Registration and information hours for the day. Registration will be located at the Hospitality Desk, Ground Floor from 11am onwards.

Implementing a vendor management program or office where none exists can be daunting. Challenges in defining the scope of the program and building out the key processes can delay implementation. This session will provide the foundation for starting any new IT vendor management program.
- How do you establish a clear vision and sponsorship for a vendor management initiative?
- What policies and processes should you establish first?
- What key roles and responsibilities must be established to make vendor management a success?

IT vendors often enter into contract negotiations with strong leverage because they are fully aware that you’ve made your buying decision and there is a lack of practical alternatives. In this session， we provide negotiating skills and techniques necessary when your leverage has been compromised:
How do you identify the factors that compromise your negotiation power?
What techniques can be leveraged to regain control and authority over the negotiation?
How do you ensure a positive relationship endures at the end of the negotiation?

In this era of rapid technological and business change， SPVM needs to change as well. In this opening keynote we will examine how SPVM needs to adapt its value proposition， its operations and its technology approach to be at the heart of business growth.

Join us for refreshments in a brief break between sessions.

SAP continues to evolve its business model to facilitate its transition to the HANA Platform and S/4HANA ERP，and to support cloud services’ growth. This interactive clinic will help sourcing and vendor procurement leaders to recognize and respond to changes in SAP’s product offerings and pricing metrics and explore negotiating tactics in order to mitigate risk and maximize deal value.

When engaging IaaS providers, contract structures, schedules and negotiation best practices are quite different compared to traditional service deals. Use this interactive session to improve your IaaS deals by optimizing key contract clauses in simpler agreements, building key best practice SOW, SLA and pricing schedules and optimizing negotiation strategies to avoid standard IaaS contractual constraints.

Effective management of IT assets requires the development of a complete IT asset life cycle management plan. Learn what the entire IT asset life cycle is， and how organizations must use it to manage their IT assets. What are the different steps of the IT asset life cycle? Who needs to be engaged in what phases of the life cycle? How do you use the life cycle to improve the management of IT assets?

Cost optimization is a constant challenge for all IT leaders. This session provides 15 actionable ideas to optimize IT costs through tactical improvements and transformational changes.
- How do we identify effective cost savings tactics that do not require a lengthy qualification process?
- What are best practices for reassessing and reworking procurement processes， supply networks and product specifications to optimize procurement costs?
- How do we develop more collaborative， strategic capabilities to optimize costs across the enterprise?

Cost transparency is critical to IT spend analysis and forecasting. This session focuses on IT finance and procurement collaboration to optimize vendor negotiations by customizing financial models such as NPV， Demand Forecasting，TCA/TCO. How can you identify the hidden costs required for a true and total cost impact analysis? What action items are required to analyze multiyear prepay proposals，on-premises to SaaS migrations，and hardware and software alternatives? How can you use financial models as a key leverage tool during negotiations?

The foundation for successful sourcing is a business and IT aligned strategy. However， most sourcing strategies are stale， focusing on outdated IT categories. This session will cover the steps involved in developing， socializing and supporting a compelling IT and business aligned sourcing strategy:
Which stakeholders should be included in defining your sourcing strategy?
What are the steps involved in building a business and IT aligned sourcing strategy?
How do you socialize the strategy and gain awareness and acceptance?

In an environment of shifting trends and development in both technologies and business objectives and strategies， IT vendor management leaders must continue to develop new competencies and best practices in vendor management to support these changes and trends. In this session we introduce Gartner’s new framework for implementing operating and maturing vendor management. What are the key components and activities in IT vendor management? How can you implement an effective IT vendor management discipline? How can you achieve the optimal business outcomes from your IT vendor management discipline?

Software support and maintenance costs continue to rise, from 12% to 18% up to 21% to 25% for many providers. But are you getting any more value in return? This clinic will explore how to negotiate maintenance and support renwals to optimize costs, taking into consideration such factors as the degree to which you utilize the provider's support offerings, the likelihood of utilizing upgrades, and the ability to leverage alternative providers at a lower cost.

Salesforce has become one of the largest vendors in the application ecosystem， with increasing product offerings and a broad array of subscription options. This clinic will provide attendees with strategies and tactics to negotiate the best contractual deal and mitigate risk when dealing with Salesforce.

Join other attendees for lunch and take advantage of the opportunity to network and catch up on the day's activities so far.

Negotiating effective software and SaaS deals with the megavendors takes more than good negotiating skills: It takes depth of knowledge of the specific vendors’ tactics and techniques. Learn how to tailor negotiations using specific tips and tactics for each megavendor: IBM，Microsoft，Oracle and SAP. This includes for each megavendor: Tailoring processes， building leverage with each negotiation and minimizing contractual risks.

