Member Article

BCS Announces Extended SAM Contract with Shop Direct

Business Continuity Services (BCS), a trusted global provider of Software Asset Management (SAM) solutions and services, today announced, after working with them extensively throughout 2011, an extended contract with Shop Direct, one of its many key customers.

Shop Direct Group is the UK’s leading online and home shopping retailer with nine brands including Littlewoods, Very and isme. Shop Direct are using Software Organiser; a market leading software licence management tool supplied and supported by BCS that provides everything an organisation needs to effectively identify and control costly software assets. Following a period of intensive SAM focused activity; Shop Direct has now engaged BCS to provide an ongoing SAM Managed Service Delivery Programme plus ad-hoc consultancy services.

Through their SAM Managed Delivery Programme, BCS is providing Shop Direct with a “per device, fixed fee, fully managed compliance service (FMS)”. BCS will manage Shop Direct’s SAM compliance programme, helping the organisation to maintain compliance, prepare for audits, plan software upgrade paths and control software maintenance costs. This enables the Shop Direct IT team to focus on their core responsibilities in the knowledge that these essential tasks are in experienced professional hands.

A Shop Direct spokesman stated; “BCS continues to work with us to ensure our internal software asset management solutions meet the high standards expected of a successful commercially driven company such as ours.”

Shop Direct has an annual turnover of £1.7 billion and over five million customers. Its contact centres and warehouses handle over 19 million calls and over 53 million items per year. To put this into context, this exciting online retailer sells a pair of jeans and a dress every 12 seconds. In recent years, Shop Direct has grown its online ecommerce trading with the IT department evolving in tune with these developments, thus necessitating the need to identify and better manage their increasingly expensive software assets.

With over 8,000 devices spread across multiple sites around the UK, Shop Direct was looking for a supplier with extensive SAM experience and impartial licensing knowledge. Having provided independent and accurate information for over 17 years on optimizing software licensing, normalising audit data and helping customers to achieve software licence compliance; BCS was an obvious choice.

Today, through its SAM Managed Delivery Programme and consultancy services, BCS is helping Shop Direct execute its Software Asset Management plan in order to achieve a controlled Effective Licence Position (ELP) enabling reconciliation and management of software installs plus identification and reduction of any associated risks. As part of the service, BCS also helps Shop Direct to effectively appreciate and manage multiple vendor software agreements and contracts in order to achieve a mature software licence compliance position.

Andy Fisher, New Business Development Director for BCS comments: “To date, we have enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Shop Direct. Over the past couple of years, we have worked together to enhance their ability to recycle and re-harvest their licence estate and as a result, Shop Direct now has its software licences and SAM practices under control. We are delighted that we have been invited to continue working with Shop Direct as I think this clearly demonstrates the value that we are providing through our SAM Managed Service Delivery Programme which now covers approximately 140,000 devices world wide for clients of all types.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Andy Fisher .