Business Connexion (BCX) has been awarded a three-year contract worth in excess of R100 million to provide and manage ICT services to packaging manufacturer, Nampak.
The contract reaffirms the relationship between the two companies, which dates back to November 2002, when Nampak first signed Business Connexion as its primary ICT service provider.
The first contract between Business Connexion and Nampak came to an end in October 2005 and was extended to October 2006. At this time, Nampak extended the contract on a month-to-month basis while it surveyed the market to assess the relevance and value of its deal with Business Connexion.
Nampak's Toni Serra says that this was part of a standard auditing process. "Our board wanted to check that we were still getting the best possible deal on our ICT service provider, and so we decided to open up our business to the competition," he says.
In August 2006, Nampak issued an open request for proposal to the ICT service provider market. Eleven major local and global companies responded, but by February 2007 Nampak had concluded that Business Connexion still offered the organisation the best overall ICT outsource solution. According to Sydney Ramutla at Business Connexion, the deal embodies the principles of a second-generation outsource. "Whereas a first-generation outsourcing deal is often concerned with how service delivery is being achieved, for example, the number of resources used, the maturity of the relationship allowed us to revamp our offering and put together a contract that shifted the focus to how well services are delivered," he says.
In the process of negotiation, Business Connexion was awarded additional business over and above the services that it was already supplying to Nampak. This extended mainly to the provision of hardware maintenance services, but also, as a single service aggregator, to the task of managing service delivery from many of Nampak's other ICT suppliers.
Business Connexion's ability to manage multiple suppliers though its Service Management centre and report service levels against a business focused service level agreement on behalf of Nampak's Group IT, adds considerable value in a multi-supplier environment.
Under the contract, Business Connexion manages all aspects of Nampak's infrastructure, with the exception of the wide area network (WAN), which is provided by Telkom. Ramutla says Business Connexion not only provides Nampak with the management and support of the infrastructure, but also hosts around 300 Nampak servers at one of Business Connexion's large data centres.
"When a Nampak user has an ICT-related issue, he or she phones Business Connexion and we take responsibility for ensuring the right resources and suppliers are mobilised. Nampak measures us on how well all its ICT providers perform and we ensure all parties meet their agreed service levels," he says.
Sydney Ramutla adds that Nampak's deal with Business Connexion is testament to a reliable and evolving service. "Nampak's own end-user satisfaction surveys show that for the last three years ICT services as perceived by the end-user community have improved year-on-year," he concludes.
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