This clinic illustrates how to use eight steps for planning negotiations with major vendors and new emerging software and cloud vendors. In this interactive discussion， we will discuss:
- How can we ensure that we ask the the right questions and gather the right detail to mitigate against cost and risk?
- How can we engage the right IT and business stakeholders to identify requirements?
- How can we leverage stakeholders as part of the negotiation plan and strategy?

IT Financial Management (ITFM) too often lacks a clear mandate， stakeholder buy-in and resource commitment. The key to mature ITFM is having a strong，clear vision with achievable time frames and a concrete roadmap with specific actionable milestones. How can you gain ITFM buy-in from the IT organization， the CFO and other key non-IT players? What are best practices to engage stakeholders to drive a sustained strategic focus on ITFM? How can you most effectively validate and communicate the ITFM program goals and impact to the business?

Software asset management (SAM) enables organizations to reduce risk and optimize costs; however, implementing a (SAM) initiative can be fraught with challenges. SAM leaders can avoid potential pitfalls by understanding the most common mistakes and how to avoid them. Why do "crash diet" approaches to SAM fail? How can you institute a healthy, sustainable approach to SAM? What tools and service providers can help you succeed with SAM?

Sourcing and procurement leaders with IT category plans can help their business stakeholders deliver against their critical business initiatives. This session will help leaders develop effective category plans. How does a category plan enable better alignment and engagement with your stakeholders? What are the critical components and sources of information to build a proactive category plan? How often should we update our plan to embed it into our existing operating model?

Procurement and vendor management leaders are often challenged to get their business stakeholders to view them as a strategic resource. This highly interactive session will help procurement and vendor management leaders to think strategically about how they communicate in order to expand their influence. Join this sessions to ask questions about new ways of thinking in terms of prioritizing communication efforts， how to build compelling messages and how to build a robust communication plan

This session will review the two primary cloud office vendors， Microsoft and Google’s offerings to illustrate their respective licensing methodologies. How should you review and evaluate the various cloud office bundles and the various licensing options? What should you consider when licensing? How do you license for maximum savings and flexible terms， while avoiding common mistakes made when comparing pricing options?

How we organize for vendor management can significantly impact how we enable optimal vendor performance. This session will identify best practices and methods to rightsize a vendor management office or organization.
What are the critical roles and responsibilities in vendor management?
What are the most effective organization models to optimize resources and facilitate effective governance?
How do we decide which organization model is best for us?

Sourcing, procurement and vendor management leaders are discovering how to successfully adopt and integrate intelligent automation services (IAS) capabilities. This session will provide you with the tools for assessing your organization’s maturity.
How can you perform an IAS maturity level review?
What are examples of use cases from successful organizations?
How can you effectively perform a proof of concept (POC) and determine use cases for your organization?

You’ve finally got time with senior management and need to request money and resources from them. This is the crucial business case presentation. But how do you really deliver with impact so that they sign-off and give you approval? This session will help you to deliver a better presentation and show you how to ensure that they are on-board with your proposals.

Join us for refreshments in a brief break between sessions.

This practical interactive clinic explains how to effectively negotiate SaaS contracts. Attend this session to learn the trends in SaaS contracting， how to identify and control hidden costs and what opportunities/risks lurk within SaaS agreements.

Negotiations on large IaaS agreements often involve substantial commitments and risk. Each cloud vendor has their own set of standards and exceptions that implicate the pricing outcome. In this interactive clinic, we will review the critical differences and similarities to be aware of when negotiating with these competing cloud providers to assist in achieving the most optimal contract.

Moving to SAP HANA requires a multitude of interlinked decisions by sourcing teams. These cover the solution，hosting options and implementation strategies. This session discusses the most common and critical questions to be addressed in your sourcing strategy. What are the most critical sourcing strategy and execution decisions to make early in your sourcing stage?

Many enterprises fail to meet cost control expectations when outsourcing because they didn’t consider all costs in their business case. This session will provide attendees the tools to better identify and analyze costs when outsourcing. How do you use Gartner’s Total Cost of Sourcing model to identify all the outsourcing and services costs? What are the risks associated with this type of outsourcing? How do you make the pragmatic choices on which providers are best for your needs?

Artificial intelligence and robotic process automation are disrupting user-based software and SaaS pricing. In this session attendees will learn new ways to measure and pay for SaaS usage.
- How can you best contract for cloud products while preserving investments?
- How can you optimize costs by capitalizing on provider pricing metric changes?
- What are the best practices for analyzing and comparing different vendors pricing metrics and models?

There are many tools and methods for assessing vendor risks. These range from assessment questionnaires to onsite audits， the collection of risk attestations， and certifications. This session will address the methods and practices that enterprises are taking to improve what is often the most problematic and inefficient process in vendor risk management.

This session will explore the notion that organization’s traditional sourcing and procurement practices are not well aligned to successfully evaluate and select digital business consulting service providers.
How you can adjust your traditional approach so that you enable your organization to identify nontraditional service providers that have critical capabilities for digital initiatives?

