Value added reseller Trustmarque Solutions has announced that its Commercial Benchmarking Service has helped Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) to enhance its current Enterprise agreement with Microsoft and save approximately £60,000 per annum.
In April this year, TfGM was carved out of the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive (GMPTE), with an extension to the scope of the organisation’s remit and operational resources. The creation led to duplication of software licences and the additional burden of 100 employees and IT resources.
To consolidate its IT assets, TfGM selected Trustmarque’s Commercial Benchmarking Service to assess where the greatest return on licensing investment could be made.
TfGM procurement lead Paul Dean said Trustmarque’s proposal was evaluated as the most economically advantageous approach in maintaining a compliant license position.
TfGM said the aim was to enable the organisation to implement a more flexible licence agreement. However, the benefits of using Trustmarque Commercial Benchmarking Service went beyond saved costs for TfGM. Trustmarque provided a full forecast of the licensing requirements and TfGM saved two months of its team’s time.
TfGM Security and Compliance Manager Jude Singleton said by working with Trustmarque they ended up with 16 possible licensing options, which is many more than they would have otherwise been aware of.
Singleton said, "We also did not have the resources to accurately calculate what the best option would be. Without Trustmarque it would have taken weeks to trawl through the information and weigh up costs."
