IT Outsourcer Enhances Client Relationship
Blazent asset intelligence solutions helps the IT Outssource team enhance the customer relationship while improving revenue

Customer description
The IT Outsourcer’s customer is one of North America’s premier financial institutions with an aggressive international posture. With almost 60,000 employees, the customer and its affiliates serve approximately 12 million customers in some 50 countries around the world. The customer offers a diverse range of products and services including personal, commercial, corporate and investment banking.

Contract Background
In 2001 the financial institution signed a 7-year agreement with a global IT Outsourcer, valued at more than $900-million to take over the day-to-day management of most of its computer operations. In 2007, the institution renewed and extended that agreement. As they continued a rapid expansion of its operations on the international front, the new contract put in place a new global framework to support the bank’s global operations.

Challenge
The customer is focused on becoming the world’s largest international bank, and to achieve that, has embarked on an explosive growth plan. In 2008 alone, the customer will open some 1,900 new branches outside North America. That rapid expansion was creating significant challenges for the IT Outsource team as the IT infrastructure to support the growth ballooned. Some of the key challenges included:

• Security standards compliance: The customer set a benchmark score for security compliance based on scores from its IP360 scanning tool. Stiff contractual mandates were set for the IT Outsourcer to comply with those mandates.
• Client credibility and trust: Without the data to back them up, the IT Outsource team had difficulty highlighting the significant value it was delivering to the customer . Furthermore, addressing contract and billing disputes was a manual and tedious effort.
• Lack of Visibility: Although the IT Outsourcer is a strategic supplier for the customer, other outsourcing vendors provide services, and the customer maintains a portion of IT as well. Understanding and showing data to prove where the IT Outsourcer’s responsibilities lie was critical to maintaining profitability in the account.

As the contract moved forward, the IT Outscourcer knew that its ability to add additional value and extend the contract was in jeopardy.

Solution
The IT Outsource team took a hard look at what was called for. First, it was clear that they needed a consolidated and accurate view of the IT assets they were under contract to manage. That view needed to be dynamic and timely. Second, they needed analytics and reporting that leveraged that data. That would give them and their customer the visibility into their assets they so desperately needed. And last, the IT Outsourcer needed to deliver these capabilities while reducing costs.

With references from other successful implementations in hand, the IT Outsource team knew that Blazent’s solutions could address their needs.

Results
Blazent’s solution was deployed into the production environment in 2006. With the solution in place, the IT Outsourcer created an accurate, unified asset inventory by aggregating, cleansing and normalizing asset data from more than 15 disparate data sources. The impact on the business was almost immediate, and continues to be felt.

• The IT Outsourcer was able to work through a difficult situation with the customer, where through a network scanning device the bank pushed responsibility fo network vulnerability/security to the IT Outsourcer. By integrating the IP360 scan data with Blazent’s “Golden Asset Record” the IT Outsourcer was able to prove to the customer that the majority of issues were not their responsibility.
• Blazent’s solutions also empowered the IT Outsource team to help the customer set achievable expectations with regards to vulnerability, and to put in place targeted remediation efforts. Not only did this help the customer develop a plan for addressing those vulnerabilities, the team gained a revenue opportunity by taking over the additional remediation.
• The detailed asset information gained from Blazent’s solution gave the customer something they’d never had before—full visibility into all its IT assets. There is a new level of dialogue between the IT Outsourcer and the customer that is truly value-add for both sides.
• The IT Outsourcer uncovered some 2,900 assets that they were maintaining but not charging for. These assets are currently being validated to be added to the invoice at a future date.

Perhaps the biggest benefit the IT Outsource team has realized from the Blazent solution is the credibility and confidence they have gained with the customer. Armed with the accurate asset intelligence information that Blazent delivers, they are now able to better focus on building value with the customer rather than dealing with endless contract and billing disputes. In 2007, the IT Outsourcer won a significant contract extension with this customer over intense competition, which in the end, is a significant win for both companies.