Many procurement professionals are not familiar with Google’s approach to licensing and how to acquire the technology. This session will provide the foundation for procurement leaders to better understand Google’s licensing methods. How do you plan for the disruptive technologies in Google’s stack of digital solutions?
How can you decipher Google’s GCP， AI and IoT licensing options? How do you align Google’s services to deliver against your digital objectives?

Should you allow SaaS to take care of itself? Data shares open to the Internet， regulatory noncompliance， overspend， and collaboration sprawl negatively impacts the majority of Gartner clients. More and more sourcing， procurement and vendor management leaders are learning that the care and feeding of SaaS is a vitally important domain that requires a strategic approach， a dedicated cross-domain team， and specialized orchestration tools.

As a sourcing, procurement, IT finance, asset or vendor management leader, you need a broad skill set. And you’re working with a diverse range of stakeholders within your organization. How do you influence these stakeholders effectively? Your ability to persuade these people is crucial to ensure that security doesn’t become ignored. What makes people tick? How do people make decisions? In this workshop, you’ll learn exactly this and understand the psychology behind how people make choices. Armed with these tools, you’ll become far more influential with your stakeholders and ensure that you are viewed as a trusted partner.

This session will illustrate and guide sourcing， procurement and vendor management leaders involved in the negotiation planning process in how to incorporate ten “must know” tips， tactics and “tricks” into the negotiation plan. How can you optimize pricing? How can you negotiate the best terms and conditions? How can you manage risk to safeguard our organization?

The RFP process can be six months long but what if you need to start the project in 6 weeks? This session will look at the traditional provider engagement process and provide an evaluation framework that will significantly speed up the identification and selection process. The session will address the following:
How do you decide which providers to include in your shortlist?
How do you build a reusable framework for comparing and selecting providers?
What can you do to contract more quickly but still manage risk adequately?

Software audits have become a high-risk and high-cost challenge for most organizations. Each year， Gartner takes hundreds of inquiries on this important topic， and has developed a powerful， highly effective 9-step Audit Readiness Process known as C9: How can I develop a robust， effective Audit Readiness kit? How can I improve my procurement and change management processes to minimize my ongoing financial risk of noncompliance? How can I apply the C9 steps to reduce risk when faced with an audit from vendors like IBM， Microsoft， Oracle or SAP?

Many organizations are moving to agile development and from a project- to product-centric delivery models to support digital business. Most are not adequately changing their financial governance processes. Typical questions that may be asked in this session include: How can I identify pitfalls and resolve pitfalls in the product model? How do I fund in a product model? How can I track cost and value so that a product model delivers on its promises?

Savings are an important metric that show the results that a procurement professional and a procurement team has achieved. But procurement can provide value beyond just cost savings and this session will provide examples of how to showcase this value. What are the best metrics for proving procurement’s value to the business that go beyond cost savings?

Vendor performance management is more than just developing SLAs. To continuously improve vendors performance， a standardized and consistent program approach should be adopted. This session will provide an overview of the key components of a successful vendor performance management program. What critical activities must be included in a comprehensive vendor performance management program?

RPA adoption is growing rapidly and Gartner predicts future disruptions and obsolescence. This session will discuss how to prepare for these changes by understanding the evolution in pricing, developing governance and where to apply RPA.
How do you identify the right licensing model for RPA?
How do you track the trends in the market and contract to address those trends?
How do you govern the providers of this rapidly moving technology?

Negotiating with Oracle can pose specific challenges. This clinic will help you to navigate the key trends, protect against risk and manage costs by addressing how to negotiate the best possible Oracle contract, how to uncover hidden costs and audit risks, and how to maximize leverage during your Oracle negotiations.

Enterprises spend between 5% and 15% of their IT budget on their networks. However, the continual evolution of enterprise demands, combined with rapidly changing market offerings and pricing options, mean that enterprises need to continually review their network sourcing and contracting to ensure they are getting the optimum balance of price, quality and flexibility. This clinic will offer best practices for network sourcing and contracting and enable discussion of how these might apply to the participants environments.

Registration and information hours for the day. Registration will be located at the Hospitality Desk, Ground Floor from 11am onwards.

Digital disruption is coming to every industry, geography and role. Digital dragons like Alibaba, Amazon and others are playing evolving roles, related not only to technology, but also to customer experience, payment, data and insight. They have deep pockets, great talent and attractive brands and they are a different type of partner, pervading many aspects of your enterprise’s ecosystem. Learn how to develop a strategic posture toward each dragon, how to ensure a joined up management of interactions with them, and how they’ve already disrupted other industries.

The world is messing with our minds. Rates of stress and anxiety are rising. A fast, nervous planet is creating fast and nervous lives. We are more connected, yet feel more alone. We are encouraged to worry about everything from world politics to our body mass index.
Bestselling author Matt Haig tackles questions that are on so many of our minds; How can we stay sane on a planet that makes us mad? How do we stay human in a technological world? A positive, honest and insightful discussion about the modern world and how best to navigate it.

