Business Challenge

A major pharmaceutical company was becoming overwhelmed by the expense of its maintenance coverage as well as by the administrative burden of managing maintenance contracts with five major equipment manufacturers for literally thousands of machines at 15 data centers across the U.S. The company was also concerned that it lacked a clear picture of the entirety of its maintenance spending. It needed more comprehensive information to make large-scale strategic decisions about equipment and maintenance management and budgeting-the ultimate goal being to significantly reduce costs.

Solution

First, Forsythe's dedicated maintenance support team relieved the company of day-to-day management of maintenance moves/adds/changes/deletes. Next, Forsythe worked directly with each of the equipment manufacturers to consolidate and make coterminous the company's maintenance coverage. Forsythe then performed physical walk-throughs of the company's data centers to collect verified current equipment data. Forsythe aggregated all the company's multi-platform asset and maintenance tracking data and made it available 24/7 via Forsythe's secure, customer-access portal, My Forsythe. The information-which includes location, serial number, equipment description, end of support life, and service level details for every covered device-provides an up-to-date financial picture of the company's support services investment. It is viewable in aggregate by manufacturer and by data center location to enable the company to better see and understand its spending patterns.

Results

The company is already reducing its maintenance costs due to greater volume discounts based on Forsythe's consolidation of its contracts. In addition, by handing over day-to-day internal administration and communication with the manufacturers to Forsythe, the company can now focus its attention on strategic spending analysis and planning. Being able to view its maintenance and IT asset tracking information in meaningful "slices" means it has better data with which to perform such analysis. An additional benefit of this new level of detail has been the company's ability to easily calculate maintenance expenditures for its internal chargeback system.

The company has already realized maintenance cost savings as high as 30% in some areas. It now has the information at its fingertips to continue to make significant cost reductions. Equally important, by working through Forsythe, the company gains greater flexibility and takes on less risk in investing in cross-platform solutions, and is able to continually tailor its maintenance to meet its needs.