Technology Commercial Assurance
Summary
Deecon’s Technology and Innovation Group (TIG) was asked to conduct a comprehensive commercial assurance of 9 technology vendors to identify opportunities to reduce operating expenditure, with a focus on in-year benefits. The project consisted of five key activities: contract health checks, price benchmarking, usage analysis, strategy assessment, and opportunity analysis. We identified £117k of quick-win in-year savings for FY25 and a potential £696k per annum in future savings.
Situation & Approach
Deecon’s Technology and Innovation Group (TIG) was asked to conduct a comprehensive commercial assurance of 9 technology vendors to identify opportunities to reduce operating expenditure, with a focus on in-year benefits. The project consisted of five key activities for each in-scope vendor:
Contract health checks: Conducted thorough reviews of contracts, including all variations and Statements of Work, to ensure compliance with regulatory and legal standards as well as alignment with industry best practices. Developed detailed contract summaries, incorporating a comprehensive 'health' score that highlighted key risks and issues. This provided actionable insights to mitigate risks and enhance contract performance
Price benchmarking: Conducted comprehensive benchmarking of licensing, support, and professional services pricing against list prices, typical market prices, and nearest competitors where available. Tnohis analysis identified opportunities to lower pricing or provided assurances that the product or pricing offered adequate value for money. to determine the most cost-effective and strategic approach for service delivery
Usage analysis: Compared contracted license volumes against usage, and support levels with ticket velocity and timings. Evaluated software development projects against typical effort and resources assigned to each phase of the software development lifecycle. This identified opportunities to right-size demand and control costs
Strategy Assessment: Assessed the usage of insourcing versus outsourcing, onshoring versus offshoring, and bespoke versus off-the-shelf products. This identifies long-term opportunities to reduce cost and risk
Opportunity development and analysis: Conducted a SWOT analysis and assessed each opportunity from feasibility, timing and business value perspectives to short-list and segment opportunities into quick-wins or those that require some upfront investment but that deliver a substantial return on investment.
Results
Deecon identified £117k of in-year savings across 2 key vendors: Salesforce and Microsoft. These savings were ‘quick wins’ as they only require a license volume reduction.
Deecon further identified 9 opportunities, which require upfront costs, but could collectively deliver £696k per annum of savings over the longer-term.
Additionally, a suite of process changes and training courses were recommended to control costs over the long-term.