Making your core business your priority

Increased global competition and demanding customers mean staying competitive requires all your attention. But managing your mission-critical processes in-house distracts you from your core business. That’s why you need to be able to simplify and fine-tune your networked IT infrastructure, without the associated management issues. With Strategic Sourcing, BT becomes your business operator, working with you to generate mutual value and freeing you to concentrate on your business priorities.

Sourcing strategically as a catalyst for growth

Unlike traditional outsourcing agreements, our Strategic Sourcing solutions provide you with flexible sourcing agreements tailored to your specific business needs. Our global expertise and flexible financial arrangements can help you move beyond mere infrastructure maintenance and third-party outsourcing to a more strategic, collaborative relationship.

BT can act as your business operator, working with you to solve business problems and provide the expertise to help you expand into new markets. Our “consolidate, converge and extend” approach can help you to achieve cost and efficiency savings, as well as adding significant value through innovation and flexible ways of working. 

With a clear, customised convergence strategy under a consistent service level agreement (SLA), you can concentrate on staying ahead of the competition.

Sharing Unilever’s goals for business innovation

In one of the largest global sourcing contracts in UK corporate history, Unilever contracted BT to manage and develop its entire global communications infrastructure. Worth €750 million over ten years, and supporting over 179,000 people in some 100 countries, the solution also included the transfer of people and assets from Unilever to BT.

To help Unilever release capital for planned business expansion, BT has reduced the number of suppliers that Unilever has to manage from 400 to one.

After rationalising and upgrading its infrastructure, Unilever can now rapidly deploy new technologies across its entire global network. With total cost of ownership savings of 20 per cent – projected to exceed €200 million – BT has helped Unilever to fund its business development programme and concentrate on its core business.

Reducing management complexity increases business agility

Organisations are often hamstrung by a complex patchwork of legacy infrastructure and network capabilities that inhibit entry into today’s evolving business ecosystem. An underperforming network infrastructure can cause time-to-market delays, reduce business agility and hinder business communications. Sourcing strategically with BT can help you implement horizontal collaboration with your “virtual partners,” enhance business agility and accelerate product time-to-market.

Converging technology and experience creates innovation

Strategic Sourcing solutions from BT can cost-effectively transform your networked IT infrastructures to reduce maintenance costs and prepare for future innovation. Our experience in implementing customised convergence and sourcing strategies is complemented by our:

• Expertise in telecommunications, IT and networking.
• Experience integrating and managing traditional and new wave technologies and services.
• Ability to consolidate multiple suppliers into a single service level agreement (SLA), reducing complexity and offering a single point of contact.
• Extensive global presence – operating in 170 countries.
• Sheer breadth of portfolio, including voice and data networks, wide area networks (WAN), local area networks (LAN), data centres, customer relationship management (CRM) and contact centres.
• Strategic alliances with market-leading technology companies, such as HP, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Nortel.

Transforming your network and IT infrastructure

Our Strategic Sourcing solutions support your transition from conventional ways of working to operating more flexibly. And with BT working as your business operator to manage your non-core, yet critical, processes you can:

Consolidate and converge your global network infrastructure to:

• Transform your complex networked IT infrastructure into a high performance, service oriented architecture (SOA).
• Reduce in-house infrastructure management and administration, freeing you to focus on your core business functions.
• Provide a platform that supports cross-business collaboration and assured, anywhere access to shared applications within the network.
• Extend the capabilities of your networked IT infrastructure easily and achieve increased flexibility with “plug and play” options.

Develop a strategic relationship with BT that enables you to:

• Benefit from industry knowledge to implement best practices and aid business compliance.
• Work with BT experts to develop new ideas and innovations to add value and support the growth of your organisation.
• Decrease your energy expenditure and reduce your carbon footprint by converging complex networks.
• Collaborate with a strategic associate who shares not only your technological but also your business goals.

Leading the way to globally sourced convergence

Sourcing strategically can help you improve your organisation’s performance through business transformation and innovation – but without all the associated management issues.

