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Optimizing the cost of your informatics and telecom equipment with the software package Global e-line

Most frequently asked for intervention:
"How do we reduce our printing costs?"
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BusinessLines' consultants operate daily in companies who try to optimize management costs linked to their technological equipment (informatics and telecom, computers, printers, etc.).

What do our customers notice concerning the informatics and telecom equipment?
- A too strong growth in the cost of technological units (especially printers)
- A too big budget for buying materials
- Growing help desk costs (internal / external) for users
- A too high number of technological units compared to other organizations of equivalent size or in the same branch of activity
- The obsolete types of contracts with technology providers
- Etc.

What do our customers seek?
- Cutting budgets (materials, technological units, help desk / assistance)
- Useful and profitable technological innovations
- Improving user satisfaction
- Setting up new types of cooperation with the providers
- Etc.

What do our BusinessLine consultants and our counseling partners suggest?
The BusinessLine consultants have perfected a technical and economical evaluation method for stocks of equipment. By participating directly in your environment or through BusinessLine consulting service partners, our consultants can evaluate the management cost of your stock of equipment, using a mixed method of T.C.O. (Total Cost of Ownership) and T.E.V. (Total Economic Value) and using the tools based on Global e-line. These technical and economical studies, approaching information and persons in technical and financial departments as well as users, will help you defining the directions you can follow to improve and give you the tools and indicators to maintain the optimum productivity of your equipment over time.

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Case study: Customer goals

The customer would like to conduct a study allowing him to reach the following goals:

1. Defining the equipment needed (materials, software, printers, Internet access, etc.) by the users according to their job, their hierarchical position and their geographical establishment
2. Comparing these needs with the existing equipment, but also with the current affectation methods and the use of the equipment and of associated technological units.
3. Defining an evolution plan allowing the evolution of the technology, of its affectation - and use - methods allowing maintaining or improving the satisfaction while assuring a better control of the costs.

The customer wishes to obtain, in 1-3 months, a significant progress allowing him to decide what actions to undertake.

Case study: BusinessLine goals

The goals for BusinessLine are:

1. Efficiency: To conduct the study as required by the customer and to provide the requested results through specialized teams used to conduct such operations and equipped with adequate methods and tools.
2. Added value: To include in the results the know-how acquired by BusinessLine through the projects for more than 40 major companies and organizations since 2001 concerning the implementation, exploitation and maintenance of informatics and telecom equipment.
3. Durability: To provide the customer with dynamic indicators and tools allowing making the obtained results evolve in accordance with the customers coming organizational and business based evolutions and new product lines and equipment providers' services.

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Advantages of the BusinessLine offer

The BusinessLine offer has 3 key advantages for the customer:
- Expertise in the field
- Specialized Methods, Tools and Teams
- Independency of providers

Advantage n°1 - Expertise in the field
BusinessLine has recently participated in projects in many companies in all sectors in France, Italy, etc. to audit, organize, improve the economical, technical and human efficiency when using the companies technological and telecom equipment (see Press Room for more information).

The projects conducted by BusinessLine concern:
· developing and following implementation plans for informatics and telecom equipment
· organizing and equipping technical help desk centers
· developing schedule of condition for outsourcing the informatics equipment management
· creating knowledge bases for capitalization of know-how
· defining T.C.O. indicators for informatics and telecom equipment
· Economical studies of satisfaction of using informatics and telecom use
· etc.

Advantage n°2 - Specialized Methods, Tools and Teams
BusinessLine consultants participate as specialists in these areas with a methodological package and software tools allowing on one hand the efficient accomplishment of consulting service missions, and providing the customer, on the other hand, with the necessary means for keeping alive the organization and maintaining the study results and thus adapt the decisions and organizational evolutions.

The consultants from BusinessLine use the software tools Global e-line provided by BusinessLine's R&D department, specialized in supervising and managing support centers and help desk departments.

Advantage n°3 - Independency of providers
The consultants from BusinessLine participate in projects independently from the informatics and telecom constructors and providers.

BusinessLine is neither reselling, nor promoting system software, office software, informatics hardware or equipment.

However, when accomplishing the missions, our consultants have a strong knowledge of the equipment market in order to integrate in their studies the best product and service solutions which can give our customers advantages.

