IT infrastructure has become ever more critical to business strategy and competitive advantage. In tandem with this, both the complexity of IT systems and the demands on IT departments have increased, with it being more important than ever for IT to clearly align itself with commercial goals. According to research from KPMG, European IT Directors are continuing to demand lower costs for the provision of IT services. The challenge for organisations is to determine how to achieve these cost savings without impairing the high performance and service standards that are expected from IT.

The Logic Group's consultants have been able to help many organisations square this circle of reducing costs while also improving performance. Our services in this area include benchmarking IT costs against comparable industry figures, reviewing infrastructure to identify areas for consolidation, and making recommendations on the way IT services are delivered, such as moving IT operations to a shared services model. The group is also able to offer expert advice on whether to outsource or 'in-source' IT services. Amongst others, the group’s consultants have been able to deliver the following benefits to clients:

•	Cost savings and increased efficiencies
•	Aligning IT and business strategy
•	Improved return on IT investment
•	Improved awareness of industry best practice

Benchmarking
The Logic Group was recently asked to review a client’s current contract, services and charges and compared them to current market offerings in order to identify opportunities for them to achieve best value. The group’s consultants used a tried and tested methodology to achieve this, utilising reference data based upon recent comparable Logic Group projects. The group provided a detailed breakdown of current spend, inefficiencies, and opportunities to offer improved value for money, including recommendations for a 10% reduction in charges. The client was supplied with evidence of the complexity of the current working practices, and recommendations on how costs could be removed from the current service offering to improve margins.

Infrastructure Consolidation
A leading client requested The Logic Group to review the hosting of their ERP systems on a mixture of outsourced and in-house data centres. This was based on the realisation that there was commercial advantage to be achieved through consolidation of services and infrastructure, whilst achieving improved quality of service. The group conducted a wide-ranging review, interviewing all the key stakeholders to gain a detailed picture of the current state of current IT infrastructure and service provision and made recommendations to centralise their IT systems onto a modern hosting arrangement and make considerable cost savings in the process.

Service Review
The group has extensive experience in re-engineering IT departments to improve the provision of services. In the case of one of the group's large financial services customers, the existing IT organisation presented a confusing picture, especially in terms of the number and variety of customer-facing units. There was a tendency on the part of customers to either play IT units off against each other, or to go elsewhere for service. There was a lack of information about problems and requests, due partly to a lack of consistent corporate systems. The group made a set of proposals to re-align the IT Service Organisation towards improved customer service and better management of the IT infrastructure. A new centralised structure was designed to facilitate more coherent infrastructure by replacing silo approaches to IT.