Sector: Hospitality & Leisure · Region: UK and Germany · Services: IT Sourcing & Outsourcing Advisory, Target Operating Model Design, Benchmarking, Delivery Assurance
At a glance
- £30m savings identified in IT run costs over 5 years, 50% below the current run rate
- £2.5m savings already delivered through four delivery workstreams
- 8 Tier 1 and Tier 2 outsourcing providers market-tested across 2 RFPs
- 40 applications decommissioned and 2 on-premise data centres migrated to Azure
The challenge
A leading UK hospitality group with £3bn in revenue was spending too much on running its IT. Its outsourced services, covering service desk, service management, end-user computing, infrastructure and on-site break-fix, had grown expensive and complex. The customer experience no longer matched what the business needed. Leadership wanted a clear view of what good looked like, what it should cost, and how to get there without disrupting hotels and restaurants across the UK and Germany.
Our approach
GOX led the programme end to end, from strategy through to delivery.
- Insight and benchmarking. We worked with senior IT, C-suite and business stakeholders to gather data and insight. The resulting benchmarking report compared the group’s IT costs and service levels with the market and shaped a new IT Target Operating Model strategy.
- Outcome-based requirements. We defined what each service had to achieve, not just what it had to do, across service desk, service management, end-user computing, infrastructure management and on-site break-fix.
- Competitive market test. We ran two RFPs and obtained detailed costings and delivery approaches from eight Tier 1 and Tier 2 outsourcing providers. That gave the client hard evidence of the savings available.
- Roadmap and quick wins. We identified immediate cost reductions and service improvements, and set out a three-year roadmap to deliver the full benefit.
- Retained organisation design. We designed the client’s retained IT organisation across the UK and Germany so it could manage its suppliers effectively under the new model.
Delivering the savings
Strategy only matters if it lands, so GOX then led four delivery workstreams across IT operations:
- Supplier integration: connected ServiceNow, via Azure, to four third-party suppliers, removing manual re-keying and the charges linked to it.
- Application rationalisation: decommissioned 40 applications that were no longer needed.
- Datacentre exit: migrated services from two on-premise data centres to Microsoft Azure.
- Service desk automation: introduced an AWS Lex virtual agent to deflect routine calls from the service desk.
The results
- £30m of savings identified over five years, halving the IT run rate
- £2.5m of savings delivered through the four workstreams
- A modern, cloud-based IT estate with fewer applications and no on-premise data centres
- Faster, more automated support for staff in hotels and restaurants
- A retained IT team and three-year roadmap that let the client keep capturing value after the programme ended
Why GOX
GOX combines independent sourcing advice with hands-on delivery. We don’t just find the savings, we help you bank them. Want to know what your IT supplier spend could deliver? Book a Spend Diagnostic and get in touch with us.