Join us for refreshments in a brief break between sessions.

IT procurement leaders are often challenged by negotiating effective Microsoft Enterprise Agreements and renewals because of the complexity of Microsoft’s licensing models and the number of options and use rights that have to be considered. This clinic will guide customers to understand these complexities and plan an effective negotiation strategy.

This clinic will illustrate Gartner’s four-step approach called "T4" (T1-Tactics; T2-Templates; T3-Terms & Conditions; T4-Timing) to educate attendees on the importance of and how to "vendor-ize" negotiations specific to IBM. Attendees will receive ready-to-use worksheets of IBM-specific negotiation tips, tactics and "tricks" along with customized checklists and templates to optimize IBM deals.

IT finance executives are challenged to structure the financing of IT’s core infrastructure to optimize cost and business agility. This session will answer many of your most critical IT financing questions. How do you minimize the risks and costs of financing IT assets while maintaining the flexibility and agility that IT and the business demand? Should you lease or purchase our IT infrastructure? What effect will the new FASB and IASB accounting changes have on your financing decision and the opex/capex balance?

Digital business requirements are sourced from the external ecosystem， making sourcing capabilities a critical link for digital transformation. Evaluate your organizational readiness for the faster， cheaper and high-quality sourcing decisions required to rapidly deliver stable IT industrialization and rapid business innovation. this session examines: How to evaluate your sourcing organization readiness for digital transformation? What are the practical steps to implement bimodal，dynamic sourcing? What are practical cases of success with dynamic sourcing?

Digital dragons like Alibaba Group, Amazon and others are playing disruptive roles in the digital ecosystem. Come to discuss how to make sure your business/government agency is considering the dragons appropriately in their strategic planning.

When organizations outsource their services they often do not spend the time to define the retained organization and the new roles and responsibilities and competencies needed. This presentation will discuss:
What roles should be retained to govern demand and supply?
What competencies are needed in the retained organization to successfully manage provider performance?
How do you transition to an effective delivery model including sourced services and retained staff?

Procurement leaders struggle when they only have one process for procurement, and are unable to respond when their business units have adopted agile methodologies to address their digital business challenges. In this workshop, you will define an agile procurement process that:
Identifies stakeholders who need to be involved and when they need to be engaged.
Defines the due diligence requirements and to which acquisitions they apply.

Join us for this women in IT session where you can connect with your peers over hot, current topics for women. You will have the opportunity to meet and exchange with your peers and participate in guided brainstorming around your challenges, key solutions and best practices. The goal is to share your perspectives and experiences, develop relationships that support ongoing discussions and collaboration, and explore how to embrace diversity, foster culture and instill the mindset traits required by high-performing teams.

Join other attendees for lunch and take advantage of the opportunity to network and catch up on the day's activities so far.

Salesforce has become one of the largest vendors in the application ecosystem，with increasing product offerings and a broad array of subscription options. This clinic will provide attendees with strategies and tactics to negotiate the best contractual deal and mitigate risk when dealing with Salesforce.
This is a repeat session.

Negotiating effective software and SaaS deals with the megavendors takes more than good negotiating skills: It takes depth of knowledge of the specific vendors’ tactics and techniques. Learn how to tailor negotiations using specific tips and tactics for each megavendor: IBM，Microsoft，Oracle and SAP. This includes for each megavendor: Tailoring processes， building leverage with each negotiation and minimizing contractual risks.
This is a repeat session.

Organizations that are outsourcing IT services should require solution measurement plans that support their business goals. This session will help attendees create the right measures of success.
- What are the sustainable measures needed for successful outsourcing results?
- What are the processes that should be in place?
- How do how you use measures to achieve successful outsourcing deals?

IT procurement teams can use general sourcing and procurement applications to execute sourcing events， negotiate contract terms and manage vendor relationships. IT Sourcing， Procurement and Vendor Management leaders need to understand the applications and vendors in the market to engage them effectively.
What applications make up the sourcing and procurement market?
Who are the key vendors in this market?
How can IT procurement leaders leverage these tools?

The onslaught of challenging and disruptive technologies (i.e., digital business, IoT, IA, robotics), deployment methods, consumption models, and vendors are challenging how organizations acquire and manage technology. Close, effective collaboration between Procurement and ITAM is a key success prerequisite to managing these challenges — and turning them to your advantage.

This case study shows how Bertelsmann's Corporate IT Sourcing has developed a holistic tool-based approach to streamline, standardize and accelerate its processes of developing category strategies, while also involving category teams staffed by colleagues from different business units. Key topics will include:

● Blueprint for digital transformation of strategic category management

● Using AI to observe and manage markets and Increased efficiency

● Continuous collaboration with stakeholders and partners

This session will present the best practices for building an effective vendor performance scorecard. It will detail approaches to create business-based metrics and a balanced approach for presenting vendor performance.
How can you develop vendor performance indicators that align to your business requirements?
What performance metrics will best represent these indicators?
How do you build a vendor scorecard to present these metrics?

