GEC reaps the benefits of standards

Last September, GEC made the radical decision to centralise all its global procurement decisions.

The company's CEO, George Simpson, said he wanted to reduce costs and increase bargaining power with vendors. He argued that instead of acting as several small companies, GEC would be better off consolidating its purchasing power to get better deals from vendors.

To see it through, he set up a procurement council made up of representatives from each country, to work closely with a specialised IT council. Russ Armitage, chairman of the procurement council, told Silicon.com that in hindsight, the biggest task he faced was to ensure all divisions around the world were running on the same equipment.

Armitage said: "The first thing was always defining the standards - if you just take something simple like what standard of PC should be used for a secretary and what standard should be used for a software engineer, you get into innumerable debates. And we've resolved that by working with everybody - you can then set a standard and make an agreement with one or two IT businesses."

With that task complete, Armitage said GEC is already making cost savings by having improved communications and a more robust IT infrastructure. "Because we are so scattered, we are very dependent on our IT infrastructure. With standardised systems, we cut down on maintenance costs, improve reliability of the systems and make mobility between divisions easier."

The full interview can be seen on Silicon.com's Outsourcing Channel, at http://www.silicon.com/outsourcing