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Home Services Source And Deploy Smart Supply Supplier Management & Rationalisation

Supplier Management & Rationalisation

As organisations seek to rationalise their supplier base, Computacenter can reduce management overheads whilst maintaining continuity of supply.

A service component of our Smart Supply solution.

What we do

Computacenter uses multiple sourcing methodologies and techniques to ensure that our aggregated customer spending is leveraged, and supply chains are efficient. These methodologies and techniques include:

Multi-Sourcing: For commodity IT products, we have an established virtual supply chain system, which captures price and stock data feeds for over 400,000 products from multiple suppliers. Preferred sources of supply are dynamically created and used for specific customer requirements.

Direct Sourcing: For large partners we source directly, leveraging our size and scale. Forecasting, forward ordering and order optimisation ensure our stock holdings constantly reflect anticipated customer demand.

Software Sourcing: For software sourcing there are further considerations such as bandings and renewals, and we therefore perform supplier rationalisation techniques based on aggregating spending with suppliers where possible.

We aim to balance the benefits of our scale, leveraging best practice and our vendor relations, with the ability to bespoke solutions where needed against specific customer needs.

How it helps

Computacenter's broad portfolio of partnerships enables organisations to multi-source products and services from one supplier. Through our Supplier Management and Rationalisation service we simplify procurement processes, reduce bureaucracy and rationalise the supplier base simultaneously.

Cost Reduction
Working with Computacenter can significantly reduce the number of suppliers a business needs, reducing the overhead of vendor management. Our increased purchasing power and scale can reduce the overall cost of purchase.

Risk Avoidance
Computacenter's broad vendor portfolio, combined with our product evaluation and roadmap capabilities, reduce the complexity and disruption involved in switching vendors. Organisations that use Computacenter as an IT solutions provider are protected from the volatility of vendor disruptions, through our lifecycle management capabilities.

Access to Skilled Resources
Computacenter's management of multiple vendor interfaces frees staff for more strategic activities. Utilising a single point of contact at Computacenter is a gateway to managed relationships with all the leading IT vendors.

Why we are different

Scale and Breadth
Computacenter has long established, direct relationships with over 1,000 suppliers and is the leading UK and European provider of many technologies and software solutions from our vendor partners. Computacenter's skilled vendor management team continuously evaluates the market, ensuring the right solutions to meet customer issues are central to our portfolio.

Real-time Data Access
Our supply chain and procurement processes are managed on a real time basis with either web portal or c-xml links into our suppliers, ensuring that key information such as delivery dates, pricing and stock quantities are kept up to date between all parties in the supply chain.

Financial Stability
With a group turnover in excess of £2bn, Computacenter has the financial scale and stability to act as a primary supplier. You can transfer the majority of relationships to Computacenter with confidence, while retaining those where you wish to have a strategic relationship in-house.

Where we have done it

Doncaster College
Since September 2006, education services at Doncaster College have been delivered via a ground-breaking facility. The Hub is part of a £72 million initiative to transform learning in South Yorkshire. To help cope with the complexity of its ICT programme, the college enlisted the help of Computacenter. "We needed an ICT partner that understood the complexities associated with delivering a multi-vendor, multi-technology solution within challenging timescales and a limited budget," says Graeme Tizard, IT Director for the College.

Computacenter designed a holistic solution, including technologies from Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, Axis, Safecom and Smart. Given the breadth of vendors involved Doncaster turned to Computacenter to consolidate their procurement, as well as project implementation. Graeme observed, "Computacenter played an important role in helping us achieve our goals and will remain a key partner as we continue to develop Doncaster's Education City."