Award winning benchmarking, sourcing and
transformation advisory firm, Alsbridge, Inc., today released a new report “The
Hidden Benefits of Benchmarking.” As the title suggests, the report uncovers on
some of the “hidden” benefits of benchmarking which clients do not expect from a mere comparison to current market
price points.
Benchmarking
outsourcing transactions is a time-tested approach for ensuring that
outsourcing contracts remain competitive over time. It ensures that vendors
continue to deliver market aligned services at market competitive prices, but
also offers much more.
“Having conducted many benchmarks over the last decade, our benchmarking team
has seen a recurring pattern of accrued ancillary benefits that often provide
greater returns than were originally expected,” says Ben Trowbridge, Chairman
and CEO, Alsbridge Inc. “These benefits do not come from the required investigations of
comparable "market price", but rather from examinations of other
financial elements often overlooked during the day-to-day challenges of
governing a complex outsourcing transaction.”
As part of the benchmarking process, invoices are often examined to
capture the full scope of services and price. Errors are commonly uncovered
with a simple question and a pointed finger asking, "What is this?"
In most cases these errors are relatively small, but sometimes errors can be
quite significant – exceeding 20% in extreme cases. ProBenchmark,
Alsbridge’s benchmarking division, estimates that greater than 80% of all
transactions have errors on their invoices. Furthermore, most of the errors we
uncover are in favor of the vendor.
Benchmarking can also uncover non-standard and convoluted pricing
schemes. What may have worked at the start of the deal later becomes a
hindrance as SOW's and work orders are added to the outsourcing contract. This
complexity can cause strange behaviors by either party. In addition to
confirming that the invoice is correct, a good benchmark will uncover billing
schemes that are no longer effective, or worse, detrimental to the
relationship.
These are just two examples of problems which are commonly uncovered.
They serve as additional reasons why organizations should consider conducting a
benchmark: not only to ensure that the price is reasonable, but that the
invoice is accurate, understandable and effective.
To further uncover the benefits of benchmarking, go to the complete report-
The Hidden Benefits of Benchmarking.
About
Alsbridge Inc.
Alsbridge provides world class sourcing advisory and benchmarking services for
the CIO, CFO and CPO. We’ve helped
hundreds of companies reduce costs and get more value from their vendors. Our experienced consultants leverage
proprietary tools and information databases to identify and engage the optimal
vendors for your situation, negotiate best practice terms at fair market
prices, and improve the way you work with your vendors. Alsbridge clients utilize the most cost effective
and value added sources globally for IT infrastructure services, hardware and
maintenance, network services, software and maintenance, application support
and development, business processes and cloud services. Alsbridge was ranked
the #1 outsourcing advisor in the world by the International Association of
Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) based on the value delivered to clients. This commitment to delivering value to our
clients has made Alsbridge a distinguished member of the 2010 Inc. 500 fastest
growing privately held companies in America.
