Kingfisher slashes costs with Snow Software Global DIY ... - Softcat

Case StudyKingfisher slashes costs of diverseglobal IT estate with Snow SoftwareA company built through international acquisition,Kingfisher plc has a huge, diverse and complicated ITestate, even by multinational standards. What startedout as a straightforward decision to use Snow’s Software Asset Management toensure compliance has led to a string of unintended benefits. Snow Software’s solutionhas grown from a tool to keep on the right side of software contracts to a means todemonstrate the value of Kingfisher’s IT estate, cut the costs of understanding andmanaging both software and hardware, allow the company to get the best from what ithas – and bring to bear serious buying power in the future.BackgroundKingfisher is a global DIY giant with businesses in the UK, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, China, Hong Kong andelsewhere. B&Q and Castorama are two of the company’s most established brands, and the group has acquiredbusinesses in many corners of the globe. One result of this is an incredibly diverse IT environment. In 2007, thecompany decided to combine the IT departments of Castorama and B&Q together to form a Kingfisher IT Services(KITS). While not all IT functions across the group are performed by KITS today, the intention is to build relationshipswith all of the Group’s far-flung businesses. “We have a very large, complex and mixed IT environment,” saysAndrew Hill, IT Asset Manager at Kingfisher IT Services.Kingfisher has 80,000 employees, 30,000 desktop computers, and 5,000 servers – the latter a mix of platforms froma variety of manufacturers. Having grown by acquisition, there’s a lot of different hardware and software performingthe same function in different operating companies. This sort of unplanned variety can cause all kinds of problems– and simply applying the same hardware and software to every Kingfisher business is prohibitively expensive, toocomplex and would fail to take into account the needs of different businesses in wildly different locations. While acommon system might for example, sound like an excellent idea, the reality is much more complex and full of nuance;one vendor’s package might suit some businesses, but not others. Not all software platforms on the market contain thenecessary tools for employers around the globe. Local funding for specific IT projects is not consistent, and prioritiesvary naturally according to location. Because of this, homogenising the Group’s IT across all locations quickly istoo expensive and complex an exercise, and one which may not deliver value for all of the different locations andbusinesses Kingfisher owns. The long term goal is to move from a Local to a more Common and Shared approach.Softcat | Fieldhouse Lane | Marlow | Buckinghamshire | SL7 1LWW: www.softcat.com | T: 01628 403 403 | E: sales@softcat.com

The SolutionApproached by a major software vendor to review its licenses, KITS decided to adopt the same software assetmanagement software worldwide. The single package would replace multiple different systems in place at differentoperating companies. Kingfisher used an integrator, Softcat, to search the market for the right tool for the job.Softcat was armed with two requirements; KITS needed a tool to conduct the necessary audit, but it also needed to usethat tool as a proof of concept to give a single view of all software assets across the Group.ChallengesThe initial project, involving an audit ofKingfisher’s IT estate, took a year andincluded evaluating Snow’s and competitor’sproducts, discussing the audit with the manydifferent teams worldwide, and gettinginformation on vendor licenses from eachoperating company. The tool was rolled outon a country-by-country basis. Because eachorganisation already had its own tools froma variety of vendors in place, integration tooktime. KITS had to take an unconventionalapproach to deployment – it had to build abespoke deployment model to fit the widevariety of environments at the differentoperating companies. It took the decision tostandardise on Snow’s own inventory agent,replacing several different inventory toolsused at different businesses it acquired.“Kingfisher has a very intricate network, which made rolling out the hardest part of this project,” says Matt Ward,Software Asset Management manager at Softcat. “We split the deployment into three regions – Asia, Europe and Russia,and the UK, auditing over 32,000 assets in the process. It is sometimes difficult to apply local regulatory requirements toasset management, but this was a straightforward process with Snow, and the software has paid for itself tenfold.”BenefitsLicensing compliance might be the immediate focus for anyone looking at asset management. Yet there are a numberof other benefits that KITS used to its advantage – both in terms of improving service and persuading Kingfisher staffof the benefits of Snow Software’s product and IT Asset Management.“It was important to quickly engage the business with workshops, awareness and training sessions looking at whatSnow could do,” says Hill. One use for Snow’s platform is to gather information on computing hardware in use atremote locations. Snow was able to discover hardware profiles within minutes, instead of over a period of weeks.“When I first started, a small hardware refresh project would cost £15,000 to identify and validate on each site,”says Hill. “The review looked for old hardware we needed to upgrade. Using Snow, I can now do this job in tenminutes at no extra cost to the business.”Unsurprisingly, this led to many more requests from within the organisation – and not just from KITS itself.“We can usually get teams an answer very quickly – even a very complex query. Often, it’s a case of people comingto us to say ‘I can only think of Snow to solve this particular problem,’ and usually, we can solve it in hours orminutes,” says Hill.Centralising both license management into SNOW Software’s asset management solution and purchasing with asingle LAR has created many beneficial opportunities for Kingfisher, including clearer contracts and cost efficienciesthrough economies of scale.Softcat | Fieldhouse Lane | Marlow | Buckinghamshire | SL7 1LWW: www.softcat.com | T: 01628 403 403 | E: sales@softcat.com