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Study methods (abstract)

Technical and economical evaluation of a stock of technological equipments

The consultants from BusinessLine undertake this mission, using state-of-the-art methods, through 4 well-defined steps:
1. Preparation Detailed definition of the goals and the deliveries
2. Collecting Collecting data
3. Analysis Analysis of data
4. Assessments Production and presentation of delivery

Procedures

The phases of the procedure can be presented as in the diagram to the right.

The goal of a study is to achieve, within the given time frame, and according to the available data, the structure of this information system for managing the customer's technology.

According to the stronger expectations on behalf of the customer, the study could for example be concentrated on:
- Defining the field-specific needs for the technology.
- Defining the theoretical user needs.

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1. Preparation

In the planning of the study progress, the first phase, called the Preparation phase, consists in defining the details of the study scope and the expected delivery.

2. Collecting

In a study, collecting the data is an essential phase since it deals with defining the present situation.
It consists in collecting existing data, which will be useful when making the study, data that is available in customer databases or available on paper documents or from interviews with customer representatives.

Collecting data will concern, although not exclusively, data contributing to the following:
- Physical survey of the company in order to get the details concerning the technology
- User profiles:
  o By place (agency, head office, service)
  o By business
  o By informatics application used
- Assessment of support calls and interventions:
  o User Profiles
  o Type of materiel
  o Frequency
  o Reason for and progress of the assistance.
- Definition of technological needs by business field.

This phase is scheduled to last for a defined amount of time. The analysis and recommendations coming from phase 3 and 4 will be based on the database that it has been possible to collect in the given time period.

3. Analysis

This phase is scheduled to take a specific amount of time. It is especially aiming at defining the technological needs for each business field. It also establishes a matrix of necessary technologies and of foreseeable use / consumption for the identified groups of business fields.

Analysis par unit

The analysis phase consists in:
- Identifying the key reasons for the current situation.
- Comparing with best practices.
- Identifying what to improve.

Cross-analysis

The cross-analysis allows clarifying the existing relations between the helpdesk costs, the consumption, the user profile, his satisfaction or yet the price of buying a technological unit.

Studying Best Practices
The management of the technology and the search for a better balance between the necessary user satisfaction (the technology is often a key element in the chain of productivity) and cost control (the technology is an expense to control).

The stakes concerning work productivity and cost control are often so important that a "Best Practices" study and the use of benchmarking is useful.

The Consultants from BusinessLine use 3 main information sources for Best Practices:

The Best Practices suggested by Consulting Firms (GARTNER, Cowen)
They have the advantage of making strong tendencies available, intra and cross-sector cost indicators and provide T.C.O. elements (Total Cost of Ownership).

Les Best Practices suggested by the Equipment Providers
The equipment providers and other providers in the technological sector make global recommendations available for the customers, the partners and the consulting firms (concerning the management and the cost and the integration in an information system), recommendations by sector (concerning the feedback from their customers experience), the product-service recommendations (concerning expected and real performance on each of the technological units and their Best Practices for each of their products and services). The consultants from BusinessLine follow closely the publications from the main providers.

The Best Practices known by the Consultants from BusinessLine
These Best Practices, result of the personal experience in the missions concerning the definition, implementation, and daily running of informatics and telecom equipment conducted by the BusinessLine consultants on one hand, and on the other hand, the relations established with all the customers for whom the consultants from BusinessLine work in all sectors of activity (Finance, Industry, Administration, Services). This array of companies is representative: CREDIT AGRICOLE, MOTOROLA, FRANCE TELECOM, SAINT-GOBAIN, CNAM, Regional hospital centers, RECTORATS, etc.. This array is composed of firms of different size, managing from hundreds to hundreds of thousands informatics and telecom equipments.

Example of Best Practices - How to reduce the budget for informatics and telecom equipment assistance

Assessments and recommendations

The "Assessment and recommendations" step is the step, which leads to the customer taking over the final report of the study.

According to the collected data and the time allowed for the mission, the report will include,
· All the elements that the consultants from BusinessLine have judged pertinent to improve the information system for technical and economical overview of the customers technological equipment.
· The recommendations that the BusinessLine consultants estimate being the most important angles for working on the change management for the equipment resources.