IT and finance organizations struggle to accurately evaluate the financial impact of on-premises to cloud migration. This session will help you accurately quantify the costs and benefits of a cloud migration strategy. What are the hidden costs of cloud that you need to include in your financial models? How can you support your cloud strategy by accurately comparing on-premises to cloud financials? How do you ensure you have complete visibility and clarity of all cloud switching and exit costs?

Join us for a hands on workshop to develop contextually specific messaging about the value of your sourcing， procurement and vendor management work. A critical capability for any SPVM organization is to be able to identify， measure， and communicate the value of its work. This can be hard to do unless we are very good at communicating about business outcomes， strategic value， vendor risk management， and continuous collaboration. Complicating this further is that often， our organizational culture prioritizes other messages over value-oriented ones. Our workshop will give us a chance to apply several key tools and techniques for hacking this problem and overcoming significant hurdles in communicating about sourcing.

Join us for refreshments in a brief break between sessions.

SAP continues to evolve its business model to facilitate its transition to the HANA Platform and S/4HANA ERP，and to support cloud services’ growth. This interactive clinic will help sourcing and vendor procurement leaders to recognize and respond to changes in SAP’s product offerings and pricing metrics and explore negotiating tactics in order to mitigate risk and maximize deal value.
This is a repeat session.

Negotiations on large IaaS agreements often involve substantial commitments and risk. Each cloud vendor has their own set of standards and exceptions that implicate the pricing outcome. In this interactive clinic， we will review the critical differences and similarities to be aware of when negotiating with these competing cloud providers to assist in achieving the most optimal contract.
This is a repeat session.

IT service providers are hired to solve business problems， yet many contracts are written so that the customer carries all the risk and the supplier none. This presentation explains how to contract for business outcomes.
● How do you know when a contract is suitable for business outcomes?
● How should you define measurable business outcomes?
● How can you negotiate outcome contracts with business outcomes?

Vendor risk management isn’t just required in highly regulated industries， it’s good practice in all industries. But today’s approaches are mired in lengthy and complex assessment surveys that span a variety of threats and risks. This session will discuss how to improve and enhance your model for managing vendor risks. Why is vendor risk management important now? What are the current best practices in a vendor risk management life cycle? How can you improve the efficiency and value of your vendor risk management programs?

Cloud-based solutions such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) have unique attributes and requirements with frequent changes as the market matures. This session will provide sourcing and procurement managers with key attributes and contract examples to help organizations understand issue spotting and how to negotiate deals. Key issues:
- What are the differences between traditional and emerging cloud based contracts?
- What opportunities do you have when negotiating these contracts?
- What do you do to limit risk via the contracts?

IT leaders are under continuous pressure to cut costs and/or deliver more with fewer resources. Use the concept of this roadmap as a communication device to socialize and gain buy-in from enterprise partners for evolving your enterprise’s IT cost optimization initiatives. How can you gain IT cost optimization stakeholder buy-in? What are the key activities to ensure a path toward IT cost optimization? How can you create a roadmap framework for communicating a vision?

The digital business must trust a growing set of external entities，including cloud services，professional services，suppliers and other intimately connected organizations. Typical questions that may be asked in this session include: Will they infect you with malware? Will they safely protect your information? How do other organizations scale themselves to assess the security risk represented by hundreds，or thousands，of external parties?

The majority of legacy software vendors are retiring their on-premise licensing models in favor of subscription-based services， which drive increased revenues and dependency. In this session，we will cover:

● How to determine the end of life dates for your on-premise licenses?

● When do you need to engage to have leverage with an incumbent vendor?

●How to create and execute an effective sourcing strategy that identifies viable alternatives and drives down costs with your incumbent vendor?

With the continued adoption of "as a service" software delivery models，IT Asset Managers must shift their focus to managing software assets in cloud computing environments. In this session，you will learn how cloud computing is impacting SAM strategies and be prepared to address the impacts within your organization. What impact is cloud computing having on SAM? What’s SAM’s role in managing cloud assets? How can SAM adapt to meet the demand to manage cloud assets?

Maturing your vendor management program starts by understanding your current maturity and mapping out a plan for reaching your desired state. Gartner's new ITScore model for IT vendor management provides the ability to quickly perform this assessment. This session will provide you with the tools to assess your IT vendor management maturity and build out your roadmap for advancing your organization's maturity.

Augmented reality, intelligent automation, advanced analytics, virtual agents, IoT are reshaping the way employees interact in their workplace environment. This session will examine how these emerging technologies can be used to enhance collaboration and performance, and how organizations can leverage its sourcing network to initiate the adoption of these technologies. What are the emerging workplace technologies? What are some examples of how they are being applied today? How can I start the adoption of these technologies in my organization?

