need the same visibility into outsourcing contracts, but for different reasons.

Enterprise IT

Enterprise IT outsources the management of its IT assets because it makes business sense to allow the service provider to manage infrastructure issues while the enterprise focuses on strategic projects. This works great in theory, but the reality is that most of these outsourcing relationships end up wasting time and resources. The solution is not to stop outsourcing, but to better manage outsourcing relationships.

Outsourcing relationships need to be governed. Both sides, enterprise IT and the service provider, need to define expectations and constantly verify performance. Unfortunately, most of today’s infrastructure outsourcing relationships do not have measurable controls in place. The result is that enterprise IT has no way of making sure it is getting the services it’s paying for. There are constant billing surprises and too much time is wasted trying to resolve these issues with the service provider.

Blazent helps enterprise IT to better manage its outsourcing contracts. Using Blazent, companies gain confidence that they are paying the right amount per their outsourcing contracts. It also increases performance and decreases costs by identifying ITO billed assets that are not fully managed, and eliminates billing surprises and the need for costly, manual invoice reconciliation.

Service Providers

IT Outsourcing service providers come to us saying that they lack the confidence that they are actually getting paid by enterprise IT for the assets they are managing. The main issue for service providers is that they find themselves delivering services that the client doesn’t pay for becuase the contract was set without an accurate baseline and because of continued inaccurate accounting of managed assets.

Blazent helps service providers by delivering outsourcing governance for IT outsourcing relationships that establishes accurate baselines for contracts and automates ongoing measurement of the service. Once everyone has insight into the same accurate and trusted data, service providers can focus on the value added activities that are the foundation of good client relationships.

Sourcing Advisors

Sourcing advisors are hired by enterprise companies to evaluate and recommend service providers and to establish an outsourcing contract with them. But it’s very difficult for sourcing advisors to establish realistic baselines and to ensure that their clients get the most from their outsourcing relationships. To achieve that, there needs to be governance — defined expectations and constantly verified performance. Doing that manually via spreadsheets is impossible and not scalable.

Blazent helps sourcing advisors to better serve their clients by delivering outsourcing governance for IT outsourcing relationships to automate measurement and controls. Blazent products enable advisors to establish an accurate foundation for client outsourcing success. Blazent also enables ongoing outsourcing governance that is scalable as the client’s assets grow, which enables advisors to stay engaged with customers throughout the outsourcing lifecycle.