“Filtering our vendors and goingfor a more common solutionmeans we don’t have to worryabout some of them –and wehave better buying power,because we have commonagreements,” says Hill. “Wenow have common agreementsin place with vendors includingMicrosoft, Symantec, Adobe,IBM and VMware.”Cost savings are an immediateconsideration, and byconcentrating purchasing intoenterprise agreements – ratherthan, in some cases, literallybuying standard copies ofproductivity software from alocal reseller – savings to tensand hundreds of thousands ofpounds have been realised witha number of vendors.“I can think of seven vendors straight away where we have saved a significant amount of money. With some vendors,we’re talking about savings of £50-100,000, others you’re into a few million in savings,” says Hill. “We are now gettinginto more enterprise agreements, which are based on the visibility and knowledge that we have thanks to Snow.”Hill is now involved in vendor negotiations, as well as contracts, and can turn around simple audit requests in afraction of the time. In some cases, the team has found that they possess more information than the vendor, puttingKingfisher in a much stronger bargaining position.“Having the information to hand very quickly is a key thing. It can be about cost avoidance as much as cost saving –eliminating some of the hard manual labour from ensuring compliance,” says Hill.That said, further benefits that have no connection to asset management have come to light since Snow Software arrived.B&Q, a Kingfisher company, distributes a lot of its internal communications information to retail stores via compactdisc to get around serious bandwidth constraints. Around 25 CDs of data were distributed each month to around350 stores – a number that had constantly grown. The cost and time involved in printing thousands of CDs a monthwas becoming significant – and the simple answer was to move to DVDs. But how many stores had computers withinstalled – and working – DVD drives? “Within half an hour, we had produced a report showing which stores had oneor more computers with DVD drives attached to them,” explains Hill. “This allowed us to understand costs and supportthe business quickly and easily”.“There are lots of other areas like that, where we’ve answered questions that typically begin with ‘I don’t knowwhether you can, but can you tell us this?’ – generally, we can - using either the license manager tool or inventory, ora combination of the two. We can look at things speculatively, answer ‘What if?’ questions,” says Hill. Snow’s solutionhas allowed KITS to reduce a number of maintenance and support contracts – and also allows it to understand howcost effective suppliers are.“With many sectors feeling the pinch in the current economic climate, it is encouraging to see Kingfisher and othercompanies in the retail sector investing in Snow Software’s SAM tools,” says Marlon Oliver, Sales Director for SnowSoftware in the UK. “Kingfisher IT Services has been very proactive in using Snow to deliver cost savings – andoptimised IT – to its parent organisation.”Softcat | Fieldhouse Lane | Marlow | Buckinghamshire | SL7 1LWW: www.softcat.com | T: 01628 403 403 | E: sales@softcat.com

Snow Software’s asset management solution has been used as a first step on the way to solving what canonly be described as a wicked problem – understanding, managing and optimising an enormously diverse ITenvironment spread across dozens of operating companies and dozens of countries. Making sure your softwarelicensing is compliant is one part of the benefit – truly understanding the hardware and software that makes up anorganisation’s IT suite, and employing that information to dramatic effect to reduce costs, identify opportunity andget the best from one’s resources is the real application.Snow Software develops and provides award winning products for Software Asset Management, inventory and softwaredistribution. Snow’s solutions enable companies to take control of and maximize the value of their hardware and softwareassets, and thereby helping customers to cut costs and reduce risks. Every day, Snow’s solutions analyses over 650 millionsoftware records at companies ranging from media and industry to the public and educational sector. Since the start in 1997,more than 5 million licenses have been implemented and Snow has offices in six countries.About SoftcatSoftcat is a leading provider of software licensing, hardware, security and related IT services. Softcat was founded in 1993by former chairman and majority shareholder Peter Kelly, remains privately owned and currently employs over 500 people.It achieved a turnover in excess of £300 million in its last financial year and has been profitable since inception, resulting ina strong balance sheet and very firm financial foundations. The company sells and supports products and solutions from allthe world’s leading IT companies. On all its portfolio products and solutions it offers a full range of services, including adviceand guidance, technical design, product sourcing, implementation, support and project management. It enjoys a tradingrelationship with over 5,000 longstanding customers, predominantly from the UK corporate sector but also including largeenterprises, small businesses and public sector organisations. As an organisation Softcat cares passionately about two things –outstanding employee satisfaction and world class customer service. It believes the former drives the latter.Softcat | Fieldhouse Lane | Marlow | Buckinghamshire | SL7 1LWW: www.softcat.com | T: 01628 403 403 | E: sales@softcat.com