Vendor management leaders are challenged to prove their value to the business. In this session，we’ll provide examples of how to calculate and communicate hard metrics like financial value and less objective and tangible measures.
- How do you calculate financial value of the vendor management organization?
- What intangible benefits does vendor management offer?
- What are the best methods to communicate financial and nonfinancial benefits?

Reducing costs is top of mind for IT sourcing and procurement leaders，yet a narrow unit price focus can drive higher costs. This session provides an actionable framework used by leading procurement organizations to ensure cost savings consistently reach the bottom line.
How do you drive TCO adoption into foundational sourcing and procurement processes，and then identify and harvest the ripest opportunities for TCO-based cost savings?

Analytics capabilities within the procurement and sourcing solutions market are evolving. This session will discuss the specific types of analytics solutions and their use cases. How and where can procurement and sourcing professionals use analytics to become more data driven?

This session will focus on the Magic Quadrant for Software Asset Management Tools. It will highlight the latest trends in the SAM tools market, review the vendors having the most impact on the market, and highlight other Gartner resources that can help guide your SAM tool investments.

This session provides an overview of the 2019 European data center outsourcing and Hybrid Infrastructure Managed Services Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities. This session will examine the providers of legacy systems management，private and public cloud，and edge compute for IoT.

Registration and information hours for the day.

IT asset management is a practice that most organizations recognize the need for，but have a hard time when starting to build an effective ITAM program. This workshop will provide you with valuable insights that will help you establish your ITAM roadmap and execute an effective ITAM program.

New metrics (APIs, Bots, etc.) are showing up in today’s SaaS contracts. This session will show how to negotiate SaaS contracts in a world of newer metrics and growing requirements for consumption-based pricing. How do you better meet the needs of digital business by negotiating SaaS terms and aligning costs with value?

To successfully fund innovation and digital business initiatives，procurement and IT must partner with IT Finance to optimize both enterprise IT and business costs. This requires procurement leaders to collaborate with IT to first demonstrate capabilities in how to effectively manage IT costs，and then to partner with IT Finance to leverage technology to optimize cost across the enterprise. What are the best practices to get procurement，IT and IT Finance to partner and collaborate to optimize IT and enterprise spend?

Midsize enterprises face different challenges than their larger， and global peers when sourcing. This session will analyze the challenges MSEs face in choosing solutions and service providers and provide best practices based on case studies for how to speed up the sourcing process and improve time to value.

You rely on your strategic IT vendors to do more than "keep the lights on，" you need them to help your business succeed. Keeping them from managing you though can be a challenge. This session will help you maneuver through these most complex relationships to drive real-business value. What actions can we take to establish a strategic vendor management program? How can you create shared objectives with these vendors? How can relationship management maintain alignment of both parties objectives?

For many years IT services have become increasingly globalized, delivered from offshore and nearshore locations. This model is threatened by recent geopolitical trends. This session will describe:

● What geopolitical events threaten the global delivery model?

● What is the potential impact of these events?

● How should organizations mitigate the risk of such impact?

Software asset management tools have become popular; however, their diverse data requirements make the selection process challenging. By ensuring their SAM tool delivers four primary capabilities, infrastructure and operations leaders will choose the right SAM tool to support their enterprise goals. How can you ensure that SAM tool investments will deliver on their promises?

This session will provide you with the opportunity to ask the expert about how to best plan for negotiating network renewals with the service providers. Cost optimization tips and tactics will be offered to aid procurement managers for both new network contracts and renewal considerations.

Vendor management leaders must develop a governance model based on a segmentation of their IT vendors. Segmentation should differentiate vendors based on their criticality and value to the business. What methods and criteria should be used when segmenting your IT vendors?

Your next infrastructure-managed service contracts must be cloud-first and support IoT and digital business beyond 2020. Learn how to dramatically improve your performances:
How can you address unknown business priorities and transformation requirements in your SOW?
How can you develop a compelling sourcing strategy for digital infrastructure in weeks?
How do you select managed service providers in 90 minutes and negotiate contracts in three months?

Public sector Procurement leaders are constrained with regulation that restricts them from accelerating certain procurement projects even if they want to. In this session we will investigate a number of approaches that can be taken to potentially create speed without operating outside the legal framework of the given public entity.

Cloud-based solutions such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) have unique attributes and requirements with frequent changes as the market matures. This session will provide sourcing and procurement managers with key attributes and contract examples to help organizations understand issue spotting and how to negotiate deals. Key issues:
- What are the differences between traditional and emerging cloud based contracts?
- What opportunities do you have when negotiating these contracts?
- What do you do to limit risk via the contracts?
(Repeat)

The foundation for successful sourcing is a business and IT aligned strategy. However， most sourcing strategies are stale， focusing on outdated IT categories. This session will cover the steps involved in developing， socializing and supporting a compelling IT and business aligned sourcing strategy:
Which stakeholders should be included in defining your sourcing strategy?
What are the steps involved in building a business and IT aligned sourcing strategy?
How do you socialize the strategy and gain awareness and acceptance? (Repeat)

Negotiating with Oracle can pose specific challenges. This clinic will help you to navigate the key trends， protect against risk and manage costs by addressing how to negotiate the best possible Oracle contract， how to uncover hidden costs and audit risks， and how to maximize leverage during your Oracle negotiations.
This is a repeat session.

