Why SOLUTIONS Management CAN Make Business Sense

Creative Solving have been providing a managed solutions service to our clients.

Not all clients choose the managed solutions route and those that do rarely put all applications under management. However some clients have identified that it makes sense to take selected applications and hand over the operations to a trusted partner.

Increasingly many other organisations are now realising the benefits of selective managed solutions. These organisations have looked at critical questions such as

• How important is it to run certain applications in-house?
• How can we support a 24x7 environment?
• How can we make our I.T. costs more predictable?
• How do we keep up with the ever-changing technology landscape?
• How do we cope when critical I.T. staff leave?
• How do we easily scale up to meet business demand?
• How do we deal with issues such as security, viruses etc?
• Do staff or skills shortages limit our ability to deliver?

An opportunity To Adopt a New COMMERCIAL Approach

There are other advantages to putting an application or suite of applications under management including alternative commercial models. Questions to consider include:-

• What if you could move to a rented software model with predictable costs spread out over a number of years?
• What if the software could be hosted and managed for you in a scalable and secure environment?
• What if the software was charged for on a ‘per-transaction’ basis thereby tightly aligning the interests of the solutions provider with your business i.e. both sides win if business booms but your I.T. costs go down if business decreases?
• What if you could more easily integrate with your customers’ and suppliers’ systems and could offer a self-service environment to both, thereby improving service and reducing costs further?
• What if you could remove many of the headaches of operating and managing your own applications with the result that this left you with more time to focus on your core business?

Software As A Service

With the increasing availability of high-bandwidth, global connectivity (i.e. the Internet) a new paradigm has started to emerge, that of ‘software as a service’.

Many analysts are predicting that the new paradigm will include the provision of software functionality from remote locations, where the business that uses the software doesn’t know (or indeed care) about where it is, how it is provided, just as long as it is always available.

This new paradigm has many attractions including the reduced risk that is achieved as the business functionality is provisioned from a centre of expertise, by people who deal with this kind of operation as part of their daily routine, usually for more than one client.

On the cost side the 'software as a service' model enables company executives to more accurately predict their software costs.

This new model can also support alternative approaches to software acquisition such as pay-as-you-go charging.

In addition to time based charging (e.g. per quarter, per annum) and user based charging, the new opportunity arises of ‘business unit’ pricing, where the business pays for its software functionality on a flat rate per business metric (e.g. £s per trade, pence per transaction etc.).

In these models, all costs are included: Hardware (and upgrades), software (and upgrades), services, changes, networks, communication etc.

Businesses are beginning to appreciate this model because business unit pricing reflects real business and trading conditions and typically aligns the pricing of software with the primary reason for wanting the functionality, namely to do more business more cost effectively.

Managed Solutions: A way forward

Managed solution contracts are a modern and progressive alternative to software procurement and are a key step in transitioning to the 'software as a service' model.

Working with you we can help you drive quicker returns on investment by reducing the total cost of technology and applications ownership. With fixed costs for the implementation and management of business applications you can more easily predict your I.T. spend.

Where appropriate ‘per transaction’ payment will ensure that your I.T. costs will also be more easily attributable to specific business initiatives. Everybody will be invested in the success of your business.

Our Managed Solution Services

Creative Solving can offer a total managed solutions service from software development and support through to hosting in world-class data centres. With over 3 years of managed applications experience behind us we understand the issues in deploying, supporting and managing applications.

As a result, a Managed Solution Contract with Creative Solving provides you with the surety of the best experience available in the areas of application management, software development, hosting and security.

To find out more about how we can offer your organisation a managed solution service pe please send us an e-mail at info@creativesolving.com