Procurement departments have rebounded from the chaos of Covid-19 but still face a number of challenges, according to business consultancy McKinsey & Co. Cost control remains a priority as procurement strategies continue to evolve.
“[Procurement teams] must mitigate the impact of inflation while managing the supply and supplier risks that can damage reputation or threaten business continuity,” the firm said. “[…] In many categories, they must also manage increased price volatility by taking a fast-moving and dynamic approach to hedging against future cost increases or taking advantage of savings opportunities in favorable markets.”
Companies need look no further than their IT departments for cost reduction and efficiency opportunities, said Abhas Jain, global head of procurement for Nexthink, a provider of digital employee experience (DEX) software. Among other functions, Nexthink’s solutions collect and analyze data from across an organization’s IT assets so managers can make better-informed decisions about assets, applications and related costs.
“As a tangible example of this, we have Windows 10 end of life coming up next year but, as of last month, only a third (33 percent) of devices have been migrated to Windows 11,” Jain told EPSNews. “This is because migrating an operating system is difficult – you’re not just changing an operating system, but all the plug-in components, browsers, agents, and application versions as well. Consequently, when these types of events happen, businesses often decide to do a mass device refresh rather than upgrading them.”
From a procurement perspective, this is hugely wasteful as most of the devices that are replaced can still be perfectly serviceable, he explained. “What we do is offer the insights into which devices need upgrading and exactly what steps need to be taken in order to do so smoothly, thus dramatically reducing the amount of replaced devices.”
Granular visibility
DEX is a relatively new category of solutions that measure and continuously improve the performance of, and employee sentiment toward, company-provided technology, according to Gartner, which recognized Nexthink in its 2024 Magic Quadrant for DEX tools. Near-real-time processing of aggregated data from endpoints, applications, employee sentiment and organizational context surfaces actionable insights and drives self-healing automations, optimized support and employee engagement, the firm said.
“Procurement is about finding the best solution in the most cost-effective way,” said Jain. “So, from that perspective, DEX is essential because it can allow you to benchmark device performance not just within your own organization, but globally versus millions of other devices. An example would be crash carts in hospitals – these are vital to medical practitioners but can often break down and this impacts patient care. But if you knew that model A, while more expensive, breaks down only a quarter as often as model B, it would be the better option because of all the savings in maintenance and upkeep.”
Nexthink software metering dashboard. Source: Nexthink
Nexthink uses its own software metering dashboard before operating system renewals, he added.
DEX has additional benefits for procurement, Jain explained:
- It allows businesses to understand the total cost over the lifetime of each endpoint, which means that procurement can make better long-term decisions.
- Because the data is gathered and benchmarked against thousands of other companies, it provides a true reflection of where cost-savings can be made. “If a majority of laptops in a business are using more energy than necessary, that won’t show up as a problem if you’re only looking internally – they will seem to be the norm and other devices are just outliers – but when you have millions of external datapoints, you can see how the business is doing as a whole and adjust procurement strategies accordingly,” Jain explained.
- In terms of recommendations for embarking on the DEX journey, the key thing is to define the outcomes and goals first, before even thinking about the technology. Once you know what you’re looking to achieve, how, and what data you need to get there, then you can look to see what technologies meet those needs.
Nexthink’s Abhas Jain
Beyond that, DEX can help businesses do things like minimize unnecessary energy consumption by swiftly identifying inefficient, abnormal, and unnecessary consumption patterns. “Again, this sort of information is vital for procurement in understanding the total cost over the lifecycle of the device, rather than just the initial outlay,” said Jain.
Use case: CrowdStrike
Nexthink was instrumental is assisting a client during the CrowdStrike service interruption. A global consumer goods company detected the MS outage with Nexthink before it made headlines. Nexthink’s platform alerted the IT team to an unusual spike in system crashes. By creating proactive tickets in an IT service management (ITSM) system, the issue quickly received the necessary attention.
Using Nexthink’s real-time device timeline view, the IT team was able to determine that CrowdStrike had been updated on the device right before the system crashes began. Nexthink’s diagnosis revealed that most devices were crashing due to a specific error code, indicating a conflict between a component of CrowdStrike and Windows.
Ten percent of the consumer organization’s devices were immediately affected, necessitating a safe boot and deletion of a system file to restore functionality. Nexthink was able to pinpoint the impacted devices and quickly dispatch support.
The customer implemented a series of preventive strategies to ensure stability and avoid additional system crashes. This included halting all Windows and application updates temporarily and verifying that each device had the correct version of CrowdStrike installed.
Jain will be a presenter at the Marcus Evans CPO Summit November 7-8. He will explore the art and science behind creating strategic leverage in negotiations. EPSNews is a media partner for the CPO Summit.
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