Join us for refreshments in a brief break between sessions.

IBM， Microsoft， Oracle and SAP allow you to move software licenses to the cloud under their own rules and policies about which licenses can be hosted where and how to calculate the requirement. How can we identify the nuances of each provider’s policies and reduce risks of noncompliance and potentially large unbudgeted fees.

Many IT leaders are challenged to overcome the perception from stakeholders that they don’t truly understand “the Business.” Join this interactive session to ask questions such as: How can I create KPIs and Metrics to help evolve the perception of IT as a Business Partner? How can I make KPIs and metrics that influence business decision making?

Political， geographic， digital and technology drivers are establishing a need for proximity as a critical factor in any modern sourcing capability that needs to be able to draw talent， resources， technology， and services from the best source. What are the trends， drivers，models and locations in the EMEA nearshore supply market for services，resources and captive and outsourced centers?

Blockchain has transcended its bitcoin-related origins to reveal itself as a disruptive collection of technologies that can have an enormous impact on business and society. In this session, we discuss how you can cut through the hype and apply blockchain for maximum benefit. What is the current state of the blockchain market? What we can expect from blockchain in the near future? How should enterprises proceed with blockchain initiatives?

Digital technology continues to disrupt enterprises with new solutions, terminology, and asset classes. This session will cover the impacts that require leaders responsible for ITAM to evolve their program and recommendations to incorporate changes and meet increased demand from digital business initiatives.

The use SaaS can increase risks that are different from managing traditonal software and services. This session will provide guidance on how to best manage risk， performance， and cost. What are the key SLAs and performance criteria to ensure application uptime and performance? What questions should I ask to determine the dependency and risk of a SaaS application， and how can I mitigate these risks? What tools can be purposed to discover， optimize consumption， and measure the performance of SaaS applications?

Dedicated sourcing， procurement and relationship managers all too often achieve suboptimal results when working with outsourcing vendors . The biggest challenge is achieving a fair contract， including what can/can’t be negotiated， exiting cloud contracts， establishing risk-management processes， and driving provider behavior. This session provides attendees key take-aways on how to best negotiate their outsourcing deals.

(Repeat Session) Enterprises spend between 5% and 15% of their IT budget on their networks. However， the continual evolution of enterprise demands， combined with rapidly changing market offerings and pricing options， mean that enterprises need to continually review their network sourcing and contracting to ensure they are getting the optimum balance of price， quality and flexibility. This clinic will offer best practices for network sourcing and contracting and enable discussion of how these might apply to the participants environments.

IT procurement leaders are often challenged by negotiating effective Microsoft Enterprise Agreements and renewals because of the complexity of Microsoft’s licensing models and the number of options and use rights that have to be considered. This clinic will guide customers to understand these complexities and plan an effective negotiation strategy. This is a repeat session.

Cloud-based services are being adopted at an ever-increasing rate due to the need for agility to deliver value in a digital world. Often this comes with a significant shift from capex to opex. This workshop gives you actionable techniques to effectively manage that transition.

Sourcing leaders must leverage contractual security articles to address business risks when sourcing public cloud services. This session will provide best practices to protect your organization’s interests when negotiating cloud and data agreements，including a "Cloud Placemat". What security clauses should you address in cloud contracts? How do you address all known and unknown cloud risks? What options exist if you are unable to address security risks in the contract?

Agile development will deliver change to the business faster. Sourcing managers must effectively contract for agile development services with DevOps elements to integrate operations and optimize the maintainability of whatever the agile project delivers. The goal is a successful agile project though implementing an effective contract, metrics and maintenance integration. This session examines:
What are the prerequisites for successful agile projects?
What contract model should you apply?
What performance metrics should you include?

IT financial leaders are challenged to continuously maintain cost optimization results. Gartner’s S-A-V-E methodology is based on four actionable steps to create collaborative cross-team savings communities to identify，validate and report innovative cost optimization ideas. How can you harness the expertise of key IT leaders and staff to identify savings opportunities? What is the best framework for analyzing IT spend categories to identify savings opportunities? How can you analyze & validate savings opportunities，and report actualized savings?

Cloud security remains a top priority. This presentation summarizes the problems, recommended processes, and new product types to address three key issues:
What are the unique risks associated with public cloud service providers, and how can they be controlled?
What are the unique security challenges of IaaS and how can they be mitigated?
What are the unique control challenges of SaaS, and how can they be addressed?

