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The recession has changed the game for organisations across Europe. The dramatic dip in the markets understandably led to businesses focusing on the bottom line, with cost cutting very much top of the boardroom agenda. Of course, this remains the case today but there is a real danger of over-emphasis on cost savings at the expense of other key areas of business operations. This could include areas such as improving service delivery, internal and external communication, customer service and business process re-engineering or change management. The reality is that in order to maintain growth, it is possible to cut costs and improve business processes – the two are not mutually exclusive. Businesses that are too focused on cost cutting are failing to see some of the other challenges they currently face, or will face in the future. New IDC industry insight shows that European organisations are focused on growth but at the same time are drowning in all the issues surrounding their businesses, which are costing them time and money. IDC’s findings show that the solution lies in working with trusted suppliers to take over the management and operation of business-critical and business-specific systems and solutions. Organisations are certainly still receptive to outsourcing – 34% of European businesses questioned said that the current economic climate makes working with third party suppliers more likely. This is understandable as technology continues to develop apace and keeping up with change is a continuous process of research, development and implementation – a burden that many organisations don’t want to take on in addition to the day to day running of their business. However, what’s not clear from these results is whether this outsourcing is meeting broader business objectives or whether it’s still too focused on simple cost cutting measures. We know that outsourcing helps organisations keep ahead of the game and gain competitive advantage over their closest rivals but this support comes at a cost and needs to deliver value – in today’s market more so than ever before. Businesses need to look beyond simple cost savings from IT suppliers and move towards extended benefits across the business. The same IDC study shows a clear desire to improve service levels through technology implementation away from cost cutting, but how is this achieved? This is where industry partnerships are starting to add real value to the customer experience. As Phil Sargeant, Research Manager, IDC, explains "technological challenges have moved on from simply hardware and software. Just merging the two together doesn’t always provide the best outcome. The partnership of two or more parties is an essential third element for customer growth and prosperity. It involves bringing their individual but complementary strengths together to deliver both a tailored solution and quality of service. “In the context of the IT industry, customers receive huge benefits from sourcing their IT solutions seamlessly through a single set of accredited partners. Rather than wasting time and energy on several suppliers, customers gain access to a full set of integrated systems that are usually tailored to individual needs. They gain valuable insights into best practices in streamlining workflows, increasing efficiencies and improving their own customer care and service programmes. The IT services market is heading even further in this direction and, as a result, is becoming much more responsive to customer demand. IT organisations or consultancies that ignore this route to market will ultimately fail.” For Canon, this partnership approach is central to our strategy and we work closely with customers to ensure they gain access to a suite of solutions and propositions that are centrally managed and designed to improve processes and add to their bottom line. Canon recognises that customer needs change over time as their own business direction and organisation develops, so the customer must have full confidence in the flexibility of what we’re offering. It is also essential that supplier / customer relationships are built on trust and focused on delivering outcomes as opposed to simple, off the shelf solutions. The value is in the specific problems that technology can solve, not trying to fit existing solutions to match customer needs. Effectively, cost savings become a healthy by-product of an overall solution designed to improve performance and productivity whilst solving specific challenges faced by businesses. There is no bigger challenge currently faced by organisations than the management of their info-media. Information is at the heart of every business but as different forms of info-media start to collide, i.e. printed documents, email, web and social media, video and images etc, the management of this information becomes an increasing challenge. IDC estimates that worldwide, there are already 630m laptops, 80m netbooks and 220m smartphones in use. This all adds up to faster access to information in greater volumes - an estimated 450bn interactions a day generating information that is predicted to grow by a factor of 50 over the next 10 years. By 2020, there will be 32 million IT professionals trying to handle 50 exabytes of information created worldwide (1 exabyte = 1 trillion gigabytes). This explosion in information is putting huge pressure on companies that need to access data quickly and in multiple, usable formats. Whether it’s management of this info-media or other IT or business services such as network solutions, SAP, process reengineering or SaaS, industry partnerships are crucial in delivering truly bespoke services that meet customers’ exacting needs. With the global economy entering a period of growth, it’s essential that organisations look beyond simple cost savings. Now, it’s about entering into true collaborations with trusted suppliers, which support all of their business objectives, including improved process management and productivity, change management, heightened data security and not just cost reduction.
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