When household brand name companies must reduce expenses, they have been approaching AIQ to find savings on their IT and services spend. According to AIQ’s Blake Wetzel, AIQ uses a highly patented reverse auction process to cut services costs by an average of 44.6%. These reverse auctions and their accompanying lower cost, more tailored services, improve EBITDA and can help firms increase their value. “We work with the client to determine which vendors they would like to invite to the client, verses inviting everyone and then we work to make sure the vendors are qualified to provide the services,” says Blake. The curated reverse auction than helps get the cost of the services, that are needed, to be lower. As this is a cost cutting project with external vendors, the saving s come without an internal head count reduction. The idea is to gain the services needed at a better price than may have previously been arranged or offered. “We touch on over 100 categories on IT and IT adjacent spend,” adds Wetzel.
In this podcast, Wetzel walks us through the process, including a very thorough assessment, done for free. AIQ discovers what the contractual obligations are, looks at the way the firm is spending, looks at the operation of the firm, including mission critical services. AIQ holds reverse auctions every week and Is experienced in holding a competitive auction process that results in getting needed services delivered for less.
Wetzel sees this as not only an inviting process for the enterprise readers, but also a channel opportunity. A channel can bring a cost savings story to a client without having to do the actual vendor development. All this is done while the channel retains their connection as the valued advisor- in this case the value advisor who saved the company, the client, on significant recurring costs.