A recent article by Rob Livingstone on CFO.com [1] attracted my attention. In the article, Rob talks about the need for a tighter, ongoing working relationship between your company and its IT vendors for “as-a-service” technology-delivery models. We have in previous blogs also discussed the changes required in the everything-as-a-service (XaaS) movement. Clearly, Rob’s target audience here is primarily the CFO, and Rob’s suggestions are intended to help financial officers focus on some of the vendor selection issues that are emerging as the technology evolves, and as the customer-vendor relationship evolves in parallel.
As a billing vendor, I look at this from the other side of the negotiation fence, but nevertheless I find I’m pretty much in agreement with Mr. Livingstone.
The article contains a number of useful reminders, some of which I may return to in a future blog. However, for today, I’ve picked out a couple of Rob’s comments, because they happen to resonate with discussions we are constantly having with our customers and prospective customers. They both address adaptability and flexibility, important tag words for us here at MetraTech.