Event summary: How to make savings on your IT budget to invest in innovation

Many firms know they need to make progress with digital transformation and embracing new technologies, but often cost can be a barrier to uptake.

This event looked at how financial services institutions can make savings on their existing IT budgets to help fund digital innovation. In particular, the event focused on the role of third-party maintenance (TPM) – which many within financial services will be unaware exists as an option.

View video highlights from the event

Our expert speakers comprised:

• Guy Tritton, renowned author, IP Barrister with Hogarth Chambers and CRO at Origina;
• Dave Edmunds, CoCo Global, a cost control and optimisation company that identifies and delivers cost reduction for businesses;
• Chad Peters, Director of Infrastructure Solutions at Service Express;
• Mark O’Neill, Northern European Sales Director, Origina; and,
• Martin Biggs, VP and Managing Director, EMEA and Strategic Markets, at Spinnaker Support

Starting the event, Guy Tritton gave a legal outline setting out something that might be a surprise to many; it is wholly legal, under the law of agency, right to repair legislation and other legal precedents, that third parties can maintain software. He gave a number of examples and metaphors to how this works to help the audience understand how this works from a legal sense.

Our second speaker was Dave Edmunds representing CoCo Global who set out that his firm is not commercially tied to TPM as a cost-control option, but they often offer it to clients for a variety of reasons. This includes direct cost-savings, as well as giving more leverage to customers when negotiating with their Original Equipment Manufacturers.

We then followed these keynotes with a panel debate where the reason FS firms should consider TPM was discussed and what firms could achieve in terms of freeing up IT budget by employing it.

How you go about leveraging the discussion about future version releases was discussed with CoCo Global advocating taking TPM support if you’re not yet ready for future releases and then negotiating further down the line to “give you the strongest pound in your pocket”.

Finally, speakers summed up their takeaways from the session, with the common theme being that TPM for either software or hardware does not have the level of awareness it deserves.