Utilities
Our utilities customers include Thames Water, Electricity North West, South West Water, United Utilities, Anglian Water and Southern Water.
Many of our customers within the utilities market are large regional businesses striving to sustain growth while operating in a defined geographical area. Achieving this growth means streamlining services and driving cost-efficiencies. There is also a particularly strong focus on operational performance – where increased staff availability and productivity, together with simplified communication systems to customers, are key objectives. The software licensing recommendations from Bytes also take into consideration the clear divide between office-based employees, remote workers and a high proportion of contractors within the wider organisation.
Recently, in these austere times, I have seen a real political change where IT departments have truly needed to do more with less. This has influenced server consolidation and virtualisation in order to decouple hardware dependencies from software upgrades, back-up and storage.
My roles is about being proactive – finding opportunities to consolidate vendors and their maintenance agreements to reduce OPEX and lowering software costs by using promotions and competitive displacement at timely periods throughout the year. Overall I represent my customers by negotiating hard with vendors to get them the best deal. I would like to say that it’s my charm that keeps my customers happy, but its price, price, price. 