Our Strategic Sourcing solutions have already:

• Enabled credit card provider Visa to achieve a more efficient and resilient infrastructure, resulting in network availability of 99.98 per cent for global credit card transactions.
• Improved performance and management of Grafton Recruitment’s pan-European multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network for rapid technology deployment and improved customer service.
• Simplified Unilever’s supplier and infrastructure management, enabling Unilever to focus on its core business.

Enriching more than just your bottom line

With BT, you can transfer the management, maintenance and development of your networked IT infrastructure and associated assets, enabling you to:

• Decrease budget expenditure by turning fixed costs into variable costs, meaning you only pay for the resources you use.
• Gain greater control of your budget by lowering ongoing investment required in your internal infrastructure.
• Reduce overheads associated with managing numerous suppliers through single service provider contracts.
• Make better use of your assets and free up trapped capital.
• Streamline your infrastructure by reducing duplication and complexity.
• Create added value through development and innovation.

Sourcing technology for greater control

Technology should help reduce and automate processes, enabling organisations to focus on their primary tasks. But you can get sidetracked by problem resolution, maintenance and supplier management when controlling your legacy network in-house. Multiple third-party outsourcing agreements often work at cross purposes, increasing complexity and impacting efficiency. With BT as your business operator you can minimise complexity, enhance innovation and collaborate effectively in today’s global business ecosystem.

Developing alliances to bring you complete solutions

As a globally recognised provider of networked IT infrastructure solutions, BT continually invests in technology to better support your current and future needs.

By analysing your specific requirements, we can customise and implement the most appropriate solution to meet your business needs. Our strategic alliances with leading IT companies, including Cisco, HP and Nortel, mean we can also provide you with the most suitable and innovative technology available.

Our alliance with HP provides an exceptional combination of products and expertise. And as this is a long-term agreement, we can continually invest in new integrated systems and processes, providing a platform for future innovation and development.

In February 2007, the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) awarded BT the Global Alliance Award for Alliance Excellence for 2006.

Strategically simplifying and enhancing your network

BT has a focused approach to delivering strategic sourcing projects which involves aligning with your business objectives. We then translate your requirements into a strategic sourcing and benefits roadmap, which may include:

Consolidating your legacy estate

• Rationalise legacy and consolidate infrastructure that comprises a “mixed bag” of technologies and vendor equipment.
• Simplify your multiple supply agreements into one single BT contract to remove supplier management complexity and drive down costs.

Converging your technologies and suppliers

• Merge your multiple suppliers and network capabilities onto a single BT global multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network to further reduce costs and accelerate your time-to-market.
• Amalgamate all your platforms – from voice and data networks to data centre servers and storage solutions – to enhance productivity, increase agility and lower costs.

Extending your capabilities

• Transform your network into a service oriented architecture (SOA) through innovation and development to accelerate time-to-market and provide continuous improvement.
• Fine-tune your infrastructure so you can improve customer experience and enhance your competitive advantage by focusing on creating value rather than managing complexity.

Liberating Unilever from laborious infrastructure management

The BT approach to global network convergence is to clearly define and manage the performance your infrastructure requires, enabling you to focus on your organisation’s core competencies and competitive differentiation.

For Unilever, we took over responsibility for the management and provision of their voice, data and mobile services, spread over 1,000 sites in 68 countries.

We have also worked in collaboration with Unilever to develop and implement robust security policies to protect the business at all levels. Services extend to maintaining effective anti-virus measures, managing firewalls, protecting against denial of service (DOS) attacks and ensuring the physical security of global assets.

Strategically sourcing expertise and collaboration

Beyond the pure cost reductions associated with globally sourcing the management of your networked IT infrastructure, Strategic Sourcing from BT can also help you:

• Overcome difficulties recruiting and retaining qualified IT employees by using our expertise.
• Lower the cost of ongoing investments in your in-house infrastructure.
• Tackle problem resolution quickly and easily through a single point of contact and proactive maintenance for improved business continuity.
• Balance the risk associated with network transformation against a trusted associate who shares your business goals.
• Manage and integrate disparate networks acquired through mergers and acquisitions.
• Streamline your networked IT infrastructure by reducing complexity and duplication.
• Gain access to industry best practice and the global reach and experience of BT.