In this session， we will discuss how to develop an effective ITAM business case to obtain the support and investments needed to mature ITAM. Typical questions that maybe asked include: What business relevant objectives does an investment in IT Asset Management support? Where do IT asset managers find data to support their business case? How do you clearly articulate what is needed to mature ITAM within the organization?

The cost and effort of implementing SAM tools are often underestimated，resulting in pre-purchase expectations that are not met. IT asset management leaders must ensure they have accurate license entitlement data，sufficient resources and objectives to support a successful outcome. How do you ensure that you have software entitlement data and consumption data to support your tool implementation? How do you determine the scope of your SAM tool implementation? What are the key considerations when resourcing a SAM tool implementation?

AI and RPA software deals introduce complexities in negotiating software and SaaS contracts. The technologies are consistently evolving， yet vendors are low on the contractual maturity scale.
- What are the key differences between AI/RPA vs. traditional software and SaaS deals and why do they matter?
- What contract terms which must be negotiated to prevent loss of critical IP?
- What are the other key contract terms needed to minimize risks?

The GDPR impacts the contracting phase of a technology product or services acquisition, as compliance is a necessity even when outsourcing personal data processing activities. Technology sourcing and vendor management leaders must include privacy requirements at the earliest possible stage to maintain a compliant operation. Typical questions that may be asked here include: What are those requirements? How can I work towards mitigating GDPR related risks?

Join other attendees for lunch and take advantage of the opportunity to network and catch up on the day's activities so far.

Maturing your vendor management program starts by understanding your current maturity and mapping out a plan for reaching your desired state. Gartner's new ITScore model for IT vendor management provides the ability to quickly perform this assessment. This session will provide you with the tools to assess your IT vendor management maturity and build out your roadmap for advancing your organization's maturity.

Software support and maintenance costs continue to rise, from 12% to 18% up to 21% to 25% for many providers. But are you getting any more value in return? This clinic will explore how to negotiate maintenance and support renwals to optimize costs, taking into consideration such factors as the degree to which you utilize the provider's support offerings, the likelihood of utilizing upgrades, and the ability to leverage alternative providers at a lower cost.

Software support and maintenance costs have been rising steadily but the value often decreases. This session examines a variety of options you have to reduce your support costs and in some cases cancel them completely. How do you reduce the already high but increasing support costs? How do you evaluate what benefit, if any you receive? How do you evaluate the risk of moving away from vendor support?

SAP customers can now use transaction-based licensing to address indirect and digital access. But， it requires careful financial modeling， guardrails to contain costs， and SAP’s agreement that the negotiated outcome is comprehensive. Attend this session to ask questions about how to identify indirect and digital access risk within your organization and how to negotiate a resolution from a position of strength.

IT procurement can provide significant business value when it is aligned with its internal partners. This session will address how IT procurement can reduce costs and risks when working closely with sourcing and vendor management. What are the core activities in IT procurement? How can these activities be aligned with sourcing and vendor management’s role? What organizational models best enable this alignment?

Enterprises spend between 5% and 15% of their IT budget on their networks. The continual evolution of enterprise demands, combined with rapidly changing market offerings and pricing options, mean that enterprises need to continually review network sourcing and contracting to ensure optimum balance of price, quality and flexibility. This session will explore: What is the current state of the network market? Which network sourcing and contracting practices deliver best service results? How can network contracts be optimized for cost?

Sourcing leaders are challenged to understand the complex licensing options for Microsoft’s Dynamics 365. The variance in options and price structures can substantially impact costs. In this session, delegates will have an opportunity to ask questions about licensing and how to achieve the optimal Dynamics 365 contract.

Sourcing is increasingly engaged to negotiate and understand cloud as its popularity increases. The options and the ability to negotiate vary greatly with the types of cloud implementation. This session explores:
- What are the reasons for moving to the cloud (cost，agility，digital transformation)?
- What are the risks associated with cloud and should you move mission-critical workloads (SAP，Oracle mainframe)?
- What are the differences in negotiation with main public cloud providers，MSPs and cloud brokerages?

ITAD is the critical final phase of the ITAM life cycle. This session will review the practical， best practice approaches to minimize ITAD’s dual material risks of data security and E-waste recycling: What are ITAD’s best-practice characteristics and services， and which ones are critical to your organization? How do you best navigate the current jumble of regional and local ITAD regulation – and minimize noncompliance risk? What criteria should you use to select a reliable， cost-effective ITAD vendor that can credibly minimize your global ITAD risk?

Managing end-to-end performance of multiple vendors is becoming increasingly difficult with cloud，communications and IoT providers entering you in your ecosystem. We examine how the MSI-SIAM model can optimize multivendor performance. Key issues include: What is the purpose of the MSI-SIAM role? How to evaluate and select providers that can provide SIAM support? How you can optimally govern this environment?

Join us for refreshments in a brief break between sessions.